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More Beginners' Guide #1 ...
You may wonder whether hackers need expensive computer
equipment and a shelf full of technical manuals. The answer is NO!
Hacking can be surprisingly easy! Better yet, if you know how to
search the Web, you can find almost any computer information you
need for free.
In fact, hacking is so easy that if you have an on-line service
and know how to send and read email, you can start hacking
immediately. The GTMHH Beginners' Series #2 will show you
where you can download special hacker-friendly programs for
Windows that are absolutely free. And we'll show you some easy
hacker tricks you can use them for.
Now suppose you want to become an elite hacker? All you will
really need is an inexpensive "shell account" with an Internet
Service Provider. In the GTMHH Beginners' Series #3 we will
tell you how to get a shell account, log on, and start playing the
greatest game on Earth: Unix hacking! Then in Vol.s I, II, and III
of the GTMHH you can get into Unix hacking seriously.
(Sorry folks, when this was written shell accounts were easy to
get. Today it is really hard. I suggest you get Linux
instead.)
You can even make it into the ranks of the Uberhackers without
loading up on expensive computer equipment. In Vol. II we
introduce Linux, the free hacker-friendly operating system. It
will even run on a 386 PC with just 2 Mb RAM! Linux is so
good that many Internet Service Providers use it to run their
systems.
(Note: this was written in 1997. This part
about Linux is out of date. Today you should get a PC with at
least 12 MB RAM and 500 MB hard drive to run Linux. Fortunately,
today it is much easier to install than it was in 1997. Caldera Linux will share the same hard drive with Windows and is
as easy to install as Windows.)
In Vol. III we will also introduce Perl, the shell programming
language beloved of Uberhackers. We will even teach some seriously
deadly hacker "exploits" that run on Perl using Linux. OK, you
could use most of these exploits to do illegal things. But they
are only illegal if you run them against someone else's computer
without their permission. You can run any program in this series
of Guides on your own computer, or your (consenting) friend's
computer -- if you dare! Hey, seriously, nothing in this series of
Guides will actually hurt your computer, unless you decide to
trash it on purpose.
We will also open the gateway to an amazing underground where
you can stay on top of almost every discovery of computer security
flaws. You can learn how to either exploit them -- or defend your
computer against them!
About So you want to be a harmless hacker?
We have noticed that there are lots of books that glamorize
hackers. To read these books you would think that it takes many
years of brilliant work to become one. Of course we hackers love
to perpetuate this myth because it makes us look so incredibly
kewl.
But how many books are out there that tell the beginner step by
step how to actually do this hacking stuph? None! Seriously, have
you ever read _Secrets of a Superhacker_ by The Knightmare
(Loomponics, 1994) or _Forbidden Secrets of the Legion of Doom
Hackers_ by Salacious Crumb (St. Mahoun Books, 1994)? They are
full of vague and out of date stuph. Give me a break.
And if you get on one of the hacker news groups on the Internet
and ask people how to do stuph, some of them insult and make fun
of you. OK, they all make fun of you.
We see many hackers making a big deal of themselves and being
mysterious and refusing to help others learn how to hack. Why?
Because they don't want you to know the truth, which is that most
of what they are doing is really very simple!
Well, we thought about this. We, too, could enjoy the pleasure
of insulting people who ask us how to hack. Or we could get big
egos by actually teaching thousands of people how to hack.
Muhahaha.