Hacking Tools

I have just been reading the 2004 edition of “Hacking for Dummies” by Kevin Beaver. It’s a great book and I could do a load of posts based on it. I may return to it at a later date and do a blog. Anyway what I thought I would do now is in the front there is an info page and there is a list of hacking software now don’t forget these have probably been updated but if you google them you’re bound to find the latest versions.

War dialing software – ToneLoc or THC-Scan

Password crackers – LC4 or pwdump2 or John the Ripper

Network scanners – SuperScan or Nmap

Network vulnerability assessors – Nessuss or QualysGuard

Network analyzers – Ethereal or Etherpeek

and Web Application Assessors Nikto or WebInspect.

Jquery

Jquery  is something that can be inserted into your html page in the form of snippets and will let your web page do special effects ie make your page fade in or out. If you have a web page or use wordpress or joomla or drupal there are hundreds of free scripts that you can use with them on the web. When I was learning dreamweaver I was advised not to learn php or asp scripts but instead to adapt ones downloaded from the web and it is the same with this. I haven’t any jquery snippets on this page because I don’t have anything like photos on here as it is just a blog. If you are interested in jquery a good place to start is

http://www.jquery.com

A good book on the subject is “Jquery for dummies” by Lynn Beighley.

The Internet & Hacking

I have just read ” The Internet for Dummies” 9th edition by John Levine et al with a view to doing a blog on it. It is a 2003 book & I think it is a bit out of date. Instead I am going to tell you an internet related funny story and then write a bit about hacking.

First the funny story. A few years ago I signed up for broadband and there was a one month wait while I was waiting for them to send my broadband adaptor etc. If you have ADSL broadband it usually uses your telephone cable. Anyway around that time there were some workmen digging up the road nearby apparently they were upgrading the telephone cable but for a joke I told a couple of people that they were bringing broadband down to me. They believed me as well.

Now I am going to write a bit about hacking. You know a lot of people think hacking is about brute force attacks were someone will crack their passwords. That is actually very difficult to do. What is more likely is what we call social engineering. This may take the form of someone in a police uniform going around to an employee’s house and asking for their passwords or it can be someone phoning the company helpdesk and pretending to be an employee who is locked out of a computer or it can be someone dressed in overalls pretending to be a pc repair man who walks out with one of their servers.

Paypal & Other Stuff

The book I read for this post is “Paypal for dummies” by Victoria Rosenborg. I am sure there is a newer version of this book on a site like kindle. I must admit I use kindle quite a lot. I don’t have a kindle reader as I am quite happy reading them on my laptop. Anyway this version of it is a proper book. There are two main uses for paypal one is making payments & the other is accepting them. There are two types of account personal and premier or merchant. If you are a business you need the second type. Incidently if you are constructing an ecommerce website using probably dreamweaver which is the industry standard for doing websites often if you use one of the included templates it will have a paypal button. I think then it is just a matter of copying and pasting some code.

Going onto another subject one of the benefits of paypal is it helps prevent identity theft. My sister uses an alias for her email address and she has had folk phishing for her account details using the alias as her name. These folk have software that does that automatically. One thing I once read is that when they are trying to defraud you by trying to get you to give them your bank details one thing they is to try to get you to break the law so if you report them you get yourself in trouble. One ploy is to say they need to launder some money. If it was a terrorist organisation you would probably end up in jail as it is a very serious offence.

 

WordPress – HTML 5 & CSS 3

I have a very good friend called claire who is almost obsessed with facebook. Anyway she has a facebook group and because I was at that time learning about dreamweaver she asked me if I would construct a website for her. I agreed although it was decided it would not be straight primarily because claire could not decide what she wanted on the site. So the idea stayed on the backburner until I happened to read a book called ” The complete idiot’s guide to HTML 5 & CSS 3″ by Joe Kraynak. It is obvious from the book that the author is a big fan of CMS or Content Management Sites like WordPress & Drupal. I don’t know if you have noticed a proliferation of companies advertising their wares on facebook rather than a dedicated website. Know here is the thing if you have a dedicated website it will cost a fortune to pay a website designer to construct it. If you have a wordpress site you can buy a domain name quite cheaply there are loads of themes and widgets although this book tells you how to change the HTML. Even if you have a custom design made it is still cheaper than a dedicated website. You can all sorts of multimedia ie video. If it is done in the right way no one would ever realise it is a wordpress. If you use something like Drupal it is even more configurable than WordPress but there is a steeper learning curve. Believe me when I told Claire all this she was really excited. I think for small companies and individuals dedicated websites are on the way out.

General Info

I have not written on this site for a while. On this site I am going to write about pc computing and on my companion site which is at
scratbagroberts.wordpress.com
I am going to write about technology and alternative therapies and anything similiar. I must admit computers are my main passion.
Feel free to visit my companion site.