I’ve spent 30 years hacking computers. I’ve done just about every trick in the book.
Many people I’ve known over the years have spent time in jail or in some other capacity that is specifically unclear after their hacking was uncovered.
And many people I know have never been discovered.
A) THE ABCs OF HACKING
I want to stick to the basics so people can understand what they are seeing in the news and think intelligently about it.
I also want to underline what the real problems are and not just the isolated problems we saw in this past election (although they are serious and I use them to demonstrate why the real issues could be much more serious).
First: what is hacking? How do people hack? What’s the difference between the movies/TV and real hacking? What is legal in this particular situation and what is illegal?
First, the WHAT: How does someone hack in today’s world (and the rules and techniques change constantly since 30 years ago).
TECHNIQUES:
1) HOLES IN THE NETWORK
One time a friend of mine was playing a joke on a well known media company.
For the sake of explanation, let’s say that media company had the initials “M” “T” “V” and just for the purposes of why it would have such strange initials, let’s say that stands for “Music TeleVision”.
MTV had a hole in their network. Every network has thousands of “ports”, like a massive cruise liner.
An “open port” sends messages back and forth. Like someone waving from a cruise ship as it pulls away.
Most ports are simply closed. But some are open in order to receive various special messages.
For instance, there is a port that listens for requests for web pages.
Like when you type into your URL box: “http://mtv.com” a message is sent (usually)…