The Art of Penetration

The title have you intrigued? The audience being Everyone have you confused? Probably the same thoughts he teacher had as she first saw this.

The Art of Penetration

 

 

Have you ever a free little trinket out of a cereal box? What would you say if one of those trinkets could be used to exploit tone-dialing phone lines? A free whistle that you could get out of a Cap’n Crunch cereal box could produce a 2600 Hz tone, the tone needed to exploit single frequency phone lines. A blind seven-year old boy, Joe Engressia, discovered the 2600 Hz tone in 1957 while whistling into a phone. He was skilled with perfect pitch which allowed him to discover whistling the fourth E above middle C would produce the 2600 Hz tone, which would stop a dialed phone recording. Thus his love of phreaking really began. Phreaking, a portmanteau of the words “phone” and “freak”, is used to refer to the use of audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreaking has become closely linked with computer hacking. This is sometimes referred to as the H/P culture, the “H” standing for Hacking and “P” as a placeholder for Phreaking.

Thus we begin our journey into the art of penetration, also known as hacking. Art of Penetration, the title of this speech, comes from what hackers do. Hackers penetrate computer systems in order to explore and gain knowledge of the systems used. Too many people associate hacking with a negative connotation, which refers to a small group of hackers dubbed “Black Hat Hackers” or “Crackers,” hackers with unlawful intentions, as other hackers name them. A subculture that revolves around hacking is often referred to as the computer underground. Hacking developed alongside phreaking, a term referring to the exploration of the phone network, and there has often been an overlap between both technology and participants. Bruce Sterling traces part of the roots of the computer underground to the Yippies. Yippies were a 1960s counterculture movement which produced the Technological Assistance Program (TAP) newsletter. Did you know that MIT labs and the homebrew club, that later resulted in such things as a personal computer or the open source movement, where other sources of early 1970s hacker culture? See and you thought all hacking was bad. The computer underground is heavily reliant on technology. It has produced its own slang and other various forms of alphabet use, such as 1337speak. Writing programs and performing other activities to support these views is known as hacktivism. Hacker conventions, “hacker cons,” are real-world gatherings that help support the computer underground. They have drawn more people every year, including H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth), DEF Con, SummerCon (Summer), and HoHoCon (Christmas).

The computer underground has several subgroups with different attitudes and aims that use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or exclude some specific group with which they don’t agree. Eric S. Raymond advocates that members of the computer underground should be known as crackers. But, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include his views into what they see as a wider hacker culture. A view harshly rejected by Raymond. Instead of a hacker-cracker dichotomy, they give more of an emphasis on a spectrum of different categories; white hats, grey hats, black hats, script kiddies, and hacktivists. In contrast to Raymond, those hackers generally reserve the term “crackers” for black hat hackers, or hackers with unlawful intentions. White hat hackers are hackers who enter computer systems for non-malicious reasons, and are generally known as ethical hackers. They generally use their hacking abilities to test computer systems. These hackers tend to enjoy learning and working with computer systems. Consequently they gain a deeper understanding of the subject. Some white hat hacks generally become legitimate hackers and work for corporations as security testers. Grey hat hackers are the grey area of hackers with ambiguous ethics and/or borderline legality, often frankly admitted. Black hat hackers are hackers that break computer security without authorization or uses technology for illegal practices. Black hat hackers are the hackers portrayed by the media, and frowned upon by other hackers who call them by the separate name “crackers.” Script kiddies is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, generally with little to no understanding. These are the outcasts of the hacker community. Hacktivists are hackers who utilize technology to announce a social, ideological, religious, or political message. Most hacktivism generally involves website defacement or denial-of-service attacks. In the most extreme cases hacktivism is used for cyberterrorism.

As you can see, not all you hear is true about hacking. Not all hacking is bad and you get to use the products of hackers work. You most likely use a personal computer, which the hacker culture helped produce. So not all hacking is bad, and if you look most of the anti-hacking programs probably had a hackers hand help in the making of it. So think about some of the stuff you see while using your computers, and wonder… how much of it the hacker culture helped produce.

Author's Note

Another work I actually enjoyed doing for class. Had to write a speech for English, so I spent 90% slacking off and learning about hacking, 2%to come up with the title, and the other 8% to write this. Enjoy :D

Reviews

[Aussie]

This was frickin interesting! I saw a few minor spelling errors but aside from that it was amazing! I was totally engrossed.