Acknowledgements
This book was made possible by the work of hundreds of hackers
who have shared their knowledge through our Happy Hacker organization.
For archives of their contributions, see http://happyhacker.org
and our email list archives at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhacker/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hh-unix/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhwindows/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhmac/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhnetwork/,
and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhprogramming/.
To chat on our Happy Hacker IRC channels (moderated to keep things
friendly and white hat), see http://happyhacker.org/jirc/.
Vincent Larsen (President of Systems Advisory Group, Inc.)
has also provided free hosting for both Happyhacker.org since
1999 and my business domain, Techbroker.com, since 2001. So far
(knock on wood), since he has hosted them, no one has managed
to break into the web sites for either domain - this despite
inviting people to try to break in.
Damian Bates, John Bailey, Daniel Gilkerson, Vincent Larsen,
Mike Miller, Greggory Peck, and Acos Thunder provided invaluable
assistance as technical editors of the first edition of this
book. On the second edition, Larsen (the most über of any
hacker I've ever met) once again assisted, along with Tanvir
Ahmed, Stuart Carter, John Demchenko, Jeff Dukovac, Gavin Heer,
Joe Klemencic, Harold Malave, Tom Massey, Mike Orton, Matt Rudderham,
David Uebel, and Susan Updike.
If you find any technical errors, blame them on these guys!
OK, OK, just kidding. I am the one who makes the mistakes, while
they labor to find and correct them. In a book covering so many
aspects of breaking into computers, it is a Herculean task to
track down errors and omissions.
Slammer and Gonzo deserve special recognition for their long,
patient instruction in the mysteries of Ethernet and how to overcome
problems of getting network interface cards of even the most
obscure sorts to function under Windows and Linux. Chris Hayes
has helped with the use of a Solaris box on Sun hardware, and
Sydney Urshan of http://www.nethollywood.net/
with a Red Hat server at his web hosting firm for many of the
experiments we ran in researching this book.
We also thank the army of volunteers who have put my Guides
to (mostly)Harmless Hacking on Web sites around the world, and
have translated them into other languages. Thanks to their help,
many talented hackers discovered us and contributed their knowledge.
Special thanks go to Dr. Mark Ludwig (author of The Giant
Book of Computer Viruses, the Little Black Book of Email Viruses
and the publisher of my book The Happy Hacker). On Nov. 10, 1998,
at the Albuquerque FBI headquarters, he stood up for me in a
confrontation with three agents. These agents were threatening
to arrest me for supposedly hacking the New York Times web site
and doing millions of damage to other computers. However, it
may have been more than coincidence that one of agents, Tracy
Baldwin, had been for some time expressing her displeasure with
my teaching people how to hack. Thanks to Dr. Ludwig publicizing
their harassment, the FBI backed off and has not bothered me
any more (at least as of this writing).
The most special thanks of all go to our computer criminal
enemies. They have made incessant attacks against those courageous
enough to allow Happyhacker.org and me to have access to the
Internet. We were able to turn this seeming misfortune into an
asset thanks to John Vranesevich and the staff at Antionline;
Vincent Larsen and his staff at Systems Advisory Group, Inc.
(http://www.sage-inc.com);
and Mark Schmitz and his staff at Rt66 Internet (http://www.rt66.com). They have provided
invaluable laboratories in which to learn how hackers break in,
and how to defend against them.
This knowledge we now share with you. - Carolyn Meinel, June,
2003.
More about Our 2nd Edition Technical Editors
Tanvir Ahmed tells us he "is a network security fanatic
and is attracted to secure-programming, networking, operating
systems, cryptography and wireless technology." He also
moderates the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhnetwork/,
and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhprogramming/
email lists with yahoogroups.com. He lives in Bangladesh and
can be reached at .
Stuart Carter holds a BEng(with honors) in Computer Science.
His main areas of interest are Unix/Linux networking and hacking,
web tinkering and PC Internals. He lives in the UK's midlands,
and is usually found juggling or unicycling when not sitting
in front of a computer. He can be found on the web at http://www.stuart-carter.co.uk and contacted
on: .
John Demchenko, student, HHwindows moderator.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhwindows/
Jeff Dukovac is a database guy, software test engineer, mechanic,
motorcyclist, sometime teacher, waiting for a project management
challenge, .
Gavin Heer is a computer Science student attending the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver B.C. Canada, .
Joe Klemencic has been in the computing industry for 12 years,
and has worked with technologies from almost every aspect within
the industry. He also has a few papers published on the Internet
about data security. Joe currently performs duties in the Data
Security field. He can be contacted at .
Vincent Larsen is President of Systems Advisory Group Enterprises,
Inc. (http://www.sage-inc.com)
and the creator of the company's process-based security line
of products.
Harold Malave is a Technology Coordinator/Network Aficionado/Computer
Teacher and Mac User. He lives in Puerto Rico.
Tom Massey "became interested in computers in the early
1980's when he had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A machine to play
with and 80's music to inspire him. He still has the book 'Beginner's
BASIC' that came with that machine. Shortly after that he graduated
to an Apple IIC, before following the Intel CPU in all its variations
from the 8086 to the Pentium III. He began using Linux more or
less exclusively in 1998, only booting to FreeBSD to play games.
Currently he edits 'Heh', a monthly hacker ezine which is archived
at http://whitehats.dyndns.org/modules.php?name=Heh.
He lives in Sydney, Australia with three cats: Peter, Paul, and
Mary; and some parents and sisters. He plays the guitar very
loudly, which more than makes up for his lack of talent."
.
Michael A Orton, CPhys, MInstP, DCT(Batt), MSRP, PGCE(Wales).
He is one of those legendary the wise old men of hacking. He
started computing at AWRE Aldermaston in early 60's using FORTRAN-2
and Stretch and Atlas supercomputers. He later Moved to the British
Ministry of Defence where he used COBOL on an IBM 360. He describes
himself as "basically a Health Physicist, a scientific con-man
who uses the fear of everything radioactive to make a good living,
protecting people from their over-blown fears. I then moved to
the Civil Nuclear generation again as a Health Physicist, though
I always found excuses for using computers: Zx-80 systems running
FORTRAN and Digital PDP-33 using CP/M and finally PCs using DOS/GEM.
Then came the networked IBM PC.(win 3.1 and IBM Token Ring network,
MS Office, Clipper, Paradox databases.)" Orton took early
retirement. "Taught in Further Education Colleges, mostly
boring stuff. Then started more lucrative free-lance work, including
IT security, data recovery etc. learned from Happy Hacker, Phrack
(http://www.phrack.org/) and other e-mail lists. At present I
am involved in local community regeneration and the arrival of
Wireless Broadband to the mountainous areas of North Wales where
I live; 2MHz if it works OK! Between 1972 and 96 was in Mountain
Rescue in North Wales. Married with four children and six grandchildren."
.
Staff Sergeant David (LocoCoyote) Uebel is currently serving
in the US Army in Germany. He says he's "A+ & Network+
certified. Self- taught bumbler of bits and hopelessly hooked
on hacking." or .
Susan Updike tells us she "emerged from graduate school
with a degree in English the year the job market for teachers
collapsed. Luckily, computers were creeping into the workplace
in many areas. Since she actually could and did read the manuals,
she began a new career, learning on the job, to operate and manage
DOS, Win95/98, HP-UX, dg-ux, SCO, and RedHat OSs. She has recently
hurled her Win98 laptop out of the window (literally) and lept
cold turkey into Mac OS X with a G4 Powerbook, where she currently
struggles with Darwin, BSD, and the tcsh shell. No expert on
any of these - still learning." .
