Life Hacks You Should Know

Biggest hacker training site shut down

What is believed to be the country's biggest hacker training site has been shut down by police in Central China's Hubei province.

Three people were also arrested, local media reported yesterday.

The three, who ran Black Hawk Safety Net, are suspected of offering others online attacking programs and software, a crime recently added to the Criminal Law. A total of 1.7 million yuan ($249,000) in assets were also frozen.

According to the provincial public security department of Hubei, the closure of the website had its roots in a previous Web attack and virus dissemination case in the city of Macheng in 2007, when police found some of the suspects caught were members of Black Hawk Safety Net.

Hubei province named Black Hawk Safety Net as the largest hacker training site in China, which openly recruited members and disseminated hacker techniques through lessons, trojan software and online forum communications.

Since it was established in 2005, the site had recruited more than 12,000 VIP members and collected more than 7 million yuan in membership fees. More than 170,000 people registered for free membership.

Police said more than 50 officers had been investigating the case.

They seized nine Web servers, five computers and one car, and shut down all the sites involved in the case, according to the provincial public security department.

"I could download trojan programs from the site which allowed me to control other people's computers. I did this just for fun but I also know that many other members could make a fortune by attacking other people's accounts," said a 23-year-old member of Black Hawk Safety Net in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu province, who asked to remain anonymous.

"It is not very difficult to do simple hacker tasks. Some hacker members are teenagers who dropped out of school and make money by stealing accounts," he said.

A 20-year-old college student who registered with three different hacker training sites said a hacker training course costs from 100 to 2,000 yuan.

"Basically students were told how to steal accounts and use trojan programs. Sometimes trainers show us how to write programs," he said.

"But now it's very difficult to become a registered member. Some well-known hacker training sites have not been accessible since November," he said.

According to a report released by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China, the hacker industry in China caused losses of 7.6 billion yuan in 2009.

Types of Hacking

Hacking Types

1) Inside Jobs - Most security breeches originate inside the network that is under attack. Inside jobs include stealing passwords (which hackers then use or sell), performing industrial espionage, causing harm (as disgruntled employees), or committing simple misuse. Sound policy enforcement and observant employees who guard their passwords and PCs can thwart many of these security breeches. 

2) Rogue Access Points - Rogue access points (APs) are unsecured wireless access points that outsiders can easily breech. (Local hackers often advertise rogue APs to each other.) Rogue APs are most often connected by well-meaning but ignorant employees

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3) Back Doors - Hackers can gain access to a network by exploiting back doors�'administrative shortcuts, configuration errors, easily deciphered passwords, and unsecured dial-ups. With the aid of computerized searchers (bots), hackers can probably find any weakness in your network. 

4) Viruses and Worms - Viruses and worms are self-replicating programs or code fragments that attach themselves to other programs (viruses) or machines (worms). Both viruses and worms attempt to shut down networks by flooding them with massive amounts of bogus traffic, usually through e-mail.

5) Trojan Horses - Trojan horses, which are attached to other programs, are the leading cause of all break-ins. When a user downloads and activates a Trojan horse, the hacked software (SW) kicks off a virus, password gobbler, or remote-control SW that gives the hacker control of the PC. 

6) Denial of Service - DoS attacks give hackers a way to bring down a network without gaining internal access. DoS attacks work by flooding the access routers with bogus traffic (which can be e-mail or Transmission Control Protocol, TCP, packets). 

Distributed DoSs (DDoS5) are coordinated DoS attacks from multiple sources. A DDoS is more difficult to block because it uses multiple, changing, source IP addresses.

7) Anarchists, Crackers, and Kiddies - Who are these people, and why are they attacking I your network?

Anarchists are people who just like to break stuff. They usually exploit any target of opportunity.

Crackers are hobbyists or professionals who break passwords and develop Trojan horses or other SW (called warez). They either use the SW themselves (for bragging rights) or sell it for profit.

Script kiddies are hacker wannabes. They have no real hacker skills, so they buy or download warez, which they launch.

Other attackers include disgruntled employees, terrorists, political operatives, or anyone else who feels slighted, exploited, ripped off, or unloved.

8) Sniffing and Spoofing - Sniffing refers to the act of intercepting TCP packets. This interception can happen through simple eavesdropping or something more sinister.

Spoofing is the act of sending an illegitimate packet with an expected acknowledgment (ACK), which a hacker can guess, predict, or obtain by snooping.