The Hacker Diaries Chapter 3

It was a normal day of school for students at Sisters High School in Oregon when one of the students complained that the server had stopped working. Renner, the school technician wasn't really interested by the crash. He thought that it just needed a few tweaks here and there, a few museclicks and codes, but no. It was an unusual problem. This high school network ISP (Internet Service Provider) network wasn't the cheap kind. It was a 50k network that provided access to 500 students but it has grown to serving more than 1,000 residences. After they found that their ISP, Outlawnet was hacked, they were concerned on why a small school network, which was swimming along with Yahoo!, Google, and all other big fishes was the one that got hacked. After that tragic incident, Sisters High became a free email relay. A lot of users disappeared and so did 3,00 files, all belonging to the school.

The case was then reported to the FBI. In a few days time, they were on the case. Software repairs to give back students internet access cost a mere 11k. Jon Renner provided the Bureau with system logs. The suspect that was found and question gave them a handful of IP addresses to study. Their most trackable lead was Sprint Canada.

Mark Gosselin, a veteran investigator in the RCMP joined the computer crime squad. In the FBI's eyes, they see that the hacker is using a high speed DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) account in Ohio. If FBI had account info, it would be a train track leading right to the hacker. Unfortunately, they don't. The first step in Gosselin's manual was to find some ISPs provided by Sprint. With Sprint that kept the car fueled, he found IPs in all over Montreal. There were more suspects but some users got banned for violating user rules. Gosselin had a fixed opinion on the source of trouble to a wealthy suburb on Rue De Golf. The owner, John Calce was the owner of a transportation company and is known as a temperament who isn't responsible for his children. His youngest child loved computers, and Gosselin paid attention ti him. It was never predicted that a skinny, dark haired teenager that like to play basketball is the actual person that they were looking for. The hunt for Mafiaboy is on. The most notorious teenage hacker since Kevin Mitnick.

It was the time when it was the U.S and China cyberwar, where hackers from all over the world took action. Ping, was an abbreviation for Packet Internet Groper, which refers when a system is working properly. It is like when you are calling someone at home, and you are waiting for him to pick up the phone. Charles Neal, LA's FBI leader was contacted most. Neal, who unraveled the Kevin Mitnick case, was FBI's most experienced cybercop had helped develop computer crime investigative methods. Like Gosselin in the search of Mafiaboy, no FBI agent in LA had a spark of brilliance if what they would encounter was going to be big. Their informative skills would prove how critical they could nab they hacker and take him down.

Swallow and Knesek, FBI agents, that opened up two hackers, managed to help by asking the hackers for help. Hackers that were arrested were immediately transformed into consultants and trainers. During Swallow's surf, a hacker tempted him with 400 credit card number which were stored in a server in Germany. The hacker wasn't trying to help or anything; he was testing if Swallow was a fed. Swallow explained that 400 cards were worth more than 4 million, and he was eager to take this person out. In situations like these, Swallow won the interest of teenage hackers and he tried to bait them.

Mafiaboy's first big loot was on Yahoo!. He went past the network and hid all it's major roots and ISPs. How Yahoo! could tell that they were hacked was by excessive ICMP traffic. Yahoo just got DDoSd. The Yahoo attack is enough to fill more than 600 trucks with data. Later that night, it was a usual night for Swallow. He was inside a server with Mafiaboy in it, bragging about his skills. Other hackers in the IRC channel was annoyed by his bragging until Mafiaboy pulled of a prank saying that Swallow booted him out.

On March 8, Buy.com system admins were battling a huge denial of service attack at a rate of 800 megabits per second of incoming data almost thrice the site's normal load. The attack threatened to keep the retailer offline at unpredictable times. The next time Swallow accessed the particular IRC channel with Mafiaboy in it, he ranted and have claimed to hack Buy.com. He then put a challenge and asked who they want him to hit next.Someone suggested CNN, as would E-Trade. In a matter of minutes, CNN and 1,200 more websites they hosted started to corrode. The next day, Datek and E-Trade, two stock-trading companies as well started to corrode and the financial market went flumsy. The FBI needed to find Mafiaboy. Fast.

Neal told Knesek that a hacker hacked tons of large networks. She and Neal found out that it would be a combo of two approaches to Mafiaboy's house to get him. The real challenge was finding the real Mafiaboy. There were dozens of Mafiaboys to find. They had to decipher the real Mafiaboy from three most suspected suspects. Neal dispatched some agents to Exodus communications to see if computers were in an attack. On February 12, Dell was attacked heavily by internet traffic. Mafiaboy again claimed responsibility and showed his kills and capabilities of hacking. There was a chat shown. in that chat, Mafiaboy changed his name.

When Knesek arrived in Montreal, she took role in FBI. After four days of setups of DNRs, investigators found an account that was owned by Mafiaboy. They were hacked accounts but legitimate ones. Gosselin was trapped; if the account was hacked and wasn't the real Mafiaboy, he'd have to let the person free. They then obtained court to find ways of capturing Mafiaboy. It involved hacking and they checked Mafiaboy's internet activity. One night, FBI agent Currie went to Mafiaboy's suburb and finally captured him. Mafiaboy was sent to court.

It was revealed that Mafiaboy just celebrated his brother's birthday. He was sentenced an 8 month juvie detention for his wrongdoings.

If there is unclear information about IRC, go here: http://insidehacking.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hacker-diaries-confessions-of.html

The Hacker Diaries is a compilation of hacking stories that was written by Dan Verton. All rights and respect go to him.

The Hacker Diaries Chapter 2

So guys, I'm back with more summary. Chapter 2 is a completely different story from the one before, and it features two kids, that don't even know each other, go to the different school, and live in the different suburb. One kid, named Joe, lived in Philly, while the other, Aaron lived in Chicago. They both have the same interest, and that is in computers. They both learned how to hack from VCRs. 

Joe's interest sparked when one noght he was starving. He went down and made himself a PBJ, but heard his dad's footsteps. Finding a way to hide it, he slipped it inside a VCR. When he was told to go upstairs to his room, instead he devised a plan to get the sandwich out. There's no denying it, Joe was learning about how the VCR is supposed to work. Aaron, on the other hand, got a VCR from his dad when his dad won a prize. He unplugged it out of the TV and saw the circuits inside. Aaron then studied his Mac 2 computer and found out that they worked the same. 

Joe went to his local radio shack and bought a used TRS-80 for 200 bucks. It had a modem slot and when he got a modem, he surfed Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), some kind of email centers and learnt about phone switching. Joe never thought that phone switching was hacking; he tried to set limits.

Aaron, never cared about limits. His parents had problems and split up. Their last action as a couple was buy his sister a new computer, but was mostly used by Aaron. He also surfed BBSs, with the username Noid, his nickname at school because he was DJ for parties. Aaron went to a BBS server called Revenge, a rich illegal file sharing server. After he shared free files with the group leader, Apocalypse, free, expensive softwares popped up in his inbox. Apocalypse gave him limited time to surf in the server. Revenge hacked tons of things and cracked many softwares, so they are more like a mafia organization than a BBS.

Within 2 years of owning a modem, Joe wrote scripts that kept on switching phones. Joe then taunted local phone services but they did't really care. He knew what he was doing was bad, but he didn't stop; it was fun and easy. It wasn't a game where there weren't any victims. After that, Joe's feelings of wrong or right prevented him from making mistakes in his gang. 

Aaron was trying to figure how to crack an application. It was challenging but hard. You can imagine his frustration if he couldn't connect to Revenge; he surfed IRCs, channels, but it was nowhere to be found. He met Apocalypse and found that it was shut down because of feds. FBI are now on the case. He gave up and started collage. He tried to take part in a different section of hacking.

Joe never quit hacking. He just redefined it and used it for a good reason. He said that if hackers didn't hack for money, what did they hack for? He did legitimate hacks in his university. Aaron was similar like Joe. He redefined hacking and defined hackers as hypocrites. Hackers also don't want their identity and credit card numbers to be stolen so don't do what you don't want people do to you.

If there is unclear information about IRC, go here: http://insidehacking.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hacker-diaries-confessions-of.html

The Hacker Diaries is a compilation of hacking stories that was written by Dan Verton. All rights and respect go to him.

The Hacker Diaries Chapter 1

Hey guys, I'm back with chapter one of this book about hacker. The book expresses different stories as chapters' but I strongly disagree. I do disagree, but I would just follow the book originality. So, lets stop complaining about hits book, and lets start with the summary.

So, Genocide (Travis Ogden but not explained in book) is a poor teenager that lived in a small shack in Alaska. He is a child of a divorced couple, and was thought and raised by his parents. He was the typical teen that you would meet in your neighborhood; he wrestles for his school, and joins summer swimming invitationals to get in good physique. He never really cared about school. Especially when it was chemistry. The only subject he was interested in was computer. It was the only good mark found on his report card. That is even if he brought his report card home. During school time, he hacks Macs in the library, and pranks users.

When it was a chemistry exam that determined if he would get his diploma, he got his teacher's username and password then changed his score. When he got his diploma and could get computer courses in the University of Alaska, he put in some commands in cmd, he found admin accounts and when admins found out, he escapes the scene and make it look like someone else did it.

Not long after computer courses, he got some friends and they formed a group called Genocide2600. It was a perfect hack team; their skills combined can hack Linux well, and they could code very well. To them, sharing files and tactics. If they didn't share files, their group never would've moved on. After the brotherhood had come closer, they made a site. A site that was so complete that an amateur hacker could go there for hacking tips. When they hacked a server called “Moon”, the FBI reasoned with the group.

After Travis was annoyed, he left Alaska without a degree and moved to Oregon. A few years later, he went back to Alaska for university. Travis is now a person that works in hacking security. Geez, what a hypocrite. This story tells us about a poor boy that never stops at what he is interested at. His mom is now a total stranger to him, but his shack is still a memory that lies with him.

If there is unclear information about IRC, go here: http://insidehacking.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hacker-diaries-confessions-of.html

The Hacker Diaries is a compilation of hacking stories that was written by Dan Verton. All rights and respect go to him.

The Hacker Diaries Introduction

Hey, guys! Welcome to my new blog. This blog will be all about book reviews and my parents decided and chose me this book because they think that it is interesting and I should learn more about a computer. Mostly my dad chose me this for me because he is a person that works in the IT division.

So, like all books, it starts with an introduction and the introduction of this book is a diary piece of a hacker that was captured for hacking illegally. As his name is concealed, you can see that he is a typical teenager that you see in your neighborhood. He doesn't admit that he is wrong; it was clearly stated that what he has done has happened due to his addiction of computers. His obsession of hacking began when he read an anarchy text off the internet; the infamous Anarchist's Cookbook. It is now a forum and it tells you how to do illegal things such as hack, pick locks, and a lot of other bad things.

His first step to full scale, big time hacking was when he joined the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) a chat room that was used by hackers to communicate. Now you can call it a huge Skype group with tons of people inside but it looks more Command Prompt-ish. In the IRC, he met two people called DarkViper and Prophet, the first people to teach him how to hack. They thought him how to disguise and slip inside IP addresses (Internet Protocol) and they also provided him with hack files and they also thought him different program languages.

He is a free child; his step mother and his father don't care about his activities in the internet and they don't really care about him. They thought that it would be better for him to stay inside with his computer, better than doing wild things like drugs out in the dangerous neighborhood. They had a very loose relationship; he wasn't a needy child and all he wanted was new computer equipment. Once in a while his parents would check his room but he always had a sports page for a decoy.

He really likes to hack in school, mostly because he knows other people's account passwords, and the teachers would accuse whoever student that logged into that account. When he turned 17, he started to hack small companies that anyone barely knows and he managed to gain root access to the servers which held the company data. After that, the gold mine with all the credit card numbers, he looted them all. He then found that too easy and because he did that mostly because of his capability of hacking websites, he got bored and stopped hacking small companies.

He and his friends then decided to form a band of hackers called The Skeleton Crew. With their advance scripts, just with a mouseclick they could find themselves in the root. They always liked it better if a site they came through was more challenging than the others; so they could try new methods of hacking. They were professionals at hacking. They could break through all operating systems; for them, Windows was too easy. They hacked Linux, Unix, Irix, you name it. Although they did it mostly for the fun of hacking, they also like to hack websites that boasted their security.

The Skeleton Crew decided that they would get out of IRC. They wanted to create a more private group where they could concentrate more so they could hack bigger. After their new group, they devised a plan to hack Pentagon's network. They then gained access to systems all over the world and attacked The Pentagon. They put some trapdoors and flaws in the system and they were able to crash military operations. Even after that, they didn't go to the press. It was like they were innocent.

The Pentagon was then panicking with all the other government associations like the FBI, NSA, The Air Force, and many other thing. They kept on doing this for a month and went inside more systems; Air Force bases, Navy installations, Nuclear research labs, NASA Sites, and university networks were all screwed.

After about a week, the FBI came and confiscated all his belongings; his floppy disks, his computer, and his CDs. Oh yeah, and also him. He was then put to court. With the FBI searching for Prophet, he and Viper were screwed. Their lives were decided by the judges as for Prophet, they were still finding him. Judges will never understand why they hacked or even what hackers are all about. Dive into this book with hacker diaries and observe what they do in their everyday life. Thanks for reading! Come back for more updates

The Hacker Diaries is a compilation of hacking stories that was written by Dan Verton. All rights and respect go to him.