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Beginners' Series Number 10
How to LEGALLY Deface Web Sites
OK, OK, just kidding. This Guide is really about how to fool your friends into thinking you have defaced a web site. You can do this by tricking the computer of your victim, er, friend into showing a false web address. It's so easy, even a beginner can pull off these tricks.
In this Guide you will learn:
* How to alter a computer to which you have access so that anyone who uses it will be tricked, muhahaha!
* How to set up a button on your web page that tricks someone who uses Internet Explorer into thinking you defaced the CIA web site.
* Plus, an uberhacker bonus, how to forge email so you can insert weird hidden codes into it.
Even if you don't like to play practical jokes, it's still worthwhile to understand how easy it can be to trick someone into thinking they are viewing a different web site from the actual one. What if you are buying something online? To whom are you *really* giving your credit card information? To whom are you *really* giving your online banking information? The easiest way to trick someone into thinking you have defaced a web site is if you have access to his or her computer (or can get them to use yours) and can edit the hosts file. Whether the victim computer is a Mac, Windows, Linux or almost any other operating system, it should have a file named "hosts". In Windows XP and 2000 it is in C:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/. In Linux it is in /etc.
If you open the hosts file in an editing program such as Notepad, it will look something like this:
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp. 127.0.0.1 localhost
Now add on to it:
206.61.52.30 www.cia.gov
Get online, type http://www.cia.gov into the location window of your browser, and you will get the Happyhacker.org web page, while the location bar says http://www.cia.gov!
OK, so you want to pick a really rank web page to display instead of our friendly Happyhacker page. How do you find the number that you put in front of www.cia.gov?
If you have Windows XP, 2000, 2003, Mac OSX, Linux or any kind of Unix, the answer is easy. If you have a Mac or Linux, bring up a terminal or shell window. In Windows, click , click Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Command prompt. (Or search for a file named command.com or cmd.exe and run it.) Then type:
ping rottendisgustingsite.com
Pinging rottendisgustingsite.com [216.999.248.174] with 32 bytes of data:
That gives the numerical address you need, in this case 216.999.248.174. Newbie note: What do those numbers mean? They are Internet addresses, usually called "IP addresses." They are kind of like phone numbers used to reach computers over the Internet. When you enter a domain name (happyhacker.org is an example of a domain name) into the window of your browser, your computer has to look up the number to which it corresponds in order to contact it, kind of like looking in a phone book. In the cases above I messed up the IP addresses by putting 999's so that lots of people wouldn't attack those IP addresses. Real IP addresses only contain numbers between the periods of up to 254. What if you want to create your own "hacked" web site at one of those free web hosting places? How do you redirect a computer to your exact page? Let's say it's at http://www.freewebsites.com/~mysite/. Tell your friend that you hid a hacked page at http://www.cia.gov/~mysite/. Then direct the IP address for freewebsites.com to www.cia.gov. When she or he types in http://www.cia.com/~mysite/ she will see your own web page.
There is one case in which this hack won't work: if the computer on which you play this trick uses a proxy server. This is common in large organizations as a security measure. So be sure to test your hack before showing it off!
* How to alter a computer to which you have access so that anyone who uses it will be tricked, muhahaha!
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com
# source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com
# x client host