As a hacker, I have to program my remote web server to automatically perform routine tasks for me. It’s a whole lot easier and cheaper to rely on my web hosting company to manage an always-on server. For starters, I don’t have to pay for the 24/7 electricity the on-call technician!
To make the server perform an automated task in a Linux or Unix environment, you need to schedule a cron job. I won’t go through all the details of setting it up in shell terminal since most people do not have remote shell access. You can read about the details more at the cron and crontab Wikipedia articles. Most of us deal with an interface on the cPanel that looks kind of like one of these two screens.
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The are a couple of things that are essential to any hacker’s walk of life. To name a few, there’s the ubiquitous flash drive for data transfer. You have the crossover cable for even faster data transfer. There’s the WiFi antenna for high gain and strong amplification. Possibly, you might find a video capture card in the computer. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous laptop and desktop computer. But what software is on these computers? Undoubtedly, you will find at least two operating systems, most often Windows and Linux. But with Linux, there are several different distributions. Is there a specific one? With hackers and crackers, there is only one Linux distro out there. It is called Backtrack.
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“Every man-made security measure can and will be broken.” That’s my motto when I secure my car, my house, my belongings, my money, my computer, and – most importantly – my data. If God did not protect it, with enough time, it will be exploited.
Password-locked Laptop
A couple of weeks ago, my dad’s boss dug an old 2002 laptop out of his garage. It was a decent IBM ThinkPad with Windows XP. His only problem was that he did not remember the Administrator password. They went to various computer shops like Circuit City, Best Buy, and Goodwill Computer Works to get an estimate on the time and cost it would take to crack or just reset the master Windows password. To their dismay, the price quotes ran at least $50 and the required time would take at least 24 hours! My dad knew that I would be able to find a way to crack it in a short amount of time and at a cheaper cost. So, his boss hired me to do it instead.
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