Black Hat 2010 Briefings (http://www.blackhat.com) worth almost $2K!!

And now for an extra special shoutout for someone who exemplifies the exact type of member we cherish here on EH-Net. When building a community, one can only hope for active members to possess a positive attitude, willingness to help others and give back to the community that gave so much to all of us. EH-Net member, rvs, in simply trying to spread the word, retweeted an offer for SensePost training at BH (http://www.sensepost.com/services/training/blackhat). He won and was offered to attend any of their courses at…

A slang word ‘to hack’ (to cut, mangle) was originally born. It meant the process of making changes ‘on the fly’ in one’s own or another person’s program (it was supposed that original texts of the program were available). A verbal noun ‘hack’ meant the results of such change. It was quite useful and dignified not to just inform the author of the program about a mistake, but to offer him such a hack that would correct it. The word ‘hacker’ originally came from there.

Hack, however, did not always have a purpose of correcting mistakes, it could change the behaviour of the program contrary to the wish of its author. It is such scandalous incidents, primarily, that went public, and journalists were never interested in understanding of the hakishness as an active feedback between authors and users of programs. Then an epoch of the closed program code became, original texts of many programs got inaccessible, and a positive role of hackishness came to ought, enormous time consumption on the hack of the closed original code could be excused by a very strong motivation-such one as a wish to earn money or scandalous popularity.

As a result, a new, awry understanding of the word ‘hacker’ appeared: it means an intruder, using extensive computer knowledge to realize the unsanctioned, sometimes deleterious actions in the computer, namely, breaking computers, writing and wide-spread of computer viruses. First, the word ‘hacker’ in this sense was used by Clifford Stall in his book ‘An egg of a cuckoo’, and a Hollywood film ‘Hackers’ contributed to its popularity. The words ‘hack’, ‘to hack’ in such a computer slang are usually referred to breaking the protection of computer nets, web-servers and so on.



Linus Torvalds, a creator of the nucleus Linux

• Linus Torvalds is a creator of the open nucleus Linux
• Larry Wall is a creator of the language and system of programming Perl
• Richard Stallman is a founder of conception of free program software
• Jef Raskin
• Eric Raymond, a founder of Open Source Initiative
• Mark Zuckerberg is a young billionaire who came into the history as a half-educated person-hacker

Famous net runners

• Robert Morris is an author of Morris worm of 1988. (In reality Morris worm is a laboratory experiment therefore he can be considered as the net runner conditionally.)
• Adrian Lamo is famous for breaking Yahoo, Citigroup, Bank of America and Cingular.
• Jonathan Josef James is an American hacker, became the first juvenile judged for hackishness.
• John Draper is one from the first hackers in the history of the computer world.

Famous hackers-writers

• Kris Kaspersky is an author of popular books and articles in computer themes.
• Kevin Mitnick is the most famous net runner, now a writer and specialist in the field of information security.

A Britain journalist Danny O’Brian invented the term ‘life hacking’ in 2004. He connected the words life («life») and hack («breaking»).

In 2006 American society in research of dialects named lifehack as one of the most useful words after podcast.

Life hacking is a set of useful and brief advice allowing to solve various vital and household tasks with less expenses and/or quicker. For example:

• How to wind out a broken lamp from the socket;
• How to get a drink in the crowded bar quicker;
• How to remember the phone number or pin-code;
• How to stand in the line less;
• How to spend time less getting to a job;
• How to fulfill more complex tasks quicker;
• How to draw up a plan of speech quickly;
• How not to get excited in front of the public and so on

A hackish attack in the broad sense of the word (original sense) is a brainstorming directed to find out ways to solve complex tasks. One or several highly qualified specialists (hackers) can take part in the hackish attack. Non-traditional methods to solve the problem can be thought out or optimizing adjustments can be introduced into already existing methods as a result of brainstorming.

An extract from Manifest was read aloud in the film ‘Hackers’ in 1995; this extract was taken from the latest, not quite true edition from the magazine 2600. Also the manifesto was reproduced inside the box of the compact-disc of the computer game Uplink.

Bryus Stirling in his work ‘Hunting for hackers’ leads up the hacker movement to the movement of phone frickers that was formed around American magazine TAP, originally belonged to the youth party yipy (Youth International Party), that obviously sympathized to communists. The magazine TAP presented a technical program of support (Technical Assistance Program) to the party of Ebbie Hoffman, helping freaks communicate by long-distance calls and make political changes in their country, which were sometimes unsanctioned by authorities.

Free program software — a wide range of program solutions in which the rights of the user (‘freedom’) for unlimited installation, launch and also free use, spread and change (improvement) of the programs are protected legally by copyright with the help of free licenses.

Open source software — is a soft ware with the open initial code. Namely, the initial code of such programs is accessible for review, study and change that allows to help in adaptation of the open program itself, and also to use the code to create new programs and correction mistakes in them – via borrowing  of the initial code if the license allows it or to study the used algorithms, structure of data, technologies, methods and interfaces (as the initial code can essentially complement documentation, and serves itself as documentation upon absence of same).

60-s, long before computers got wide-spread. Then it was a part of the local slang

and could mean a simple but rude solution of some problem, damned sly trick of

students (the author was usually called a hacker). Up to that time words ‘hack’ and

‘hacker’ were used by various reasons irrelatively to computer technique in general.
A slang word ‘to hack’ (to cut, mangle) was originally born. It meant the process of

making changes ‘on the fly’ in one’s own or another person’s program (it was supposed

that original texts of the program were available). A verbal noun ‘hack’ meant the

results of such change. It was quite useful and dignified not to just inform the

author of the program about a mistake, but to offer him such a hack that would

correct it. The word ‘hacker’ originally came from there.
Hack, however, did not always have a purpose of correcting mistakes, it could change

the behaviour of the program contrary to the wish of its author. It is such

scandalous incidents, primarily, that went public, and journalists were never

interested in understanding of the hakishness as an active feedback between authors

and users of programs. Then an epoch of the closed program code became, original

texts of many programs got inaccessible, and a positive role of hackishness came to

ought, enormous time consumption on the hack of the closed original code could be

excused by a very strong motivation-such one as a wish to earn money or scandalous

popularity.
As a result, a new, awry understanding of the word ‘hacker’ appeared: it means an

intruder, using extensive computer knowledge to realize the unsanctioned, sometimes

deleterious actions in the computer, namely, breaking computers, writing and

wide-spread of computer viruses. First, the word ‘hacker’ in this sense was used by

Clifford Stall in his book ‘An egg of a cuckoo’, and a Hollywood film ‘Hackers’

contributed to its popularity. The words ‘hack’, ‘to hack’ in such a computer slang

are usually referred to breaking the protection of computer nets, web-servers and so

on.