My bored mind at work

 I'm just going to let my mind run on auto control for now. Please ignore the next few sentences.

I procrastinate a lot.  I think of something cool, but then I loose interest. When I do continue to have interest, it seems that somehow some unknown force causes it to fail.  And then, out of the blue comes another wacky yet interesting idea. But I can't follow through because the unknown force comes back.

StarCraft is pretty fun. I wish more people could realize that not all old games are bad. Most are better than recent games. 

I have a three drawers below my computer, all of which are full of assorted junk.  Along with my room, too. Full of crap. I've attempted to clean my room once, but it always goes back to its messy state. My dad insists I continue to clean it regularly, but it really doesn't help much.  It's like as if a tornado lived in my room.  It must be evil, since it only destroys my room and no other ones.  And ugly too, because it's jealous that it doesn't have a room for itself.  I wonder if it has any siblings.

I've always thought of life as an equilibrium.  For each talent or positive feature something has, there's always a negative side that contrasts it. Smart, mathematical people tend to be slightly unattractive (but isn't always the case),and nonacademic people tend to be athletic (but isn't always the case either). It just happens a lot, but not always.  But it's always equal. I believe in karma, because it happens to me a lot.  If I happen to choose to do an action I would usually regard as wrong, I'll most likely get paid back with an awful day, and vice versa. It reminds me of a game. Plus, I often achieve great things when I'm not consciously thinking about it.  For example, I was able to win a game of poker at Chris' birthday party (the party was fucking epic) and I never thought I would have won.  I never thought of winning, but I didn't doubt it either. It was like I had a blank mind.  This happens to me a lot, where my mind just goes on auto control and something goes right.  It's nice.  But I rarely go on auto, because I'm always thinking about stuff.


Since it's the Super Bowl and my dad wants me to play some board game with him and our guests at our house, I guess this is a good time to say farewell.

Basics of Hacking

The Basics of Hacking and Viruses

THIS IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY (although I know readers will ignore this)

In the hacking world, there are 3 groups of hackers, distinguishable by their nonexistent colored hats:

• White Hat 
• These are the "good guys" who help people out with their computer problems.

• Grey Hat

• A mixture of white and black, these hackers can either do both white and black hat hacking, or black hat hacking and then white hat hacking. For example, let's say a website has an exploit. The grey hat would use the exploit to hack into their website, but wouldn't cause any harm; only notify the admin that there is an exploit on their site.

• Black Hat

• The worst of them all, Black Hats hack to steal and steal to hack... if that makes any sense at all. They're the ones who could possibly steal your credit card info, crash your website, etc. You don't want to get on the bad side of these guys. 

Hacking can be ILLEGAL, but only if you break into unwanted areas, such as websites that are not yours, computers that are not yours, you get the point. It's like robbing; it's illegal only when you steal/break in from somebody else.


There are hundreds of different things to hack, and there are hundreds of ways to hack them. Here are the basics:

• Exploiting/Injection - Using problems or holes/faults in the victim to gain access.
• Flooding/DoS/DDoS - Using programs or multiple computers to send trillions of bytes to one location in an attempt to overload it.
• Brute Forcing - Using programs to try to access protected areas by guessing the password from a list or by words in the alphabet thousands of times a second. 
• Cracking -  Changing code inside the victim to gain access.
• Phishing - Tricking victims into entering personal data about themselves.
• RATing - Using programs called RATs to gain access to a victim's computer through a back door and control it.

 Exploiting/Injecting
 All exploiting and injecting I can think of is used on websites. To exploit, hackers use scripts that trick the website into thinking the hacker is admin, or doing something only an admin can do, going the hacker power over parts or all of the site.

Exploiting/injecting can be done with programming code such as PHP, SQL, Javascript, basically anything that can write a website can be used to exploit a site. Example seen at right (drawn by me, like those drawing skillz?)
















Flooding/DoS/DDoS
 DoS (Denial of Service) and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) are powerful attacks that can be dangerous when used correctly. What it is, is basically the hacker sends trillions of billions of data to one location in an attempt to slow or shut the victim down. the victim can be a website, computer, or anything that has an IP address.

The difference between DoS and DDoS attacks is DoS attacks are by one person, whereas DDoS attacks are Distributed, as in across many computers. In DDoS attacks the hacker usually has control over all the victim's computers, nicknamed "Zombies". The Zombie are controlled by the hacker, the "Leader". The Leader sends commands to all the Zombies to ping, or send data to, one location. DDoS attacks are MUCH stronger than DoS simply because there are so many more attackers.

Example drawing of control at left, and example DoS program at right (the creator of that program mistakenly typed DDoS at the title instead of DoS since it can't control zombie computers).














Brute Forcing
Brute Forcing is slow, ineffective, and easily detected by a victim. A hacker would most likely use this as their last resort to attack a victim.

It's so ineffective because it needs to use either a dictionary (giant list of words in a text document), or guess random letters/numbers. Rarely do you ever see someone get brute forced, because they get caught so easily. The brute forcer tries to guess THOUSANDS of passwords per second, so of course the victim would know the hacker is trying to brute force because they look at the logs and see that someone tried to log in thousands of times.
















Cracking
Used mostly on programs, cracking can be either patches (modifications to a program that can be downloaded and installed) or manual code changing (often with hex editors). hex (Hexadecimal) is a number system that counts by 16 values, in contrast to the decimal system that counts by 10 values (0-10), and  uses the alphabetic letters A-F to represent the 6 values past 9. For example, counting in hex would be:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0A, 0B, 0C, 0D, 0E, 0F, 10.

All computer files are able to be edited in a hex editor, and when in hex, the file contains such code like:

48 65 6C 6C 6F 2C 20 79 6F 75 72 20 61 72 65 20 72 65 61 64 69 6E 67 20 74 68 69 73 20 74 65 78 74 20 6F 6E 20 4F 63 74 6F 70 69 27 73 20 62 6C 6F 67 2E

(That text said "Hello, your are reading this text on Octopi's blog.") Most files can be edited in hex and able to be executed again, but some cannot. I'm not very knowledgeable about hex editing, but it requires a lot of knowledge on how to do it.

However, there are many patches of programs that can be downloaded off of the internet such as Photoshop, Vegas Pro, Call of Duty, etc. Most of them are ILLEGAL because it's allowing people to use programs for free that should be paid for. Plus, most of cracks of programs are disguised as viruses or RATs (see the section on RATs below), so make sure that if you decide to use a crack, download from a reliable location. ThePirateBay.org is a torrent site that provides pretty clean cracks.

Phishing
 Phishing, like it's name suggests, "hooks" victims like a fish to give the hacker their personal information. The victim gets tricked into thinking it's the legitimate website, but it's actually the hacker's website. When they attempt to log in, the website sends those credentials to the hacker.
Most phishing attacks are done by the hacker mass emailing thousands of random emails a fake website account email. Almost everyone who has an email gets spam, and I'm sure you've gotten one of those emails that say, "Your bank account has had suspicious activity! Log on here: http://www.hackersite.com/bankofamerica". That is a phishing attempt.

It's pretty easy to tell if an email is a phishing attempt, by following these rules:

• If the email has spelling/grammatical errors, it may be an attempt.
• If the URL of the website the email sends you is fraudulent, then it's definitely a phishing attempt.

• To tell if a URL is fake, make sure that the domain is real.
• Real: http://login.wellsfargo.com/
• Fake: http://wellsfargologin.qibgh3.com/
• ALWAYS check the subdomain and domain before visiting a suspicious link.
• For example, if you get an email from Wells Fargo, make sure the DOMAIN is Wells Fargo, not something else. 
• A email without images that tries to get you to log into a website is usually the case of a phishing attempt. However, hackers are getting smarter and disguising their emails with images that make the email appear real. But remember, ALWAYS check the URL.

At right: Fake email attempting to lure the victim into logging on to a fake eBay website. Notice how the hacker puts the image at the top to make it appear real.
 

RATing
This type of hacking is my favorite :D RATs are programs that install trojans on victims computers, giving the hacker access to them. Once they get access, they can do basically whatever they want, whether it's harassing them, changing their background, watching their screen, or even wiping their hard drive.
 Most RATs are easy to detect because they're used so often, but hackers now use crypters to stop anti-virus programs from detecting that it's a hacking program.  For example, scanning an infected file would come up in a result like this:

File server.exe received on 2010.01.18 07:16:13 (UTC)
Antivirus	Version	Last Update	Result
a-squared	4.5.0.50	2010.01.18	Riskware.Win32.DelfInject!IK
AhnLab-V3	5.0.0.2	2010.01.16	-
AntiVir	7.9.1.142	2010.01.17	TR/Spy.Gen
Antiy-AVL	2.0.3.7	2010.01.12	-
Authentium	5.2.0.5	2010.01.16	W32/Downloader.C.gen!Eldorado
Avast	4.8.1351.0	2010.01.17	Win32:Buzus-IV
AVG	9.0.0.730	2010.01.17	Generic15.AZNC
BitDefender	7.2	2010.01.18	Generic.Malware.SPV!PkWk!.92DC6447
CAT-QuickHeal	10.00	2010.01.18	Trojan.Mepaow.jty
ClamAV	0.94.1	2010.01.17	Trojan.Killav-109
Comodo	3621	2010.01.18	Heur.Packed.Unknown
DrWeb	5.0.1.12222	2010.01.18	Trojan.Apocalyps.1
eSafe	7.0.17.0	2010.01.17	-
eTrust-Vet	35.2.7243	2010.01.18	Win32/Dowque.AXR
F-Prot	4.5.1.85	2010.01.17	W32/Downloader.C.gen!Eldorado
F-Secure	9.0.15370.0	2010.01.18	-
Fortinet	4.0.14.0	2010.01.18	-
GData	19	2010.01.17	Generic.Malware.SPV!PkWk!.92DC6447
Ikarus	T3.1.1.80.0	2010.01.18	VirTool.Win32.DelfInject
Jiangmin	13.0.900	2010.01.18	Trojan/Mepaow.gv
K7AntiVirus	7.10.949	2010.01.16	-
Kaspersky	7.0.0.125	2010.01.18	-
McAfee	5864	2010.01.17	BackDoor-EIL
McAfee+Artemis	5864	2010.01.17	BackDoor-EIL
McAfee-GW-Edition	6.8.5	2010.01.17	Trojan.Spy.Gen
Microsoft	1.5302	2010.01.18	VirTool:Win32/DelfInject.gen!L
NOD32	4781	2010.01.18	a variant of Win32/Lypserat.A
Norman	6.04.03	2010.01.17	-
nProtect	2009.1.8.0	2010.01.18	Trojan/W32.Mepaow.73216.G
Panda	10.0.2.2	2010.01.17	Suspicious file
PCTools	7.0.3.5	2010.01.18	Trojan.IRCBot
Prevx	3.0	2010.01.18	Medium Risk Malware
Rising	22.31.00.03	2010.01.18	Backdoor.Win32.Undef.fcl
Sophos	4.49.0	2010.01.18	Mal/Behav-010
Sunbelt	3.2.1858.2	2010.01.17	RiskTool.Win32.ProcessPatcher.Nor!cobra (v)
Symantec	20091.2.0.41	2010.01.18	W32.IRCBot.Gen
TheHacker	6.5.0.6.154	2010.01.18	-
TrendMicro	9.120.0.1004	2010.01.18	PAK_Generic.001
VBA32	3.12.12.1	2010.01.17	Trojan.Win32.Mepaow.jrk
ViRobot	2010.1.18.2141	2010.01.18	-
VirusBuster	5.0.21.0	2010.01.17	-

Whereas a crypted RAT would return results like this:

File Keygen.exe received on 2010.02.03 07:09:18 (UTC)
Antivirus	Version	Last Update	Result
a-squared	4.5.0.50	2010.02.03	-
AhnLab-V3	5.0.0.2	2010.02.03	-
AntiVir	7.9.1.156	2010.02.02	-
Antiy-AVL	2.0.3.7	2010.02.02	-
Authentium	5.2.0.5	2010.02.03	-
Avast	4.8.1351.0	2010.02.02	-
AVG	9.0.0.730	2010.02.02	Dropper.Small.CGH
BitDefender	7.2	2010.02.03	-
CAT-QuickHeal	10.00	2010.02.03	-
ClamAV	0.96.0.0-git	2010.02.03	-
Comodo	3802	2010.02.03	-
DrWeb	5.0.1.12222	2010.02.03	-
eSafe	7.0.17.0	2010.02.02	-
eTrust-Vet	35.2.7278	2010.02.03	-
F-Prot	4.5.1.85	2010.02.01	-
F-Secure	9.0.15370.0	2010.02.03	-
Fortinet	4.0.14.0	2010.02.03	-
GData	19	2010.02.03	-
Ikarus	T3.1.1.80.0	2010.02.03	-
K7AntiVirus	7.10.963	2010.02.02	-
Kaspersky	7.0.0.125	2010.02.03	-
McAfee	5880	2010.02.02	-
McAfee+Artemis	5880	2010.02.02	-
McAfee-GW-Edition	6.8.5	2010.02.02	-
Microsoft	1.5406	2010.02.03	-
NOD32	4830	2010.02.03	a variant of MSIL/TrojanDropper.Agent.T
Norman	6.04.03	2010.02.02	-
nProtect	2009.1.8.0	2010.02.03	-
Panda	10.0.2.2	2010.02.02	-
PCTools	7.0.3.5	2010.02.03	Trojan.Generic
Prevx	3.0	2010.02.03	-
Rising	22.33.02.03	2010.02.03	-
Sophos	4.50.0	2010.02.03	-
Sunbelt	3.2.1858.2	2010.02.03	-
TheHacker	6.5.1.0.177	2010.02.03	-
TrendMicro	9.120.0.1004	2010.02.03	-
VBA32	3.12.12.1	2010.02.02	-
ViRobot	2010.2.3.2169	2010.02.03	-
VirusBuster	5.0.21.0	2010.02.02	-

As you can see, it can be dangerous when crypted files are sent out to the public. That's why its always good to have an anti-virus on your computer (I recommend AVG), because you don't always know when there's a virus on your computer.

Here's a few screenies of different RATs.

Fake Facebook Profile Spies

If you haven't noticed yet, I've added a "Support Haiti" widget to the right, so visitors can click the link and send money to help the Red Cross.

In terms of hacking, my blog post about hacking is still being worked on. It's a BIG post, and I didn't want to split it up into parts because I don't want visitors to have to navigate to different posts to read one article.

Here's a sample of what I have so far:

Hacking can be ILLEGAL, but only if you break into unwanted areas, such as websites that are not yours, computers that are not yours, you get the point. It's like robbing; it's illegal only when you steal/break in from somebody else.


There are hundreds of different things to hack, and there are hundreds of ways to hack them. Here are the basics:

• Exploiting/Injection - Using problems or holes/faults in the victim to gain access.
• Flooding/DoS/DDoS - Using programs or multiple computers to send trillions of bytes to one location in an attempt to overload it.
• Brute Forcing - Using programs to try to access protected areas by guessing the password from a list or by words in the alphabet thousands of times a second. 
• Cracking -  Changing code inside the victim to gain access.
• Phishing - Tricking victims into entering personal data about themselves.
• RATing - Using programs called RATs to gain access to a victim's computer through a back door and control it.

That's a small small part of what I've written, and when I'm done it'll be epic.  I'll make sure to provide lots of picture guides too.

I'd also like to note that all those "FACEBOOK WATCHER", "PROFILE SPY", and "KEEP THE GOV. FROM WATCHING YOUR PROFILE!" groups are ALL false. ALL of them. The reasons why are:

 There is NO way selecting all your friends to invite to a group can activate a Facebook Application. The instructions say:

You Should :
1- Join this group.

2-Invite "all" your friends to this group. .(wont work unless all friends are invited)

3- 30min after %75 of your friends joined this group, the application profile watcher will be activated and when ever somebody visits your profile a notification will be left telling who it was.

This will only work if all your friends are invited!!!

Hi Guys When U Press Invite People To Join, Copy And Paste This Link Into The Address Bar:

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

It Selects All Ur Friends Then Press Invite

 The blue highlighted text is false, it will never work, whether you invite 1 or +1000 friends, no application can detect that.

The red highlighted text is false, having friends join the group WON'T "activate" the application because the application needs to get your approval before it can ever detect that it's YOUR friends that joined.

The yellow highlighted text is JavaScript text that selects all your friends on the invite window. No magic that could "activate" an application here.

Shortage in posts + EPIC screensaver

Sorry for the shortage in posts lately, Finals are tomorrow and I've been studying for them like crazy. Plus, I've been really stressed. 

I'm running into a bit of blogger's block right now, so I'm going to talk about something completely random.

I recently downloaded this EPIC (and I mean, completely awesomely EPIC) screensaver that generates fake rain on your screen, complete with wind, sound, and lightning. You can customize the wind velocity, rain physics, lighting color, and more in the free version of it.
What it does is it takes a screenshot of your desktop, and portrays rain on it, as if your desktop is actually getting wet (it made we want to wipe my screen when I first used it).

Download link

It's so fun to watch and listen to when I'm bored.... I'll just sit there and imagine that it's real rain.

Ahhhhh....

I just finished a giant project for English. This feels so good to just sit in my chair and type about how good this feels.

Since I'm in a good mood, I'm going to band my head on my keyboard and see what comes up.

b gvfffghjnujkkiiujhyyttrfgfrgvfbhjunjilcxdx

HBGTFD
iuhgtrf

Windows Hotkeys

I feel crappy... probably because I've been playing MW2 all day...lol. I get Dorito cravings at night when I'm bored, and I'm feeling it now...MUST...RESIST...SPICY NACHO

By the way, in case you haven't heard it yet, I'm working on a Troll Detector that analyzes text and gives you a percentage of possibility of that text being written by a troll. It's going very nicely (much easier than I thought!) so I hope to be done with it soon.  If you would like to help, just email me or send me a message through Facebook.

I also accept requests for computer info. If you want some information on a specific computer topic, ask me and I can write a post on it for you.

 Common Windows Hotkeys

This is a guide to basic hotkeys you can use on your PC.

• Ctrl + Escape or Win: Display start menu. 
• Shift + F10 or AppsKey: Display context menu. 
• Win + E: Open Windows Explorer. 
• Win + R: Open Run dialog.
  
• Win + M: Minimize all windows.
  
• Win + Shift + M: Undo minimize all windows.
  
• Win + D: Toggle minimize all windows.
  
• Win + B (XP only): Activate system tray. Arrow keys select, Enter double-clicks, and AppsKey or Shift + F10 right-clicks.
  
• Win + L (XP Only): Locks keyboard. Similar to Lock Workstation.
  
• Win + F or F3: Open Find dialog. (All Files) F3 may not work in some applications which use F3 for their own find dialogs.
  
• Win + Control + F: Open Find dialog. (Computers)
  
• Win + U: Open Utility Manager.
  
• Win + F1: Open Windows help.
  
• Win + Pause: Open System Properties dialog.
  
• Win + Tab: Cycle through taskbar buttons. Enter clicks, AppsKey or Shift + F10 right-clicks.
  
• Win + Shift + Tab: Cycle through taskbar buttons in reverse.
  
• Alt + Tab: Display CoolSwitch. More commonly known as the AltTab dialog.
  
• Alt + Shift + Tab: Display CoolSwitch; go in reverse.
  
• Alt + Escape: Send active window to the bottom of the z-order.
  
• Alt + Shift + Escape: Activate the window at the bottom of the z-order.
  
• Alt + F4: Close active window; or, if all windows are closed, open shutdown dialog.
  
• Shift while a CD is loading: Bypass AutoPlay.
  
• Ctrl + Alt + Delete or Ctrl + Alt + NumpadDel (Both NumLock states): Invoke the Task Manager or NT Security dialog.
  
• Ctrl + Shift + Escape (XP Only): Invoke the task manager. On earlier OSes, acts like Ctrl + Escape.
  
• Printscreen: Copy screenshot of current screen to clipboard.
  
• Alt + Printscreen: Copy screenshot of current active window to clipboard.
  
• Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow: Invert screen. Untested on OSes other than XP.
  
• Ctrl + Alt + Up Arrow: Undo inversion.

Here are some hotkeys for the Firefox browser:

Add Bookmark	Ctrl + D
Back	Alt + Left Arrow
Bookmarks List	Ctrl + B Ctrl + I
Caret Browsing	F7
Close Tab	Ctrl + W Ctrl + F4
Close Window	Ctrl + Shift + W Alt + F4
Open previously closed tab	Ctrl + Shift + T
Copy	Ctrl + C
Cut	Ctrl + X
Decrease Text Size	Ctrl + -
Delete	Delete
Delete Autocomplete Entry	Shift + Delete
Downloads List	Ctrl + J
Find Again	F3 Ctrl + G
Find Link As You Type	'
Find Text As You Type	/
Find Previous	Shift + F3
Find in This Page	Ctrl + F
Forward	Shift + Backspace Alt + Right Arrow
Full Screen	F11
History List	Ctrl + H
Home	Alt + Home
Increase Text Size	Ctrl + +
Move to Next Frame	F6
Move to Previous Frame	Shift + F6
Bottom of Page	End
Top of Page	Home
New Tab	Ctrl + T
Next Tab	Ctrl + Tab Ctrl + PageDown
New Window	Ctrl + N
Open File	Ctrl + O
Open Address in New Tab	Ctrl + Enter
Open Address in New Window	Shift + Enter
Page Source	Ctrl + U
Paste	Ctrl + V
Previous Tab	Ctrl + Shift + Tab Ctrl + Page Up
Print	Ctrl + P
Redo	Ctrl + Y Ctrl + Shift + Z
Reload	F5 Ctrl + R
Reload Override Cache	Ctrl + F5 Ctrl + Shift + R
Restore Text Size	Ctrl + O
Save Page As	Ctrl + S
Select All	Ctrl + A
Select Location Bar	Alt + D F6 Ctrl + L
Select Tab (1 to 9)	Ctrl + (1 to 9)
Stop	Esc
Undo	Ctrl + Z
Web Search	Ctrl + E Ctrl + K

Image Filetypes

 

Image Filetypes

This is a guide to commonly used image file types.

There are 4 main image file formats used most, and they are:

• JPEG
• GIF
• PNG
• BMP

Each has their own good and bad features.

• • JPEG is used mostly in photos, but it can have lower quality than others because of it's compression type, lossy. Lossy and Lossless are compression algorithms that tell the photo whether it should keep the high quality or lose it to keep the file size low. Lossy picture compression decreases the quality of the photo, but not too evidently. It can lower the file size. Lossless picture compression is used for whenever you care more about the quality than the file size.
• • GIF is used for simple graphics since it can only use 256 colors, but it can be used for animations which are widely used on the internet. (Example animated GIF on the left, I found it on 4chan.... lol)
• • PNG can use 16 million colors and are great for high definition/quality pictures and photos. I try to save most of my pictures in this format because it's so reliable and the quality is great.
• • BMP is a very simple file type that is typically uncompressed, and is usually used in Microsoft's Paint application. (Example BMP pixel art created by me below)
  

The file types mentioned about are known as raster images, because they are made of thousands of colored pixels. The SVG file type is a vector image that doesn't use pixels, but shapes.

• SVG stands for scaleable vector graphics. Vector graphics are, as apposed to raster (examples are mentioned above), made by rendering, or creating, shapes that can be sized and won't lose quality, no matter how big you zoom in on it. Raster images are made by thousands of pixels of colors that can lose quality when zoomed in. (Example at right, vector is on the left and raster is on the right)