Group 8 Task 2: Hacking

Group 8Kapil Giri
Naveen Reddy
Gurumurthy Batharaju
Muninder Adavelly
Vishnu Chitta
Mohammad Hussain

Hacking is defined in various ways associated with Information Technology.
1. Hacking is an act of access to the computer and network with out the endorsement supposed to be seeked.
2. Always there is a human tendency of learning new things, as part of this a person tries to gain the hidden knowledge without authorisation.

The person who performs the act of hacking is called a ‘Hacker’. The methods hackers use to attack your machine or network are fairly simple. A hacker scans for vulnerable systems by using a demon dialer (which will redial a number repeatedly until a connection is made) or a wardialer (an application that uses a modem to dial thousands of random phone numbers to find another modem connected to a computer).

Another approach used to target computers with persistent connections, such as DSL or cable connections, employs a scanner program that sequentially "pings" IP addresses of networked systems to see if the system is up and running. Where can a hacker find such tools? On the Internet, of course. Sites containing dozens of free, relatively easy-to-use hacking tools available for download are easy to find on the Net. While understanding how these tools work is not always easy, many files include home grown documentation written in hacker shoptalk.

Among the programs available are scanning utilities that reveal the vulnerabilities on a computer or network and sniffing programs that let hackers spy on data passing between machines.

Hackers also use the Net to share lists of vulnerable IP addresses--the unique location of Internet-connected computers with unpatched security holes. Addresses of computers that have already been loaded with a Trojan horse are available for anyone to exploit (in many cases without the owner of the computer knowing).
Once the hacker finds a machine, he uses a hacker tool such as Whisker to identify in less than a second what operating system the machine is using and whether any unpatched holes exist in it. Whisker, one of a handful of legitimate tools used by system administrators to test the security of their systems, also provides a list of exploits the hacker can use to take advantage of these holes.

It is true that Hacking is a great skill with lot of knowledge and commitment put behind it. Ethically if it is used for a good cause with possible acceptances, it can be useful for the future for new innovations and prevent possible vulnerabilities.