How To Reset Windows Vista Account Password using Trinity RSK

Copyright © reserved by Walker

Today, I found another trick and tested it successfully on my own Windows Vista UltimateThe Trinity Rescue Kit or TRK! machine -
^{Trinity Rescue Kit is a tiny Linux distribution that used to repair or recover both Linux and Windows operating system, including the ability to reset a forgotten Windows Vista Administrator account password}

In fact, there is a proven video demo of using Trinity Rescue Kit to reset a forgotten Windows Vista administrator account password. Beside Windows Vista editions, the TRK is said works well to reset account password in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 too.

Cautions! It’s illegal (with most countries cyber laws, I think) to crack or reset another Windows logon account password that is not yours. The Trinity Rescue Kit is only a really good toolkit for those who want to reset a forgotten Administrator account password which is under his/her administration or ownership!

How to crack or reset a forgotten Windows Administrator account password with Trinity Rescue Kit in 3 minutes?

Download the latest Trinity Rescue Kit 3.2 Build 279 from the TRK official home page.

Make sure you’re downloading TRK ISO image file and validate its MD5 checksum with the published one (to confirm the ISO image is genuine and safe!)

Burn the TRK ISO image to a blank CD, which is less than 105MB in size.

Boot up Windows Vista machine with the Trinity Rescue Kit CD-ROM and wait for the tiny Linux loading completely to system memory.

Type winpass -u Administrator at the command prompt. To reset a Windows Vista Administrator account called Admin, just replace Administrator as Admin will do.

The winpass command will then displaying message that resemble these:

Searching and mounting all file system on local machine
Windows NT/2K/XP installation(s) found in:
1: /hda1/Windows
Make your choice or ‘q’ to quit [1]:

In this case, type 1 and press ENTER or just hit ENTER key to accept the default value, i.e. [1].

Next, it’s time to reset password of the specified Windows Vista account. The Trinity Rescue Kit suggests resetting it to a blank password that might work better than setting a new password! So, just type * (asterisk key) and hit the ENTER key to reset a blank or empty password for the specified Windows account.

Then, type Y and press ENTER key at the “Do you really wish to change it?” message prompt.

Now, type init 0 to shutdown the Trinity Rescue Kit Linux system, take out the CD-ROM and boot into Windows Vista Ultimate again.

This time, your Windows Vista should have automatically logged on with Administrator account without asking for a forgotten password!

Hack Windows Vista Logon Account Password

Copyright © reserved by Walker

Microsoft takes five years plus to develop Windows Vista, the so-called highly secured and renowned Windows operating system, with an overly redeveloped kernel.

But someone from China claimed that he takes only 3 minutes to hack or crack into Windows Vista logon account, or probably silently adding new Administrator account to Windows Vista without having to know the existing Administrator password.

Steps to crack Windows Vista logon account password (in case of forgotten Vista Administrator password)

1. Reboot the Windows Vista and boot up with Windows Vista installation DVD.
2. While the Windows Vista installation interface pops up, click the Repair You Computer
   link at the bottom-left corner.
3. Next, the System Recovery Options dialog box appears. There are few options that related to repairing Windows Vista, looks like Recovery Console in Windows XP:

   Startup Repair options is used to automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows Vista from starting.

   System Restore to restore Windows Vista setting to an earlier point in time.

   Windows Complete PC Restore to restore Windows Vista from a full system backup.

   Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool could be the first Microsoft memory tester toolkit that bundled with Windows setup media.

   Command Prompt is the target option of this Vista hacking guide. Click on this option now.
   

4. In the Vista Command Prompt, type mmc.exe and press ENTER key to bring up the Microsoft Management Console.
   
5. Click on the File menu, select Add / Remove Snap-in option, locate and select the Local Users and Groups on the left panel, and click Add button to add it to the right panel.
   
6. Now, the Choose Target Machine dialog box pop up. Keep the default setting by clicking the Finish button – that means using the Local Users and Groups snap-in to manage this local computer, and not another computer in network.
   
7. Click OK button and return to MMC windows. Under the Root Console in left panel, double-click Local Users and Group that was added earlier. Click on User folder, locate and right-click the target Vista logon account that found in the right panel.

Guess you should know what to do now. Select the Set Password from the right-click menu to set a new password / reset old password

Online Banking Hack and how to prevent it

It is not uncommon to perform banking and to purchase products online with your credit card. It is also a common thought that doing so is secure, as this is done via SSL. For the most part, this is true and the sessions are secure. Discover Card, for example, posts the following statement on their website:

Figure 1

The problem is that it is not “virtually impossible” for someone else to see your data, such as login information or credit card numbers. It can actually be relatively easy, as you’ll see, if you as an end-user are not knowledgeable about how you can be exploited and know the signs that this is occurring.

Figure 2 (Indicates a Secure SSL Session)

Continuing with the scenario, what you didn’t realize is that a hacker has intercepted your Online Banking login credentials and credit card information and can now log into your Online Banking Website or purchase items with your credit card. How is this possible, since SSL was used and is hard to break? The answer is that you made a fatal mistake that subjected you to an SSL Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack.

The Attack

The fatal flaw that enabled the sensitive information to be stolen is possible when an end-user is not properly educated on an easy to do and well-known SSL exploit – SSL MITM.

Here’s how it’s done:

The hacker goes to coffee shop and connects to the same Wi-Fi network you are connected to. He runs a series of utilities to redirect other user’s data through his machine. He runs a number of other utilities to sniff the data, act as an SSL Certificate Server and to be the Man-the-Middle. The following diagram shows a very simplified graphic of how your SSL Banking session should work under normal conditions, then how it would work during an attack:

Figure 3

Figure 4

An important concept to grasp here is that a certificate is used to establish the secure SSL connection. This is a good thing, if you have a good certificate and are connecting directly to the website to which you intended to use. Then all your data is encrypted from your browser to the SSL website where the bank’s website will use the information from the certificate it gave you to decrypt your data/credentials. If that is truly the case, then it is pretty darn hard for a hacker to decrypt the data/credentials being transmitted, even if he is able to sniff your data.

This is a bad thing if you have a “Fake” certificate being sent from the hacker, and you are actually connecting to his machine, not directly to the bank’s website. In this case, your credentials are being transmitted between your browser and the hacker’s machine. The hacker is able to grab that traffic, and, because he gave you the certificate to encrypt the data/credentials, he can use that same certificate to decrypt your data/credentials.

Here are the exact steps a hacker could use to perform this attack:

The first thing he would do is turn on Fragrouter, so that his machine can perform IP forwarding

Figure 5

After that, he’ll want to direct your Wi-Fi network traffic to his machine instead of your data traffic going directly to the Internet. This enables him to be the “Man-in-the-Middle” between your machine and the Internet. Using Arpspoof, a real easy way to do this, he determines your IP address is 192.168.1.15 and the Default Gateway of the Wi-Fi network is 192.168.1.1:

Figure 6

The next step is to enable DNS Spoofing via DNSSpoof:

Figure 7

Since he will be replacing the Bank's or Online Store’s valid certificate with his own fake one, he will need to turn on the utility to enable his system to be the Man-in-the-Middle for web sessions and to handle certificates. This is done via webmitm:

Figure 8

At this point, he is setup and ready to go, he now needs to begin actively sniffing your data passing through his machine including your login information and credit card info. He opts to do this with Ethereal, then saves his capture:

Figure 9

He now has the data, but it is still encrypted with 128-bit SSL. No problem, since he has the key. What he simply needs to do now is decrypt the data using the certificate that he gave you. He does this with SSL Dump:

Figure 10

The data is now decrypted and he runs a Cat command to view the now decrypted SSL information. Note that the username is “Bankusername” and the password is “BankPassword”. Conveniently, this dump also shows that the Banking site as National City. FYI, the better, more secure banking and online store websites will have you first connect to another, preceeding page via SSL, prior to connecting to the page where you enter the sensitive information such as bank login credentials or credit card numbers. The reason for this is to stop the MITM-type attack. How this helps is that if you were to access this preceeding page first with a "fake" certificate and then proceeded to the next page where you were to enter the sensitve information, that page where you would enter the sensitive information would not display. That is because the page gathering the sensitive information would be expecting a valid certificate, which it would not receive because of the Man-in-the-Middle. While some online banks and stores do implement this extra step/page for security reasons, the real flaw in this attack is the uneducated end-user, as you'll soon see:

Figure 11

With this information, he can now log into your Online Banking Account with the same access and privileges as you. He could transfer money, view account data, etc.

Below is an example of a sniffed SSL credit card purchase/transaction. You can see that Elvis Presley was attempting to make a purchase with his credit card 5440123412341234 with an expiration date of 5/06 and the billing address of Graceland in Memphis, TN (He is alive!). If this was your information, the hacker could easily make online purchases with your card.

Figure 12

Also Real Bad News for SSL VPN Admins

This type of attack could be particularly bad for corporations. The reason for this is that Corporate SSL VPN solutions are also vulnerable to this type of attack. Corporate SSL VPN solutions will often authenticate against Active Directory, the NT Domain, LDAP or some other centralized credentials data store. Sniffing the SSL VPN login then gives an attacker valid credentials to the corporate network and other systems.

What an End-User Needs To Know

There’s a big step and end-user can take to prevent this from taking place. When the MITM Hacker uses the “bad” certificate instead of the “good”, valid certificate, the end-user is actually alerted to this. The problem is that most end-users don’t understand what this means and will unknowingly agree to use the fake certificate. Below is an example of the Security Alert an end-user would receive. Most uneducated end-users would simply click “Yes”… and this is the fatal flaw:

Figure 13

By clicking “Yes”, they have set themselves up to be hacked. By clicking the “View Certificate” button, the end-user would easily see that there is a problem. Below are examples of the various certificate views/tabs that show a good certificate compared to the bad certificate:

Figure 14
(Good Certificate) (Bad Certificate)

Figure 15
(Good Certificate) (Bad Certificate)

Figure 16
(Good Certificate) (Bad Certificate)

How an End-User Can Prevent This

• Again, the simple act of viewing the certificate and clicking “No” would have prevented this from happening.

• Education is the key for an end-user. If you see this message, take the time to view the certificate. As you can see from the examples above, you can tell when something doesn’t look right. If you can’t tell, err on the side of caution and call your Online Bank or the Online store.

• Take the time to read and understand all security messages you receive. Don’t just randomly click yes out of convenience.

How a Corporation Can Prevent This

• Educate the end-user on the Security Alert and how to react to it.

• Utilize One Time Passwords, such as RSA Tokens, to prevent the reuse of sniffed credentials.

• When using SSL VPN, utilize mature products with advanced features, such as Juniper’s Secure Application Manager or Network Connect functionality.

Conclusion

This type of attack is relatively easy to do in a public Wi-Fi hotspot environment. It could also easily happen on a home Wi-Fi network, if that Wi-Fi network isn’t properly configured and allows a hacker to connect to that home network . An educated end-user and sound security practices by corporations can protect your valuable data.

Source:i google it.

Free music from napster using winamp

Using a loophole in a winamp plugin, you can download and burn music from Napster for free.

Steps:

1. Download and install Napster, sign up for 14 day free trial.
2. Download and install Winamp
3. Download and install the Winamp Plug-in Output Stacker
4. Open Winamp Options->Plug-ins->Output->Dietmar’s Output Stacker->Configure
5. Add out_ds.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder
6. Add out_disk.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder
7. Select out_disk.dll in the Output Stacker->Configure
8. Set the output directory and output file mode to Force WAV file
9. Exit preferences
10. Load downloaded Napster protected WMAs into your Winamp playlist
11. Press play and each file will be converted to WAV as it plays
12. Burn WAVs to CD with your favorite burning programs.

Note:

1. This is not tested (due to lack of time)
2. Found this in a text file on a public PC. (so email me if u know its real source)

WIFI Hacking and Prevention

Finding Wireless Networks

Locating a wireless network is the first step in trying to exploit it. There are two tools that are commonly used in this regard:

Network Stumbler a.k.a NetStumbler – This Windows based tool easily finds wireless signals being broadcast within range – A must have. It also has ability to determine Signal/Noise info that can be used for site surveys. I actually know of one highly known public wireless hotspot provider that uses this utility for their site surveys.

(NetStumbler Screenshot)

Kismet – One of the key functional elements missing from NetStumbler is the ability to display Wireless Networks that are not broadcasting their SSID. As a potential wireless security expert, you should realize that Access Points are routinely broadcasting this info; it just isn’t being read/deciphered. Kismet will detect and display SSIDs that are not being broadcast which is very critical in finding wireless networks.

(Kismet Screenshot)

Attaching to the Found Wireless Network

Once you’ve found a wireless network, the next step is to try to connect to it. If the network isn’t using any type of authentication or encryption security, you can simply connect to the SSID. If the SSID isn’t being broadcast, you can create a profile with the name of the SSID that is not being broadcast. Of course you found the non-broadcast SSID with Kismet, right? If the wireless network is using authentication and/or encryption, you may need one of the following tools.

Airsnort – This is a very easy to use tool that can be used to sniff and crack WEP keys. While many people bash the use of WEP, it is certainly better than using nothing at all. Something you’ll find in using this tool is that it takes a lot of sniffed packets to crack the WEP key. There are additional tools and strategies that can be used to force the generation of traffic on the wireless network to shorten the amount of time needed to crack the key, but this feature is not included in Airsnort.

(Screenshot of Airsnort in Action)

CowPatty – This tool is used as a brute force tool for cracking WPA-PSK, considered the “New WEP” for home Wireless Security. This program simply tries a bunch of different options from a dictionary file to see if one ends up matching what is defined as the Pre-Shared Key.

(Cowpatty Options Screenshot)

ASLeap – If a network is using LEAP, this tool can be used to gather the authentication data that is being passed across the network, and these sniffed credentials can be cracked. LEAP doesn’t protect the authentication like other “real” EAP types, which is the main reason why LEAP can be broken.

(Asleap Options Screenshot)

Sniffing Wireless Data

Whether you are directly connected to a wireless network or not, if there is wireless network in range, there is data flying through the air at any given moment. You will need a tool to be able to see this data.

Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) – While there has been much debate on the proper way to pronounce this utility, there is no question that it is an extremely valuable tool. Ethereal can scan wireless and Ethernet data and comes with some robust filtering capabilities. It can also be used to sniff-out 802.11 management beacons and probes and subsequently could be used as a tool to sniff-out non-broadcast SSIDs.

(Screenshot of Ethereal in Action)

(Yahoo IM Session being sniffed in Ethereal)

The aforementioned utilities, or similar ones, will be necessities in your own wireless security toolkit. The easiest way to become familiar with these tools is to simply use them in a controlled lab environment. And cost is no excuse as all of these tools are available freely on the Internet.

Protecting Against These Tools

Just as it’s important to know how to utilize the aforementioned tools, it is important to know best practices on how to secure your Wireless Network Against these tools.

NetStumbler – Do not broadcast your SSID. Ensure your WLAN is protected by using advanced Authentication and Encryption.

Kismet – There’s really nothing you can do to stop Kismet from finding your WLAN, so ensure your WLAN is protected by using advanced Authentication and Encryption

Airsnort – Use a 128-bit, not a 40-bit WEP encryption key. This would take longer to crack. If your equipment supports it, use WPA or WPA2 instead of WEP (may require firmware or software update).

Cowpatty – Use a long and complex WPA Pre-Shared Key. This type of key would have less of a chance of residing in a dictionary file that would be used to try and guess your key and/or would take longer. If in a corporate scenario, don’t use WPA with Pre-Shared Key, use a good EAP type to protect the authentication and limit the amount of incorrect guesses that would take place before the account is locked-out. If using certificate-like functionality, it could also validate the remote system trying to gain access to the WLAN and not allow a rogue system access.

ASLeap – Use long and complex credentials, or better yet, switch to EAP-FAST or a different EAP type.

Ethereal – Use encryption, so that anything sniffed would be difficult or nearly impossible to break. WPA2, which uses AES, is essentially unrealistic to break by a normal hacker. Even WEP will encrypt the data. When in a Public Wireless Hotspot (which generally do not offer encryption), use application layer encryption, like Simplite to encrypt your IM sessions, or use SSL. For corporate users, use IPSec VPN with split-tunneling disabled. This will force all traffic leaving the machine through an encrypted tunnel that would be encrypted with DES, 3DES or AES.

TELNET

Introduction:
Telnet is used to connect to remote machines through emulation. This means thatit can connect to a server, any server instantly because of it's ability to emulate (copy)remote computers.

Lets Start:In Windows, Telnet can be found by going to Start -> Run and then typing telnet.The application should then pop up. If you don't have Windows, there are many Telnet alternatives for mac, linux etc. Since I don't know any,search the internet for Telnet for Linux or Telnet for Mac and you should find something instantly.

If you have a PC and are using Windows 98/95, 2000, Me, or XP continue...As you can see,

Telnet has 4 menu options.
These are Connect, Edit, Terminal, and Help.

If you click Connect, you should see more options. Here they are.

Connect:
Remote System..
Disconnect
Exit

Names of servers you have been on.

To connect to a server, click Remote System...
This will then take you to a dialog box that has these fields:

Hostname:
Port:
TermType:

There should also be a Connect button and a Cancel Button.
Lets go over these & what you should put in them.

-Hostname-
The Hostname can be the address of the website your going to be connecting to:http://www.google.comor it can be the IP address. Keep in mind that you can only connect to servers and not to clients (other PCs)an IP Address looks like this: 44.333.111.99

-Port-
Port can bb either the port number you wanna connect to on the server (Port 80 is the Internet, Port 23 is Simple Mail Protocol then there are some more ports for different things..) or you can keep it Telnet and see what happens.

-TermType-
TermType is the type of Terminal telnet will be acting like.This doesn't matter most of the time, so you can keep it to default or try other ones if you want.
When you have all this set up, you can Click Connect & see what happens.

Note: Sometimes many servers don't like anon people just logging on, so be careful when logging onto servers, because sometimes it might be some big company that likes bullying people or just SOMEONE who likes bullying people and then they might want to find you or trace you or something and I know for a fact you don't need that happening.

Another Note: When you go to a server and type something, such as a login name or a password, you might not see anything even though you are typing. this is a feature that telnet or the other server uses. It's for some kind of safety measure.
Ok that's all for the Connect Menu, lets go over the Terminal menu.

The terminal menu should have 3 options:
Prefernces
Start Logging
Stop Logging.

-Prefernces-
If you go to this, a dialog box will come up with various options. Here, you can change thetext color & background color of the program, and you can enable Local Echo, which showsyou everything you've typed, Blinking cursor if you want the cursor to blink check it, if not un check, Block cursor if you want the cursor to be shown as a block, VT100 Arrows, don't worry about these they are useless, Buffer Size, this allows you to set the number of lines of text you want to be shown before the screen starts to scroll, The Terminal emulation type, always have this set on the default unless you know what the second one is and you know what your doing.

-Start Logging-
This logs everything you do on Telnet in a log file on your computer.

-Stop Logging-
This will stop logging processes.Well that's it for basics of telnet.
Thanks for reading.For complete Guide on telnet visit happy hackers guide for telnet,
Telnet: the Number One Hacker Tool is the guide title, from this guide really you can become a hacker

Basic Hacking

Getting Ip's:--
To see the ip all computers you are connected to (web servers, people attempting to hack into your computer).

Go to dos (start>run>type command) and run the netstat command. Type netstat /? for details.
Type netstat -r at the command prompt to see the ip of all computers you are connected to

In MSN (and other programs) when you are chatting to someone everything you type goes through the MSN servers first (they act as a proxy) so you see their ip rather than who you are chatting to. You can get round this by sending them a file as MSN doesn't send file through its proxy.
When you type the netstat -r (or -a for a different view) the ip's are under the foreign address table. The ports are seperated by a : . Different programs use different ports, so you can work out which ip's are from which program.

Connecting to other computers and what ports are:--
Servers send information. Clients retrieve. Simple.
Windows comes with a built in program to connect to other computers called telnet.To start Windows telnet Start menu> Run> type Telnet. Click connect> remote systemPorts are doors into computers. Hosts are computer names
(ip number or a name that is translated into the ip automatically)
Different programs open different ports, but they always open the same ports so other computers know which port to connect to. You can get a port list listing all the different ports, but a basic one is:

11 :- Sends info on the computer
21 :- FTP (File transfer program)
23 :- Telnet (Login to the computers command line)
25 :- Smtp (Sends mail)
80 :- Http (Web pages)

There are thousands of different programs using different ports. You can get programs called portscanners which check a computer for all ports up to a certain number, looking for ways in. You can portscan a computer looking for ways-in.Anyway, back to telnet.
Type www.yahoo.com as the host and port as 80 the click connect.If nothing happens, you're in. Wow. You are connected to Yahoo's server.You can now type http commands (you are connected to an http server, so it supports http commands). Ie. on an ftp server you can type open and it will do something. On an http server it will just wonder what the hell you are on about.
Type get / http/1.0 then press enter twice to get the file on the server at / (try /index.html) etc.)

Allowing dos and regedit in a restricted Windows
A very simple tactic I found after accidentally locking myself out of dos and regedit is to open notepad and type the following:

REGEDIT4[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesWinOldApp]"Disabled"=dword:0[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem]"DisableRegistryTools"=dword:0

Save it as something.reg then run it. Simple.

Proxies
Proxies are computers that you connect through, hiding your computer. Most aren't anonymous, they give away your ip. Some are. Good anonymous proxies: mail.uraltelecom.ru:8080 and 194.247.87.4:8080.Different programs require different ways of using proxies.
To do it in internet explorer 5 go to tools, internet options, connections, settings. In the above proxies they are in the format host:port

Who is snooping my EMAIL?

Is anyone is secretly reading your email ? Following are two simple techniques that can help you confirm your suspicion - it detects snoopers and can track the address of the computer that is watching your email.

Remember that for steps 3 & 4, you can create a free account on geocities.com, create a dummy HTML file that contains Statcounter or Google Analytics tracking script.

1. Set up a Hotmail account in US and and a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediff.com or IndiaTimes.com)
2. Send messages between the two email accounts which might be interesting to the email snooper or NSA who may be monitoring your email.
3. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server (link to the dummy file on geocities.com containing the tracking code) that you have access to its server logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the message should encourage an NSA monitor or email snooper to visit the URL.
4. If the server log file ever shows this URL being accessed, then you know that you are being snooped on. The IP address of the access can also provide clues about who is doing the snooping.

The other technique uses Google Analytics for tracking the email impressions.

1. Create an email email message such that Urchin with the following HTML code to embed the __utm.gif image anywhere in your email message.



The email impressions would be credited to the source "news1" and the medium "email". As soon as someone ones your email, the impression will be registered on Google Analytics server as the gif file is downloaded on the spying computer.

2. If the email recipient has disabled automatic downloading of internet images, you can create a campaign link to track the email referrals. Tag these links using the utm_ campaign variables.

Continuing with the example above of an email message which you track using the source "news1" and the medium "email," your tagged link might look like this:

< href="www.mywebsite.com/?utm_source=news1&utm_medium=email">

Update: According to NYT, the volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency without court-approved warrants was much larger than the White House has acknowledged.

Americans come to the program's attention only if they have received a call or e-mail message from a person overseas who is already suspected to be a member of certain terrorist groups or linked somehow to a member of such groups. And the agency still gets a warrant to intercept their calls or e-mail messages to other people in the United States.
Who is snooping on my email? - confirm if one's email messages are being read by someone else.

How to become a hacker

Eric Steven Raymond
Thyrsus Enterprises

Why This Document?

As editor of the Jargon File and author of a few other well-known documents of similar nature, I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbies asking (in effect) "how can I learn to be a wizardly hacker?". Back in 1996 I noticed that there didn't seem to be any other FAQs or web documents that addressed this vital question, so I started this one. A lot of hackers now consider it definitive, and I suppose that means it is. Still, I don't claim to be the exclusive authority on this topic; if you don't like what you read here, write your own.

If you are reading a snapshot of this document offline, the current version lives at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html.

Note: there is a list of Frequently Asked Questions at the end of this document. Please read these—twice—before mailing me any questions about this document.

Numerous translations of this document are available: Arabic Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, German, Greek Hebrew, Italian Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian Russian Spanish, Turkish, and Swedish. Note that since this document changes occasionally, they may be out of date to varying degrees.

The five-dots-in-nine-squares diagram that decorates this document is called a glider. It is a simple pattern with some surprising properties in a mathematical simulation called Life that has fascinated hackers for many years. I think it makes a good visual emblem for what hackers are like — abstract, at first a bit mysterious-seeming, but a gateway to a whole world with an intricate logic of its own. Read more about the glider emblem here.

What Is a Hacker?

The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term ‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.

The Hacker Attitude

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself. And to behave as though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the attitude.

But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes as just a way to gain acceptance in the culture, you'll miss the point. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for you — for helping you learn and keeping you motivated. As with all creative arts, the most effective way to become a master is to imitate the mind-set of masters — not just intellectually but emotionally as well.

Or, as the following modern Zen poem has it:

To follow the path:
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.

So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until you believe them:

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.

Being a hacker is lots of fun, but it's a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.

If you aren't the kind of person that feels this way naturally, you'll need to become one in order to make it as a hacker. Otherwise you'll find your hacking energy is sapped by distractions like sex, money, and social approval.

(You also have to develop a kind of faith in your own learning capacity — a belief that even though you may not know all of what you need to solve a problem, if you tackle just a piece of it and learn from that, you'll learn enough to solve the next piece — and so on, until you're done.)

2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating new problems waiting out there.

To behave like a hacker, you have to believe that the thinking time of other hackers is precious — so much so that it's almost a moral duty for you to share information, solve problems and then give the solutions away just so other hackers can solve new problems instead of having to perpetually re-address old ones.

Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better. What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels.

(You don't have to believe that you're obligated to give all your creative product away, though the hackers that do are the ones that get most respect from other hackers. It's consistent with hacker values to sell enough of it to keep you in food and rent and computers. It's fine to use your hacking skills to support a family or even get rich, as long as you don't forget your loyalty to your art and your fellow hackers while doing it.)

3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do — solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.

To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else (especially other hackers).

(There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice — nobody who can think should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.)

4. Freedom is good.

Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers.

(This isn't the same as fighting all authority. Children need to be guided and criminals restrained. A hacker may agree to accept some kinds of authority in order to get something he wants more than the time he spends following orders. But that's a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of personal surrender authoritarians want is not on offer.)

Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information-sharing — they only like ‘cooperation’ that they control. So to behave like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or deception to compel responsible adults. And you have to be willing to act on that belief.

5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

To be a hacker, you have to develop some of these attitudes. But copping an attitude alone won't make you a hacker, any more than it will make you a champion athlete or a rock star. Becoming a hacker will take intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work.

Therefore, you have to learn to distrust attitude and respect competence of every kind. Hackers won't let posers waste their time, but they worship competence — especially competence at hacking, but competence at anything is valued. Competence at demanding skills that few can master is especially good, and competence at demanding skills that involve mental acuteness, craft, and concentration is best.

If you revere competence, you'll enjoy developing it in yourself — the hard work and dedication will become a kind of intense play rather than drudgery. That attitude is vital to becoming a hacker.

Basic Hacking Skills

The hacker attitude is vital, but skills are even more vital. Attitude is no substitute for competence, and there's a certain basic toolkit of skills which you have to have before any hacker will dream of calling you one.

This toolkit changes slowly over time as technology creates new skills and makes old ones obsolete. For example, it used to include programming in machine language, and didn't until recently involve HTML. But right now it pretty clearly includes the following:

1. Learn how to program.

This, of course, is the fundamental hacking skill. If you don't know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy; it is very powerful and flexible and well suited for large projects. I have written a more detailed evaluation of Python. Good tutorials are available at the Python web site.

Java is also a good language for learning to program in. It is more difficult than Python, but produces faster code than Python. I think it makes an excellent second language. (There used to be a problem with Java because it was proprietary, but Sun is remedying that and the difficuties should entirely vanish with the final code drop in early 2007.)

But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even merely a programmer if you only know one or two languages — you need to learn how to think about programming problems in a general way, independent of any one language. To be a real hacker, you need to get to the point where you can learn a new language in days by relating what's in the manual to what you already know. This means you should learn several very different languages.

If you get into serious programming, you will have to learn C, the core language of Unix. C++ is very closely related to C; if you know one, learning the other will not be difficult. Neither language is a good one to try learning as your first, however. And, actually, the more you can avoid programming in C the more productive you will be.

C is very efficient, and very sparing of your machine's resources. Unfortunately, C gets that efficiency by requiring you to do a lot of low-level management of resources (like memory) by hand. All that low-level code is complex and bug-prone, and will soak up huge amounts of your time on debugging. With today's machines as powerful as they are, this is usually a bad tradeoff — it's smarter to use a language that uses the machine's time less efficiently, but your time much more efficiently. Thus, Python.

Other languages of particular importance to hackers include Perl and LISP. Perl is worth learning for practical reasons; it's very widely used for active web pages and system administration, so that even if you never write Perl you should learn to read it. Many people use Perl in the way I suggest you should use Python, to avoid C programming on jobs that don't require C's machine efficiency. You will need to be able to understand their code.

LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the GIMP.)

It's best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Java, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways.

I can't give complete instructions on how to learn to program here — it's a complex skill. But I can tell you that books and courses won't do it (many, maybe most of the best hackers are self-taught). You can learn language features — bits of knowledge — from books, but the mind-set that makes that knowledge into living skill can be learned only by practice and apprenticeship. What will do it is (a) reading code and (b) writing code.

Peter Norvig, who is one of Google's top hackers and the co-author of the most widely used textbook on AI, has written an excellent essay called Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years. His "recipe for programming success" is worth careful attention.

Learning to program is like learning to write good natural language. The best way to do it is to read some stuff written by masters of the form, write some things yourself, read a lot more, write a little more, read a lot more, write some more ... and repeat until your writing begins to develop the kind of strength and economy you see in your models.

Finding good code to read used to be hard, because there were few large programs available in source for fledgeling hackers to read and tinker with. This has changed dramatically; open-source software, programming tools, and operating systems (all built by hackers) are now widely available. Which brings me neatly to our next topic...

2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.

I'll assume you have a personal computer or can get access to one. (Take a moment to appreciate how much that means. The hacker culture originally evolved back when computers were so expensive that individuals could not own them.) The single most important step any newbie can take toward acquiring hacker skills is to get a copy of Linux or one of the BSD-Unixes or OpenSolaris, install it on a personal machine, and run it.

Yes, there are other operating systems in the world besides Unix. But they're distributed in binary — you can't read the code, and you can't modify it. Trying to learn to hack on a Microsoft Windows machine or under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast.

Under Mac OS X it's possible, but only part of the system is open source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's proprietary code. If you concentrate on the Unix under the hood you can learn some useful things.

Unix is the operating system of the Internet. While you can learn to use the Internet without knowing Unix, you can't be an Internet hacker without understanding Unix. For this reason, the hacker culture today is pretty strongly Unix-centered. (This wasn't always true, and some old-time hackers still aren't happy about it, but the symbiosis between Unix and the Internet has become strong enough that even Microsoft's muscle doesn't seem able to seriously dent it.)

So, bring up a Unix — I like Linux myself but there are other ways (and yes, you can run both Linux and Microsoft Windows on the same machine). Learn it. Run it. Tinker with it. Talk to the Internet with it. Read the code. Modify the code. You'll get better programming tools (including C, LISP, Python, and Perl) than any Microsoft operating system can dream of hosting, you'll have fun, and you'll soak up more knowledge than you realize you're learning until you look back on it as a master hacker.

For more about learning Unix, see The Loginataka. You might also want to have a look at The Art Of Unix Programming.

To get your hands on a Linux, see the Linux Online! site; you can download from there or (better idea) find a local Linux user group to help you with installation. From a new user's point of view, all Linux distributions are pretty much equivalent.

A good way to dip your toes in the water is to boot up what Linux fans call a live CD, a distribution that runs entirely off a CD without having to modify your hard disk. This will be slow, because CDs are slow, but it's a way to get a look at the possibilities without having to do anything drastic.

You can find BSD Unix help and resources at www.bsd.org.

I have written a primer on the basics of Unix and the Internet.

(Note: I don't really recommend installing either Linux or BSD as a solo project if you're a newbie. For Linux, find a local Linux user's group and ask for help.)

3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.

Most of the things the hacker culture has built do their work out of sight, helping run factories and offices and universities without any obvious impact on how non-hackers live. The Web is the one big exception, the huge shiny hacker toy that even politicians admit has changed the world. For this reason alone (and a lot of other good ones as well) you need to learn how to work the Web.

This doesn't just mean learning how to drive a browser (anyone can do that), but learning how to write HTML, the Web's markup language. If you don't know how to program, writing HTML will teach you some mental habits that will help you learn. So build a home page. Try to stick to XHTML, which is a cleaner language than classic HTML. (There are good beginner tutorials on the Web; here's one.)

But just having a home page isn't anywhere near good enough to make you a hacker. The Web is full of home pages. Most of them are pointless, zero-content sludge — very snazzy-looking sludge, mind you, but sludge all the same (for more on this see The HTML Hell Page).

To be worthwhile, your page must have content — it must be interesting and/or useful to other hackers. And that brings us to the next topic...

4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.

As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function in the hacker community.

Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all).

Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.

Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to.

Status in the Hacker Culture

Like most cultures without a money economy, hackerdom runs on reputation. You're trying to solve interesting problems, but how interesting they are, and whether your solutions are really good, is something that only your technical peers or superiors are normally equipped to judge.

Accordingly, when you play the hacker game, you learn to keep score primarily by what other hackers think of your skill (this is why you aren't really a hacker until other hackers consistently call you one). This fact is obscured by the image of hacking as solitary work; also by a hacker-cultural taboo (gradually decaying since the late 1990s but still potent) against admitting that ego or external validation are involved in one's motivation at all.

Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.

There are basically five kinds of things you can do to be respected by hackers:

1. Write open-source software

The first (the most central and most traditional) is to write programs that other hackers think are fun or useful, and give the program sources away to the whole hacker culture to use.

(We used to call these works “free software”, but this confused too many people who weren't sure exactly what “free” was supposed to mean. Most of us now prefer the term “open-source” software).

Hackerdom's most revered demigods are people who have written large, capable programs that met a widespread need and given them away, so that now everyone uses them.

But there's a bit of a fine historical point here. While hackers have always looked up to the open-source developers among them as our community's hardest core, before the mid-1990s most hackers most of the time worked on closed source. This was still true when I wrote the first version of this HOWTO in 1996; it took the mainstreaming of open-source software after 1997 to change things. Today, "the hacker community" and "open-source developers" are two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and population — but it is worth remembering that this was not always so.

2. Help test and debug open-source software

They also serve who stand and debug open-source software. In this imperfect world, we will inevitably spend most of our software development time in the debugging phase. That's why any open-source author who's thinking will tell you that good beta-testers (who know how to describe symptoms clearly, localize problems well, can tolerate bugs in a quickie release, and are willing to apply a few simple diagnostic routines) are worth their weight in rubies. Even one of these can make the difference between a debugging phase that's a protracted, exhausting nightmare and one that's merely a salutary nuisance.

If you're a newbie, try to find a program under development that you're interested in and be a good beta-tester. There's a natural progression from helping test programs to helping debug them to helping modify them. You'll learn a lot this way, and generate good karma with people who will help you later on.

3. Publish useful information

Another good thing is to collect and filter useful and interesting information into web pages or documents like Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) lists, and make those generally available.

Maintainers of major technical FAQs get almost as much respect as open-source authors.

4. Help keep the infrastructure working

The hacker culture (and the engineering development of the Internet, for that matter) is run by volunteers. There's a lot of necessary but unglamorous work that needs done to keep it going — administering mailing lists, moderating newsgroups, maintaining large software archive sites, developing RFCs and other technical standards.

People who do this sort of thing well get a lot of respect, because everybody knows these jobs are huge time sinks and not as much fun as playing with code. Doing them shows dedication.

5. Serve the hacker culture itself

Finally, you can serve and propagate the culture itself (by, for example, writing an accurate primer on how to become a hacker :-)). This is not something you'll be positioned to do until you've been around for while and become well-known for one of the first four things.

The hacker culture doesn't have leaders, exactly, but it does have culture heroes and tribal elders and historians and spokespeople. When you've been in the trenches long enough, you may grow into one of these. Beware: hackers distrust blatant ego in their tribal elders, so visibly reaching for this kind of fame is dangerous. Rather than striving for it, you have to sort of position yourself so it drops in your lap, and then be modest and gracious about your status.

The Hacker/Nerd Connection

Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to be a nerd to be a hacker. It does help, however, and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being something of a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking.

For this reason, many hackers have adopted the label ‘geek’ as a badge of pride — it's a way of declaring their independence from normal social expectations (as well as a fondness for other things like science fiction and strategy games that often go with being a hacker). The term 'nerd' used to be used this way back in the 1990s, back when 'nerd' was a mild pejorative and 'geek' a rather harsher one; sometime after 2000 they switched places, at least in U.S. popular culture, and there is now even a significant geek-pride culture among people who aren't techies.

If you can manage to concentrate enough on hacking to be good at it and still have a life, that's fine. This is a lot easier today than it was when I was a newbie in the 1970s; mainstream culture is much friendlier to techno-nerds now. There are even growing numbers of people who realize that hackers are often high-quality lover and spouse material.

If you're attracted to hacking because you don't have a life, that's OK too — at least you won't have trouble concentrating. Maybe you'll get a life later on.

Points For Style

Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking.

• Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are very able writers.

• Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers).

• Train in a martial-arts form. The kind of mental discipline required for martial arts seems to be similar in important ways to what hackers do. The most popular forms among hackers are definitely Asian empty-hand arts such as Tae Kwon Do, various forms of Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, or Ju Jitsu. Western fencing and Asian sword arts also have visible followings. In places where it's legal, pistol shooting has been rising in popularity since the late 1990s. The most hackerly martial arts are those which emphasize mental discipline, relaxed awareness, and control, rather than raw strength, athleticism, or physical toughness.

• Study an actual meditation discipline. The perennial favorite among hackers is Zen (importantly, it is possible to benefit from Zen without acquiring a religion or discarding one you already have). Other styles may work as well, but be careful to choose one that doesn't require you to believe crazy things.

• Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing.

• Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.

The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important; hackers need to be able to both reason logically and step outside the apparent logic of a problem at a moment's notice.

Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. For true hackers, the boundaries between "play", "work", "science" and "art" all tend to disappear, or to merge into a high-level creative playfulness. Also, don't be content with a narrow range of skills. Though most hackers self-describe as programmers, they are very likely to be more than competent in several related skills — system administration, web design, and PC hardware troubleshooting are common ones. A hacker who's a system administrator, on the other hand, is likely to be quite skilled at script programming and web design. Hackers don't do things by halves; if they invest in a skill at all, they tend to get very good at it.

Finally, a few things not to do.

• Don't use a silly, grandiose user ID or screen name.

• Don't get in flame wars on Usenet (or anywhere else).

• Don't call yourself a ‘cyberpunk’, and don't waste your time on anybody who does.

• Don't post or email writing that's full of spelling errors and bad grammar.

The only reputation you'll make doing any of these things is as a twit. Hackers have long memories — it could take you years to live your early blunders down enough to be accepted.

The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser.

Other Resources

Paul Graham has written an essay called Great Hackers, and another on Undergraduation, in which he speaks much wisdom.

Peter Seebach maintains an excellent Hacker FAQ for managers who don't understand how to deal with hackers.

There is a document called How To Be A Programmer that is an excellent complement to this one. It has valuable advice not just about coding and skillsets, but about how to function on a programming team.

I have also written A Brief History Of Hackerdom.

I have written a paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which explains a lot about how the Linux and open-source cultures work. I have addressed this topic even more directly in its sequel Homesteading the Noosphere.

Rick Moen has written an excellent document on how to run a Linux user group.

Rick Moen and I have collaborated on another document on How To Ask Smart Questions. This will help you seek assistance in a way that makes it more likely that you will actually get it.

If you need instruction in the basics of how personal computers, Unix, and the Internet work, see The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO.

When you release software or write patches for software, try to follow the guidelines in the Software Release Practice HOWTO.

If you enjoyed the Zen poem, you might also like Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I tell if I am already a hacker?

Q: Will you teach me how to hack?

Q: How can I get started, then?

Q: When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?

Q: How long will it take me to learn to hack?

Q: Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?

Q: Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?

Q: How can I get the password for someone else's account?

Q: How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?

Q: How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?

Q: I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?

Q: I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?

Q: Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?

Q: Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?

Q: Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?

Q: What language should I learn first?

Q: What kind of hardware do I need?

Q: I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work on?

Q: Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?

Q: But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make a living?

Q: Where can I get a free Unix?

Q:	How do I tell if I am already a hacker?
A:	Ask yourself the following three questions: Do you speak code, fluently? Do you identify with the goals and values of the hacker community? Has a well-established member of the hacker community ever called you a hacker? If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, you are already a hacker. No two alone are sufficient. The first test is about skills. You probably pass it if you have the minimum technical skills described earlier in this document. You blow right through it if you have had a substantial amount of code accepted by an open-source development project. The second test is about attitude. If the five principles of the hacker mindset seemed obvious to you, more like a description of the way you already live than anything novel, you are already halfway to passing it. That's the inward half; the other, outward half is the degree to which you identify with the hacker community's long-term projects. Here is an incomplete but indicative list of some of those projects: Does it matter to you that Linux improve and spread? Are you passionate about software freedom? Hostile to monopolies? Do you act on the belief that computers can be instruments of empowerment that make the world a richer and more humane place? But a note of caution is in order here. The hacker community has some specific, primarily defensive political interests — two of them are defending free-speech rights and fending off "intellectual-property" power grabs that would make open source illegal. Some of those long-term projects are civil-liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the outward attitude properly includes support of them. But beyond that, most hackers view attempts to systematize the hacker attitude into an explicit political program with suspicion; we've learned, the hard way, that these attempts are divisive and distracting. If someone tries to recruit you to march on your capitol in the name of the hacker attitude, they've missed the point. The right response is probably “Shut up and show them the code.” The third test has a tricky element of recursiveness about it. I observed in the section called “What Is a Hacker?” that being a hacker is partly a matter of belonging to a particular subculture or social network with a shared history, an inside and an outside. In the far past, hackers were a much less cohesive and self-aware group than they are today. But the importance of the social-network aspect has increased over the last thirty years as the Internet has made connections with the core of the hacker subculture easier to develop and maintain. One easy behavioral index of the change is that, in this century, we have our own T-shirts. Sociologists, who study networks like those of the hacker culture under the general rubric of "invisible colleges", have noted that one characteristic of such networks is that they have gatekeepers — core members with the social authority to endorse new members into the network. Because the "invisible college" that is hacker culture is a loose and informal one, the role of gatekeeper is informal too. But one thing that all hackers understand in their bones is that not every hacker is a gatekeeper. Gatekeepers have to have a certain degree of seniority and accomplishment before they can bestow the title. How much is hard to quantify, but every hacker knows it when they see it.
Q:	Will you teach me how to hack?
A:	Since first publishing this page, I've gotten several requests a week (often several a day) from people to "teach me all about hacking". Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to do this; my own hacking projects, and working as an open-source advocate, take up 110% of my time. Even if I did, hacking is an attitude and skill you basically have to teach yourself. You'll find that while real hackers want to help you, they won't respect you if you beg to be spoon-fed everything they know. Learn a few things first. Show that you're trying, that you're capable of learning on your own. Then go to the hackers you meet with specific questions. If you do email a hacker asking for advice, here are two things to know up front. First, we've found that people who are lazy or careless in their writing are usually too lazy and careless in their thinking to make good hackers — so take care to spell correctly, and use good grammar and punctuation, otherwise you'll probably be ignored. Secondly, don't dare ask for a reply to an ISP account that's different from the account you're sending from; we find people who do that are usually thieves using stolen accounts, and we have no interest in rewarding or assisting thievery.
Q:	How can I get started, then?
A:	The best way for you to get started would probably be to go to a LUG (Linux user group) meeting. You can find such groups on the LDP General Linux Information Page; there is probably one near you, possibly associated with a college or university. LUG members will probably give you a Linux if you ask, and will certainly help you install one and get started.
Q:	When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?
A:	Any age at which you are motivated to start is a good age. Most people seem to get interested between ages 15 and 20, but I know of exceptions in both directions.
Q:	How long will it take me to learn to hack?
A:	That depends on how talented you are and how hard you work at it. Most people who try can acquire a respectable skill set in eighteen months to two years, if they concentrate. Don't think it ends there, though; in hacking (as in many other fields) it takes about ten years to achieve mastery. And if you are a real hacker, you will spend the rest of your life learning and perfecting your craft.
Q:	Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?
A:	If you're asking this question, it almost certainly means you're thinking about trying to hack under Microsoft Windows. This is a bad idea in itself. When I compared trying to learn to hack under Windows to trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast, I wasn't kidding. Don't go there. It's ugly, and it never stops being ugly. There is a specific problem with Visual Basic; mainly that it's not portable. Though there is a prototype open-source implementations of Visual Basic, the applicable ECMA standards don't cover more than a small set of its programming interfaces. On Windows most of its library support is proprietary to a single vendor (Microsoft); if you aren't extremely careful about which features you use — more careful than any newbie is really capable of being — you'll end up locked into only those platforms Microsoft chooses to support. If you're starting on a Unix, much better languages with better libraries are available. Python, for example. Also, like other Basics, Visual Basic is a poorly-designed language that will teach you bad programming habits. No, don't ask me to describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. Learn a well-designed language instead. One of those bad habits is becoming dependent on a single vendor's libraries, widgets, and development tools. In general, any language that isn't fully supported under at least Linux or one of the BSDs, and/or at least three different vendors' operating systems, is a poor one to learn to hack in.
Q:	Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
A:	No. Anyone who can still ask such a question after reading this FAQ is too stupid to be educable even if I had the time for tutoring. Any emailed requests of this kind that I get will be ignored or answered with extreme rudeness.
Q:	How can I get the password for someone else's account?
A:	This is cracking. Go away, idiot.
Q:	How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
A:	This is cracking. Get lost, moron.
Q:	How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
A:	This is cracking. Begone, cretin.
Q:	I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?
A:	No. Every time I've been asked this question so far, it's been from some poor sap running Microsoft Windows. It is not possible to effectively secure Windows systems against crack attacks; the code and architecture simply have too many flaws, which makes securing Windows like trying to bail out a boat with a sieve. The only reliable prevention starts with switching to Linux or some other operating system that is designed to at least be capable of security.
Q:	I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?
A:	Yes. Go to a DOS prompt and type "format c:". Any problems you are experiencing will cease within a few minutes.
Q:	Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?
A:	The best way is to find a Unix or Linux user's group local to you and go to their meetings (you can find links to several lists of user groups on the LDP site at ibiblio). (I used to say here that you wouldn't find any real hackers on IRC, but I'm given to understand this is changing. Apparently some real hacker communities, attached to things like GIMP and Perl, have IRC channels now.)
Q:	Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?
A:	I maintain a Linux Reading List HOWTO that you may find helpful. The Loginataka may also be interesting. For an introduction to Python, see the introductory materials on the Python site.
Q:	Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?
A:	No. Hacking uses very little formal mathematics or arithmetic. In particular, you won't usually need trigonometry, calculus or analysis (there are exceptions to this in a handful of specific application areas like 3-D computer graphics). Knowing some formal logic and Boolean algebra is good. Some grounding in finite mathematics (including finite-set theory, combinatorics, and graph theory) can be helpful. Much more importantly: you need to be able to think logically and follow chains of exact reasoning, the way mathematicians do. While the content of most mathematics won't help you, you will need the discipline and intelligence to handle mathematics. If you lack the intelligence, there is little hope for you as a hacker; if you lack the discipline, you'd better grow it. I think a good way to find out if you have what it takes is to pick up a copy of Raymond Smullyan's book What Is The Name Of This Book?. Smullyan's playful logical conundrums are very much in the hacker spirit. Being able to solve them is a good sign; enjoying solving them is an even better one.
Q:	What language should I learn first?
A:	XHTML (the latest dialect of HTML) if you don't already know it. There are a lot of glossy, hype-intensive badHTML: The Definitive Guide. HTML books out there, and distressingly few good ones. The one I like best is But HTML is not a full programming language. When you're ready to start programming, I would recommend starting with Python. You will hear a lot of people recommending Perl, and Perl is still more popular than Python, but it's harder to learn and (in my opinion) less well designed. C is really important, but it's also much more difficult than either Python or Perl. Don't try to learn it first. Windows users, do not settle for Visual Basic. It will teach you bad habits, and it's not portable off Windows. Avoid.
Q:	What kind of hardware do I need?
A:	It used to be that personal computers were rather underpowered and memory-poor, enough so that they placed artificial limits on a hacker's learning process. This stopped being true in the mid-1990s; any machine from an Intel 486DX50 up is more than powerful enough for development work, X, and Internet communications, and the smallest disks you can buy today are plenty big enough. The important thing in choosing a machine on which to learn is whether its hardware is Linux-compatible (or BSD-compatible, should you choose to go that route). Again, this will be true for almost all modern machines. The only real sticky areas are modems and wireless cards; some machines have Windows-specific hardware that won't work with Linux. There's a FAQ on hardware compatibility; the latest version is here.
Q:	I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work on?
A:	No, because I don't know your talents or interests. You have to be self-motivated or you won't stick, which is why having other people choose your direction almost never works. Try this. Watch the project announcements scroll by on Freshmeat for a few days. When you see one that makes you think "Cool! I'd like to work on that!", join it.
Q:	Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?
A:	No, you don't. Not that Microsoft isn't loathsome, but there was a hacker culture long before Microsoft and there will still be one long after Microsoft is history. Any energy you spend hating Microsoft would be better spent on loving your craft. Write good code — that will bash Microsoft quite sufficiently without polluting your karma.
Q:	But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make a living?
A:	This seems unlikely — so far, the open-source software industry seems to be creating jobs rather than taking them away. If having a program written is a net economic gain over not having it written, a programmer will get paid whether or not the program is going to be open-source after it's done. And, no matter how much "free" software gets written, there always seems to be more demand for new and customized applications. I've written more about this at the Open Source pages.
Q:	Where can I get a free Unix?
A:	If you don't have a Unix installed on your machine yet, elsewhere on this page I include pointers to where to get the most commonly used free Unix. To be a hacker you need motivation and initiative and the ability to educate yourself. Start now...