Steal This Computer Book 4.0

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Edition: CD
Format: Trade Paper
Pub. Date: 2006-05-06
Publisher(s): No Starch Press
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Summary

If ever a book on cyberculture wore a fedora and trench coat and leaned against a lamppost on a foggy street, this is the one. It is an unabashed look at the dark side of the Net - the stuff many other books gloss over. It's hard-edged, wisecracking, and often quite cynical as it pours over the reality of online scams, illegal activities, and simple annoyances. Wang's stated goal is to open the reader's eyes about what's really there. He shows what's being done, how it's being done, and how to avoid problems or even strike back. He shows you the secrets of malicious hackers and others and how some of them attack computer systems without the ethical mindset typical of the original, idealistic hackers. Wang shows you how you can set up your defenses against such an onslaught, discussing how to protect yourself and your kids from online stalkers and how online con games work.

Author Biography

Best-selling computer book author Wallace Wang (The Book of Nero 6, Steal This File Sharing Book, both No Starch Press, and Visual Basic 6 for Dummies), is a former contributor to Boardwatch Magazine, where he wrote a monthly column called "Notes From the Underground." He is a successful stand-up comic who has appeared on A&E's "Evening at the Improv" and appears regularly at the Riviera Comedy Club in Las Vegas.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1(6)
Your Own Revolution
1(2)
Communication's the thing
2(1)
Truth is nothing but a point of view
2(1)
What's in This Book
3(4)
PART 1: THE EARLY HACKERS
1 THE HACKER MENTALITY
7(6)
Questioning Authority
7(2)
Questioning Assumptions
9(2)
Developing Values
11(1)
The Three Stages of Hacking
11(2)
2 THE FIRST HACKERS: THE PHONE PHREAKERS
13(18)
A Short History of Phone Phreaking
13(1)
Phone Phreaking Urban Legends
14(4)
The toilet paper crisis in Los Angeles
15(1)
The Santa Barbara nuclear hoax
16(1)
The president's secret
17(1)
True and Verified Phone Phreaking Stories
18(2)
Making free phone calls, courtesy of the Israeli Army
18(1)
Phone phreaking for escorts in Las Vegas
19(1)
Phone Phreaking Tools and Techniques
20(11)
Shoulder surfing
20(1)
Phone phreaking with color boxes
21(1)
Phone phreaking with color box programs
22(1)
Phreaking with war dialers and prank programs
23(2)
Phreaking cellular phones
25(2)
Hacking voice mailboxes
27(1)
Hacking VolP
28(3)
3 HACKING PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS
31(14)
Social Engineering: The Art of Hacking People
31(3)
Studying a target
32(1)
Gaining familiarity
32(1)
The keys to social engineering
33(1)
Picking Locks
34(2)
The theory of lockpicking
34(1)
The tools and techniques
34(2)
Exploring Urban Areas
36(2)
Hacking the Airwaves
38(1)
Hacking History (or, Hemp for Victory)
39(6)
The Japanese textbook controversy
40(1)
Hiding history to protect the present
40(1)
Watching movies for fun and propaganda
41(4)
PART 2: THE PC PIONEERS
4 ANSI BOMBS AND VIRUSES
45(18)
The Making of an ANSI Bomb
45(2)
How an ANSI bomb works
46(1)
Planting an ANSI bomb
46(1)
The Spread of Computer Viruses
47(3)
Spreading a file-infecting virus
48(1)
Spreading a boot-sector virus
48(1)
Spreading a multipartite virus
49(1)
Spreading a macro virus
49(1)
How Viruses Avoid Detection
50(2)
Infection methods
50(1)
Stealth
51(1)
Polymorphism
52(1)
Retaliators
52(1)
How Antivirus Programs Work
52(2)
Comparing antivirus programs
53(1)
Choosing an antivirus program
53(1)
Why People Write Viruses
54(2)
For fun
55(1)
For notoriety
55(1)
Finding Virus-writing Tutorials
56(1)
Virus-writing Toolkits
57(1)
Virus Myths and Hoaxes
58(3)
The mobile phone virus hoax
58(2)
The nuclear war hoax
60(1)
The bait-and-switch virus hoax
61(1)
The publicity-seeking virus hoax
61(1)
Learning More About Viruses
61(1)
The Future Virus Threat
62(1)
5 TROJAN HORSES AND WORMS
63(10)
The World of Trojan Horses
63(6)
Taunting the victim
65(1)
Attacking the victim's pocketbook
65(1)
The coming of the RATs (remote-access Trojans)
66(3)
Worms: Self-Replicating Viruses
69(2)
Email worms
70(1)
IRC/Instant messaging worms
70(1)
Internet worms
70(1)
Malicious web pages
71(1)
Stopping Worms and Trojan Horses
71(1)
Tracking the Threats
72(1)
6 WAREZ (SOFTWARE PIRACY)
73(12)
Copying Copy-Protected Software
74(2)
Defeating Serial Numbers
76(2)
Defeating Product Activation
78(1)
Warez Websites
79(1)
Usenet Newsgroups: The New Piracy Breeding Ground
80(5)
PART 3: THE INTERNET HACKERS
7 WHERE THE HACKERS ARE
85(12)
Hacker Websites
85(5)
Hacker websites for fun and profit
86(2)
Computer security "hacking" websites
88(2)
Hacker search engines
90(1)
Hacker Magazines
90(2)
2600
90(1)
Blacklisted! 411
91(1)
Hacker Usenet Newsgroups
92(1)
General hacking newsgroups
92(1)
Computer virus newsgroups
92(1)
Encryption newsgroups
93(1)
Cracking newsgroups
93(1)
Finding Hackers on IRC
93(1)
Hacker Conventions
93(2)
DefCon
94(1)
HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth)
94(1)
Chaos Communication Congress
94(1)
PH-Neutral
94(1)
RuxCon
94(1)
Shmoocon
94(1)
SummerCon
94(1)
ToorCon
94(1)
Don't Panic: Hackers Are People, Too
95(2)
8 STALKING A COMPUTER
97(18)
Why Hackers Choose Their Targets
97(1)
Finding a Target
98(15)
War dialing
98(1)
Port scanning
99(3)
War driving
102(5)
Probing sites by Google hacking
107(6)
The Next Step
113(2)
9 CRACKING PASSWORDS
115(10)
Password Stealing
115(5)
Using a keystroke logger
116(1)
Spying with a desktop monitoring program
117(1)
Using a password recovery program
118(2)
Dictionary Attacks
120(1)
Brute-Force Password Attacks
121(1)
Passwords: The First Line of Defense
121(1)
Blocking Access with Biometrics
122(2)
Biometric devices
123(1)
Defeating biometrics
123(1)
Good Enough Security
124(1)
10 DIGGING INTO A COMPUTER WITH ROOTKITS
125(12)
How Operating Systems Work
125(1)
The Evolution of Rootkits
126(6)
Modifying log files
127(1)
Trojaned binaries
128(2)
Hooking program calls
130(1)
Loadable kernel module (LKM) rootkits
131(1)
Opening a Backdoor
132(1)
Sniffing for More Passwords
132(1)
Killing Rootkits
133(4)
11 CENSORING INFORMATION
137(22)
Censoring the Internet
137(7)
URL filtering
137(2)
Content filtering
139(1)
DNS poisoning
140(2)
Port blocking
142(2)
The Internet Censors
144(5)
Countries that censor the Internet
144(4)
Companies that censor the Internet
148(1)
Censorship Begins at Home: Parental Control Software
149(2)
Parental control software gone bad: blocking political and educational sites
149(1)
Parental control software gone really bad: CYBERsitter
150(1)
Project bait and switch: the double standard of censorship
151(1)
Researching parental control programs
151(1)
Avoiding Internet Censorship
151(4)
Accessing banned web pages by email
152(1)
Accessing banned web pages through proxy servers
153(2)
Reading Banned Books Online
155(3)
Secretly reading a banned book in broad daylight
156(1)
Secretly browsing the Web in broad daylight
156(2)
Is Anyone Censoring the Censors?
158(1)
12 THE FILESHARING NETWORKS
159(10)
A Short History of Internet Filesharing
159(1)
How Filesharing Works
160(4)
The birth of Gnutella
160(2)
The Ares network
162(1)
The FastTrack network
162(2)
Sharing Large Files
164(1)
The Problem with Filesharing
164(5)
PART 4: THE REAL WORLD HACKERS
13 THE INTERNET CON ARTISTS
169(20)
Charity Scams
170(1)
The Area Code Scam
171(1)
The Nigerian Scam
172(2)
Work-at-Home Businesses
174(2)
Stuffing envelopes
174(1)
Make-it-yourself kits
175(1)
Work as an independent contractor
175(1)
Fraudulent sales
175(1)
Pyramid Schemes
176(2)
The Ponzi scheme
177(1)
The infallible forecaster
177(1)
The Lonely Hearts Scam
178(1)
Internet-Specific Con Games
178(5)
Packet sniffers
179(1)
Web spoofing
179(1)
Phishing
180(2)
Keystroke loggers
182(1)
Porn dialers
183(1)
Online Auction Frauds
183(1)
Credit Card Fraud
184(1)
Protecting Yourself
185(2)
Cagey Consumer
186(1)
Council of Better Business Bureaus
186(1)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
186(1)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
186(1)
Fraud Bureau
186(1)
ScamBusters
186(1)
Scams on the Net
187(1)
ScamWatch
187(1)
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
187(1)
The Recovery Room Scam
187(2)
14 FINDING PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET
189(12)
Who Are the Stalkers?
189(1)
Stalking on the Internet
190(1)
Finding Personal Information on the Internet
191(6)
Searching personal websites
191(1)
Finding names, addresses, and phone numbers
192(3)
Finding someone using a Social Security number
195(1)
Finding people in the military
195(1)
Searching public records
196(1)
Finding email addresses
196(1)
Stalking Celebrities
197(1)
Protecting Yourself
198(3)
15 PROPAGANDA AS NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT
201(20)
The News as Reality TV
204(1)
Corporate Influence on the News
205(4)
Project Censored: the news you never read about
205(1)
Drink milk—the chemicals are good for you
206(1)
The objective news from ABC and Wal-Mart
207(1)
The mystery bulge on George Bush's back
208(1)
The News Only Reports the Facts—And Anything Else Anyone Will Tell Them
209(1)
The News as History
210(1)
Fear, Future, Fun, and Fakes: The Weekly World News as a Role Model for the News Media
210(6)
Fear: attracting an audience
212(1)
Future: distracting from the present
212(1)
Fun: keeping people happy
213(1)
Fakes: lies are more interesting than the truth
213(3)
Using Satire to Report on Reality
216(1)
Blogs as News Sources
216(5)
16 HACKTIVISM: ONLINE ACTIVISM
221(18)
Virtual Sit-ins and Blockades
222(4)
The world's first Internet strike
222(1)
Zapatistas on the Internet
223(1)
Disturbance on demand
224(2)
Email Bombing
226(2)
Web Hacking and Computer Break-ins
228(3)
Computer Viruses and Worms
231(2)
Activist Video Games
233(2)
Google Bombing
235(1)
Becoming a Hacktivist
236(3)
17 HATE GROUPS AND TERRORISTS ON THE INTERNET
239(10)
Hate Groups on the Internet
239(2)
Racist Video Games
241(1)
Terrorism: The Communist Threat of the Twenty-first Century
242(3)
The myth of cyberterrorism
243(1)
Terrorists on the Internet
243(2)
The Future of Terrorism
245(4)
PART 5: THE FUTURE—HACKING FOR PROFIT
18 IDENTITY THEFT AND SPAM
249(22)
Understanding Identity Theft
249(3)
How identity theft works
249(1)
Minimizing the threat of identity theft
250(1)
Protecting your credit rating
251(1)
Spam: Junk Mail on the Internet
252(1)
Why Companies Spam and How They Do It
253(5)
Collecting email addresses
254(3)
Masking the spammer's identity
257(1)
Protecting Yourself from Spammers
258(4)
Complain to the spammer
258(1)
Complain to the spammer's ISP
258(2)
Complain to the Internal Revenue Service
260(1)
Locating the spammer's postal address
261(1)
How Spam Filters Work
262(3)
Content (Bayesian) filtering
262(1)
Blacklists and whitelists
262(2)
DNS lookup lists
264(1)
Attachment filtering
264(1)
Stopping Spam
265(1)
Possible Future Solutions to Spam
266(3)
Going on the offensive
266(2)
Antispam organizations
268(1)
A Postscript: Spam as Propaganda
269(2)
19 BANNER ADS, POP-UP ADS, AND SEARCH ENGINE SPAMMING
271(14)
Banner Ads and Click Fraud
271(3)
Pop-Up/Pop-Under Ads
274(4)
How to create a pop-up/pop-under ad
275(2)
How to stop banner and pop-up/pop-under ads
277(1)
Watching Out for Web Bugs
278(3)
Tracking the websites you visit
278(1)
Using web bugs in spam
279(1)
Bugging newsgroups
280(1)
Protecting yourself against web bugs
280(1)
Spamdexing: Search Engine Spamming
281(5)
Keyword stuffing
282(1)
Keyword content creators
282(1)
Link farming
283(1)
Cloaking and code swapping
284(1)
Doorway pages
284(1)
Spamdexing for hire
284(1)
20 ADWARE AND SPYWARE
285(18)
What Spyware Can Do
286(2)
Displaying pop-up ads
286(1)
Home page hijacking
287(1)
Stealing information
287(1)
Why Companies Advertise Through Spyware
288(3)
How Spyware Infects a Computer
291(5)
Installing infected files
291(2)
Installing infected anti-spyware programs
293(2)
Drive-by downloads
295(1)
Spyware-infected spyware
296(1)
Where Spyware Hides
296(1)
Eliminating Spyware
297(6)
Securing Internet Explorer
298(1)
Switching to a safer browser
299(1)
Installing a firewall
299(1)
Monitoring your startup programs
299(1)
Running anti-spyware programs
299(4)
PART 6: PROTECTING YOUR COMPUTER AND YOURSELF
21 COMPUTING ON A SHOESTRING: GETTING STUFF FOR (ALMOST) FREE
303(10)
Internet Comparison Shopping
303(1)
Buying a Refurbished Computer
304(1)
Save on Printer Supplies
305(1)
Free (and Almost-Free) Software
306(3)
Getting commercial software cheaply (and legally)
306(2)
Finding an open-source program
308(1)
Free Internet Access
309(1)
Free Email Accounts
310(1)
Free Web and Blog Space
310(1)
The Best Things in Life Are Free
311(2)
22 COMPUTER FORENSICS: THE ART OF DELETING AND RETRIEVING DATA
313(10)
Recovering Deleted Data
313(2)
File Shredders
315(1)
Storing Deleted Data
316(2)
Finding data stored in slack space
316(1)
Finding data stored in swap files
316(1)
Your history stored in a web browser cache
317(1)
Computer Forensics Tools
318(2)
File-undeleting programs
318(1)
Hex editors
318(1)
Magnetic sensors and electron microscopes
319(1)
Commercial Forensics Tools
320(1)
Protecting Yourself
321(2)
23 LOCKING DOWN YOUR COMPUTER
323(12)
Protecting Your Computer (and Its Parts)
323(2)
USB blockers
324(1)
Alarms
324(1)
Remote tracking services
325(1)
Protecting Your Data
325(7)
Backing up your data
325(1)
Update and patch your operating system
326(1)
Identifying and closing default weaknesses
326(2)
Choosing a firewall
328(1)
Switch to a safer browser
329(1)
Protecting your email account from spam
330(1)
Protecting against phishing
331(1)
What's Next?
332(1)
EPILOGUE 333(2)
APPENDIX WHAT'S ON THE STEAL THIS COMPUTER BOOK 4.0 CD 335(16)
Uncompressing, Unzipping, Unstuffing, and So On
335(1)
Chapter 1 The Hacker Mentality
336(1)
Chapter 2 The First Hackers: The Phone Phreakers
336(1)
Chapter 3 Hacking People, Places, and Things
336(1)
Chapter 4 ANSI Bombs and Viruses
337(1)
Chapter 5 Trojan Horses and \Norms
338(1)
Chapter 6 Warez (Software Piracy
338(1)
Chapter 7 Where the Hackers Are
339(1)
Chapter 8 Stalking a Computer
339(1)
Chapter 9 Cracking Passwords
340(1)
Chapter 10 Digging into a Computer with Rootkifs
341(1)
Chapter 11 Censoring information
341(1)
Chapter 12 The Filesharing Networks
342(1)
Chapter 13 The Internet Con Artists
343(1)
Chapter 14 Finding People or the 1nterriet
343(1)
Chapter 15 Propaganda as News and Entertainment
343(1)
Chapter 16 Hacktivism: Online Activism
344(1)
Chapter 17 Hate Groups and Terrorists ch the 1ntemet
344(1)
Chapter 18 Identity Theft and Spam
344(1)
Chapter 19 Banner Ads, Pop-up Ads, ant Search Engine Scamming
345(1)
Chapter 20 Adware and Spyware
345(2)
Chapter 21 Computing on a Shoestring: Getting Stuff for (Almost) Free
347(1)
Chapter 22 Computer Forensics: The Art of Deleting and Retrieving Data
347(1)
Chapter 23 Locking Down Your Computer
348(3)
INDEX 351

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