The Diary of a Hacker (Prologue)
Why a beginning? There has never been a beginning! It has always been with me. I don’t know why, I don’t know where or when it all began. I just know that it’s been with me for a while. So forget about a beginning. I’d like to start from the middle:
A Command prompt opens. color 0a. Other colors just dont suit my style. net view. Holy crap all these computers are on LAN? Let’s try something new…
wait… I look around. The teacher is teaching other students. I’m in level 3 so he doesn’t bother teasing me much. I should know what I’m supposed to do after all (even though I didn’t actually TAKE levels 1&2, I skipped them!!) So I guess I should be fine…
This is High School and Computer Science doesn’t have many fans. People think of Firefox as an operating system. “Internet Explorer” is the same as “Internet”. A command prompt MEANS a hacker. a “Tree” command MEANS hacking to an international database!
However, there is still a class in which people learn computer science level 2! but there are only 8 of us in this classroom: an Asian guy with glasses and pimples all over his face, he browses for jokes on his computer all the time. The other guy: Asian again, but this one has neither glasses nor pimples. He just sits quietly by himself in the corner all the time, does his homework. Good kid. Very depressing that someone with his talents doesn’t like computer science. Another guy: Weird face, glasses, straight hair but no asian eyes. Looks Bulgarian or something: Dubstep, Break Dance, a novel with a circuit on its cover, a tuned voice, as if a robot is speaking. This is all I can remember from him, but I expect much more. We have some of the stuff in common, just some, but this guy, with all these technology themes floating around him, doesn’t like programming either. Why?? Aren’t the computers cool enough for someone like you??
“Laziness triggers this boredom.” My brain answers me.
Other one is a Nerd-looking one: Reminds me of the genius kid in “Meet The Robinsons” Another talented-looking kid. However, he likes to spend his time playing Mario rather than some real-deal programming!! Why??
“You just don’t get it do you?” My brain replies. His words make me hate him because he’s always right.
The others don’t even count: A Paki who does his World History homework during CS classes, and the other one is just… not there.
These are all level 2 students.
Level 3 has even fewer students. Guess how many? only… 2. One of them is me, and the other one…
No luck on that one either, even tho hes level 3.
The other level 3 student is from Bangladesh, a stupid, weird, nerdy guy who spends his time watching classic movies and looking for fashion designers. He doesn’t understand a crap out of computers. All he does is what his parents tell him to do. He can’t write a single algorithm, and so far he’s survived because he’s been cheating from my hand.
All these thoughts pass through my mind. So who am I? Why am I sitting here? Do I deserve to be with these people?
I had the answers: I’m not a weirdo, not a dubstep dancer, not a nerdy asian. I’m just the one that actually LOVES computer science and ENJOYS being here, in this class. And I’m sitting here because I thought that this class is supposed to teach us about computers (and it did, however, in a VERYY BOOOORIIING WAY!) if I was a regular student like them, I’d give myself the right to hate that class. I mean, 8 students overall (from which one of them is mentally retarded!) + 27 stupid computers to be programmed with a language like JAVA! and some lessons such as Trees and Sorting and Searching and GRID WORLD! (WHY???) for a student who has just started exploring the world of computers. Such great beginning! I don’t blame them…
That’s why I hate beginnings, so I started from the middle: Command prompt, color 0a, net view, and all those computer names appeared. I was facinated again, I was totally thrown out of my own world.
Being thrown out of the world… such familiar feeling. I’m never where I’m supposed to be. My mind flies: it flies all over the place. The only thing that keeps it in one place is a screen full of code.
All my world was that Black-and-green command prompt now. shutdown \\computername. A whole lot of text, which means wrong syntax. Looking through the help… GOTCHA!
Went to my friends computer: The pimply asian guy. Computer > Properties, wrote down his computer name on my palm with a pen. Back to my own. Shutdown /r /f /m \\D97618. 10 seconds pass. Network address not resolved! Crap… well who cares imma just try random computers displayed by net view. shutdown … shutdown … shutdown … shutdown …
meh! Nothing is happening! I pressed enter and the last shutdown command was hopelessly entered… Another failed experiment…
Teacher’s voice rises: “hmmm… What is this? Windows shutting down in a few seconds? Why?”
I looked at his face, then back to my screen, again at his face, then back to my screen. I didn’t mean to do it!!! And while my brain thought hidden, my tongue shouted the truth. The white hat on my head made me confess.
…
You can guess my teacher’s reaction: He didn’t like it, even though I was his best student. Even though I revealed a security threat to him which he could fix later. He told me not to tell anyone. Sure I wont… (Evil laugh!)
But why couldn’t I shutdown my friends computer?? I take a look at those names again. His computer name is not on the list, neither are all the other computers’ in that room. So, what are these???…
The thought passed from my mind like a thunder, shaking my entire body. “They better not be all the teachers computers…”
For the first time, I had experienced the sweet taste of power… The Power Of A Hacker…
…
It was so sweet that I came home and started this Diary, without a single ray of hope for anybody to read it. I don’t write it for the others to read it, after all, how many people know what I’m talking about when I speak about the world of Black and Green? How many people know what I’m talking about when I say GUI? How many people even care about whether they know about these stuff or not? How many people like to read the Diary of A Hacker????
But I don’t write it because I want the others to read it. I write it because I feel like doing it. It’s so sweet that remembering those memories gives me a happy time, and writing them down, makes me even happier. That’s why I write about hacking: Simply, because I’m a Hacker!
Mouse-Bot
Hey waz up people??
Artemis V0R73X is here…
Today, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve been contributing to an Open Source Project called Mouse-Bot. Refer to the official link in my company’s website for more info + the download link:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mousebot/files/latest/download
How to configure System Variables for cmd?
Have you noticed that sometimes when you execute exe files in command prompt, they’re not actually in the current directory, but they execute anyway?
For example, if you type in “tree” in command prompt, you are executing tree.exe (since we don’t have a built in command named tree.exe! in cmd) yet tree.exe is not in the current directory in which you are! Nevertheless, it executes, regardless of the current directory! Same is true for takeown, tasklist, ping, netstat, etc.
Well, here’s what happens:
when you execute something from command prompt, cmd looks for the file in the current directory. If it wasn’t found there, cmd automatically looks in some special directories for your executed file. THESE SPECIAL DIRECTORIES ARE CALLED: System Path Variables.
System Path Variables are part of a bigger family called System Variables. System Variables are part of a bigger family called Environment Variables. Environment Variables are some string values passed to programs such as cmd (when I say cmd I mean cmd.exe program) as variables and control their behavior this way. they are like some public values that need to get used sometimes, therefore they are stored somewhere public, so that programs can access them if needed.
Where? They used to be specified in the autoexec.bat files for the older Windows OSs, but now, registry holds these values… Environment Variables consist of two parts:
User Variables: Environment variables specific to the current user account.
Registry values are stored in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment
System Variables: Environment variables that stay the same all over the system, regardless of the user.
Registry values are stored in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
EXTRA: typing “set” command in cmd with no switches displays all the environment variables + their values.
Now which variable is the one we were talking about? The one that stores the directories in which cmd will look for the executed file?
The name of this variable is Path, and the value it stores is a list of directories separated by semicolon (; character).
Mine looks like this:
C:\Python32;C:\MinGW\bin;C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\;C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2011b\runtime\win64;C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2011b\bin;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0\bin
yeah it looks freakin long and complicated! But it’s nothing hard in fact! Its just long (and that’s because I have installed a lot of crap on my PC so it looks like that! I’ve even modified it and deleted some extra values!) For example, C:/Windows/System32 is one of these directories, and if you’ve installed Perl on your machine, C:\Perl\bin is another one of these (which was added by perl installer during installation!)
So say, you have a directory in which you have some common files that need to be executed a lot! (funny way to write a sentence…!) So all you have to do is to add the directory to the list of system variables.
You have 3 ways to do so:
1. Open up regedit (regedit.exe is another one of those commons files btw) and go to the registry address above, and change the data of “Path” value. Add one “;” in the end of the data, and add the directory. Add another ; and add another directory. All these directories will be considered during the execution of a file through cmd.
2. Open up System Properties, either through Right clicking on Computer icon on your desktop and selecting properties, or goto Control Panel > System. Click on Advanced System Settings (in Vista & Seven… idk about xp), then in the Advanced Tab, Click on Environment Variables, and in the opened windows you should see 2 sections: User Variables and System Variables. Under System Variables, you should see the value “Path”. Change that value and add the directory.
3. Use the “set” command to change the value of the variable. However, this is not recommended since it’s temporary, and based on my experience, it doesn’t work at all!
set PATH = %PATH%;C:/MinGW/bin;
AANNNND DOONE! You know what I used to do when I didn’t know about these? I copied all the .exe files I needed to System32 directory, which was not… efficient… at all! Well, good old times… ;D
How to change the default search engine in Firefox & Chrome
YO!…
well, idk why i said that! It’s for black people right??? I aint black!!!!!
anyways, today, I’ve come up with another probably useful tutorial over how to change THE… well, the default search engine in two of the greatest browsers of all time: Firefox and Chrome!
If anyone is using Opera or Safari please let me know I’ll post the tutorials for those, too.
(Don’t say that you’re using Internet Explorer… DONT SAY IT I SAID!!! … well, u said it. My solution: GET ANOTHER BROWSER FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!)
Firefox:
1. In the URL bar, type in
about:config
2. In the opened window, there’s a filtering field. Search for
keyword.url
3. Search should bring up the “keyword.url” value. Double Click, Replace it with:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&q=
if you’re wanna set google as a default browser.
in other cases, life if you wanna set another search engine as your default, here’s what you should do:
a) Go search something in your favorite search engine.
B) Look at the url as it searches.
C) Copy it all the way until your search statement begins.
D) Replace the keyword.url with the URL you copied.
EXAMPLE: For example, a quick search in Yahoo! gave me this (I searched “awesome” in yahoo!):
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AgkWTzeHfta98yOHtqoKzk2bvZx4?p=yahoo&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-505
notice that your search statement “awesome” begins after “…p=” so copy the whole thing until “p=”, which will be this:
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AgkWTzeHfta98yOHtqoKzk2bvZx4?p=
so if you wanna set yahoo as the default search engine replace “keyword.url” with the URL above.
(However, I noticed that it still works without that apparently hash code. So just replace it with:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=)
4. And that’s it!
Google Chrome:
1. Click on Settings icon (it looks like a wrench!)
2. goto “Options“. You are already in the “Basics” tab. You should be seeing several sections: OnStartup, Home Page, etc.
3. Click “Manage search engines” in the “Search” section.
3. If you already see your favorite search engine in the list, just hover your mouse over it and click on “Make Default“.
4. If you don’t see it there, u gotta add it! In order to do this, just scroll down to the very bottom and add your search engine there.
5. Enter an optional name, leave the keyword field empty, and the same URL address we talked about up there about firefox.
The difference is: Here, in the URL address used for searching, enter %s instead of your search statement.
Example:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s
6. Select it and click on “Make Default”. (Either shown as a button on the right, or it’s shown when you hover over the field)
EXTRA: you see how you left the “keyword” field empty: well I thought you might wonder what this is (because that’s what happened to me: I was wondering what “keyword” was!! And well, curiosity brought me some answers so Imma post them here):
Keywords let you use several search engines at the same time. Say, your default search engine is google, but all of a sudden, for some reason, you wanna search in Bing! All you have to do is to type the keyword of that search engine first, space, and then whatever you wanna search.
Example: Say, you create a new search engine, set the name to “Chicken” (it doesn’t have to be the name of the search engine!) and set the keyword to “mc” and set the url to “http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=” . But this is not your default (you like google better) but all of a sudden you wanna search in yahoo. All you have to do is:
a) In the URL bar, type in mc,
b) One space,
c) Type in your search keyword,
d) And it searches in Yahoo!
Firefox (side search field):
If you’ve noticed, there’s another search bar in firefox. On the top right! That can provide you another search engine. In order to change that one, you can either:
a) click the little icon on the right side of the search field and choose your default browser in there.
b) If your favorite browser is there but it doesn’t search correctly, do this:
1. Open the searchplugins folder located inside the Firefox installation directory
2. Find the URL. Change it to the desired URL. Restart the browser.
c) If your default search engine is not there, look for it’s search plugin either in the Addons center for firefox > search tools section or in the search engine website itself.
d) If you can’t find it and you want to build a new searching plugin for firefox, click here.
How to bypass Deep Freeze? / 6 Ways For Disabling Deep Freeze!
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
Artemis V0R73X Is Here! Behold, for today, I’ve brought you something that is not found anywhere else on this mortal earth!
Not only one, but 6 amazing ways to disable deep freeze!
Method #1: Generate a new One-Time-Passoword:
- Open the Deep Freeze login dialog (CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + F6) on the computer for which you need to generate the OTP.
- Write down the Token code which is located at the top of the login dialog.
- Open the Deep Freeze Configuration Administrator and click the One-Time Passwords tab or open the Enterprise Console and click on Tools > One Time Password.
- Enter the code you recorded into the Token field and click Generate OTP. Another code will appear in the OTP field. The second code is the password for the workstation.
The newly generated One-Time Password can then be used to disable, uninstall, and re-install Deep Freeze with the correct password.
Method #2: Disable From BIOS
- Restart the computer.
- Enter the system BIOS settings.
- Advance the clock by at least 60 days and then restart your computer. This will disable the software.
- After the system has started, run the Deep Freeze installation program to uninstall Deep Freeze.
- After the computer reboots, re-enter the BIOS and reset the clock to the current date. You can then re-install Deep Freeze after restarting.
If the Deep Freeze version is already registered and licensed, this doesn’t work.
Method #3: Ollyscript
Follow the instructions here: http://www.securiteam.com/windowsntfocus/5XP0H1FG0S.html
Method #4: Anti Deep Freeze
A program that diables deep freeze. Google for the links.
Method #5: Brute-Force.
- Install BackTrack on a USB Flash Drive and bring it up on the victim computer.
- Go to where C:\windows\system32\drivers.
- Delete the crap, which would be deepfrz.sys! xD
- Goto Administrative Tools
- If you dont know the pass, goto Computer Management > Local Users and Groups > Users > Right click on Administrator on right side, click Set Password
- Proceed to Local Security Policy > Debug Programs > Click Add User or Group > Advanced > Find Now
- Select Administrator and click OK.
- … to be continued… try the other methods for now! xD
Dice #2: Why did I start blogging?
First things first: It’s been always a pain that each time I write somethings that others are going to read, I have to be careful about each single letter I write, because they might bother people! I hate it when each single word takes 2 minutes of thought, and finally when you’re done, you go over the text and you realize that it’s terrible! I agree that words shouldn’t be foolish, but some people consider them foolish no matter what! I hate that and I can’t blog this way, so from now on, I’m gonna ASSUME that:
Nobody is viewing my blog. yeah! Now I feel better… I blog for myself, and for people who think the same way as I do. Each post has a different tone, because each day I.m in a different mood. Each post has a new value, because each day I learn something new.I’m only going to put what I think, right on the blog! ;D
So back to the main question: Why did I start blogging? Blogging has been old now: nobody blogs these days. People have facebooks, twitters! Who the hell is gonna read bolgs these days? So why did I choose to blog??
I partly answered the question above, when I said “I’m gonna put what I think, right on the blog!” And well, honestly, That the #1 reason of mine for blogging! Yeah thats right: A Trash Can For The Thoughts in my Mind! It’s so important that it’s even written up there: Below the title! Well, Artemis V0R73X has a busy mind, and this weird mind over-complicates itself sometimes! And the trash can in my brain gets full! So I have to empty it sometimes, and what is better than a blog?
There is also another reason for that, i.e the #2 Reason: to categorize myself! Yes I can’t live without categorizing myself! I feel lost… So each time I find or learn something new, I’m gonna put it up on the blog so I won’t fell like I’ve lost it forever! Yeah that’s right: This blog is my NOTEBOOK! and dont you agree that when you write something while you’re learning it, you’ll remember it better? (oh you don’t? oh so that’s why you got a 60 on your last test results! xD ) So that’s what I’m gonna do: everytime I learn something important, I’m gonna put it on the blog so that I’ll remember it better, AND I’ll be able to refer to it if I forget it! Sounds GRRRRRRRRREAT!
and on the other hands, I’m getting depressed because some of the things must be told but can’t be told to anybody! I’m going to POUR my thoughts into this blogs. Some of them are trash, some others, pure gold! This blog is like another friend of mine (maybe one of the best friends, maybe…) so that I can talk to it when I can’t talk to anybody else about a subject. This is Reason #3.
AND on the other hands: people don’t know me! I like the idea of blogging because you are the boss in your blog! In twitter, you are the boss of some people, but then some others are bosses to you at the same time. In the end, you achieve nothing! And people who don’t WANT or LIKE twitter won’t even know about you! But a blog, is like a new notebook, not borrowing a piece of paper from your friend each time! Facebook is even worse: you post something, and nobody even notices that you’ve talked because your voice is lost among a thousand other voices that are talking at the same time! You post somethings, and then it goes down for 2 meters under the pressure of other posts! And even worse: People who are NOT on facebook don’t even get to hear you! Your posts are not found by google: and that’s why people on facebook are either posting stupid jokes about stupid stuff or creating/answering stupid questions about all kinds of stuff! So yeah, that’s the #4 reason that made me choose blogging for sharing purposes instead of facebook/twitter.
I dunno about you, but Blogging is the only way a person can spread his word to the WORLD!
And That’s why I started blogging. Here I am, Artemis V0R73X, for people who know me, and people who want to know me. People who are like me, and people who like me no matter what I do and where I am. Perfection is unreachable, so I’m not going to even try that, and this fact, will be the FIRST lesson I learnt when I started my blog. I’m going to be MYSELF and nobody else, unlike what I’ve been doing all my life, and unleash the reality inside me. So “LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” (Bullet for my valentine: Tears don’t fall => Intro of the song)