Hacking

Hacking

There’s something elitist about hackers, and we all seem to go through this phase of wanting to be one. Well, you can aspire to be one by talking the h4x0r talk…

Backdoor

A backdoor is a hole in the security of an operating system or software. It is left there on purpose by the designers of the software, so that they can get unrestricted access in case they’re locked out.

Fat-finger

A typo in code or in settings of software that can cause chaos to the stability of a system.

Hammer / Bang

Stress-testing software or hardware to check for security and stability. In the hacker world, it can also mean attempting to gain entry into a system using brute force.

Kiddie

Generally an insult. Used along with the words script, packet, etc. Examples: script kiddie, packet kiddie. Used by hackers to describe other hackers who use pre-compiled software to hack. Basically, a kiddie is someone who can achieve a task like a hacker, but does not know what he is doing, or how he did it.

Mailbomb

To flood a server or a person’s Inbox with mail or spam.

Owned / Pwned

A reaction after success. Asserting one’s superiority.

Rootkit

Software used by “kiddies” to hack and gain access to root privileges.

Usage: “Here I was minding my own business (just DDoS-ing a few guys), and I notice some strange network traffic. Turns out, this kiddie was trying to use a rootkit to find a backdoor into my BSD box. I mailbombed him with a couple of million messages that said “hacking people with quad-T3s is not a smart thing to do!” Then, just for good measure, I hacked his ISP and changed his cable modem config file. He thought I fat-fingered, because I gave him a speed boost from 1 Mbps to 10—sent me a cheeky “thank you f00!, lol” mail. Bet he wasn’t laughing when his ISP reported the hack to the cops—can’t wait for the papers tomorrow!”

Hack Attacks

Hack Attacks

Ever been tongue-tied thinking up explanations for why your PC has been brought to its knees? Here’s a favourite excuse/genuine reason: it’s been hacked! But how? What kind of attack is it? Were there swords involved? Take your pick:

DDoS: A Distributed Denial of Service attack is carried out by flooding servers with data till they’re crippled and can’t service genuine requests. A popular method is the dreaded Ping of Death—pinging a server repeatedly from different sources. Most Web sites are still quite vulnerable to this type of attack, and it’s a general avourite among those with malicious intent.

Trojan Horse: A program that comes disguised as something harmless, even useful, but really opens up access to a computer, making it a participant in a DDoS attack, or making it possible to use it to attack other computers.

Worm: True to their biological counterparts, worms keep consuming system resources, slowly overloading the system and finally causing it to cease functioning.

SQL Injection: Nothing like a flu shot, this is a technique whereby SQL commands are passed through a Web application so they get executed by a backend database. One of the most common application-layer attacks currently being used. To be able to perform SQL Injection hacking, all the attacker needs is a browser and some guesswork to figure table and field names.

Cross-Site Scripting: Called XSS or CSS, this is a security exploit in which the attacker inserts malicious code into any link that appears to be from a trustworthy source. When you click on the link, the embedded code is submitted as part of your Web request and can execute on your computer, possibly (and usually) allowing the attacker to steal information.

GPS

GPS

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. People mainly use it in their cars for navigation—the GPS satellite system can pinpoint where you are on the globe. The system was initially designed for, and is operated by, the US military. To pretend you know all about the system, say all the following without batting an eyelid.

• “It’s all about satellites and offsets, you know! Four satellite signals compute your position in three dimensions and the time offset in the receiver clock.”
• “GPS is everywhere! Soon you will have GPS built into your smartphone and, you know, you’ll know whether I am in my bathroom or in my bedroom.” (This is not realistic, but remember you are bluffing!)
• “It’s a wonderful thought, all those satellites out there monitoring where I am. The GPS Operational Constellation has 24 satellites orbiting Earth every 12 hours. The orbit altitude of those satellites is crazy! And with all those orbital planes equally spaced—60 degrees apart… in fact, they’re inclined at about 55 degrees with respect to the equatorial plane.” (You’re got to speak fast when you’re saying this. Make sure you say the keywords—“orbital planes” and so on—loudly.)
• When someone asks you how it’s all controlled, say with a wave of the hand, “It’s all from Colorado. The Schriever Air Force Base is where it’s at.”
• Now if someone gets inquisitive and asks how it all works, you’ll need a good memory. Memorise the following: “Position is determined from multiple pseudo-range measurements at a single measurement epoch. The pseudo-range measurements are used together with SV position estimates based on the ephemeris data each SV sends. That’s how they figure out where you are.”

  Simple, eh?

Gaming

Gaming

Real-life heroes are few and far between, but in the gaming world, anyone can be a one. But how do you sound like one?

Listen to Our Hero’s story: He sauntered into the dark and sinister-looking dungeon with the nonchalance of a two-year old who couldn’t have known better. Not surprisingly, he soon found himself Fragged—finished by the enemy, leaving him a useless, lifeless lump of virtual human flesh. This was no ordinary enemy, either—it was a dreaded Camper, who springs out of the underbrush and tags his unsuspecting prey. Life isn’t a ball in the world of the First Person Shooter (FPS).

Retiring from the world of active warfare, our hero decides to build his army and enter the world of the Realtime Strategy (RTS) Game, commandeering his forces to wreak havoc on his enemies’ bases, while he looks upon them from a safe location.

Every once in a while, though, The Itch strikes, and he wants to feel the heat of battle once again—but not without his forces. So, in the Tactical FPS, he gets to kill some bad guys himself, and also seek his team’s help in tight spots.

For an “out of body” experience, he turns to the Role Playing Game (RPG), putting himself in some one else’s shoes. He will now fight evil, or embark upon an Adventure Game, full of cryptic clues and mythical monsters and other such hindrances to progress.

Not content with interacting with artificiallyintelligent bots , Our Hero decides to go online and take on the world of the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG, where he can interact and with other players from all over the world, brought together as a huge online civilisation.

And if boredom sets in, there is always the joy of the Arcade Racer—there are few things more fun than spreading a few hundred thousand dollars worth of car all over the landscape.

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver

How do you manage to look intelligent when someone throws Dreamweaver jargon at you? Here’s a very brief primer.

“Add an image swap behaviour…”

Just remember that anytime a user mouses over a menu item and the item gets highlighted, that’s an “image swap”; and a “behaviour” is jargon for JavaScript codes that can be built into a document. It’s “a combination of an event and an action”. “Behaviour” is a term you’ll come across pretty often.

“CSS Styles…”

You’re bound to hear that from anyone who’s building a Web site. All you need to remember is, “The W3C-approved method for presenting and positioning objects in a Web page is using cascading style sheets (CSS). Dreamweaver makes it easy to define styles.”

“Layers…”

When someone mentions layers, you’ll know what they’re talking about if you remember this: “Dreamweaver uses DHTML to make layers. DHTML is a scripting language that allows HTML to change even after a page has been loaded into a browser.” Of course, you’ve also got to remember that layers are a little bit like containers for stuff on the page. You can actually specify exact coordinates and some other stuff like hiding particular layers. You can have many layers on one page and hide each one until required.

“Just re-use that snippet…”

Reusing code pieces, also known as ‘snippets’, is supposed to be “a great way to save time.” And as for “bindings”, we don’t know what they are, so just rote-learn the following: “The Bindings tab of the Applications panel holds dynamic content in a safe place for you to easily access and bind as you build your documents.

For example, when you create a recordset, it will be listed under the Server Behaviors tab, and accessible under the Bindings tab. You will be able to bind recordset columns into your document.”

Digital Video

Digital Video

You’ve suddenly found yourself in a café in the Art District and have no clue how you got there—it happens to the best of us. You are bored for company and are wondering how to break into the group of digital video (DV) geeks in the corner.

“CMOS or CCD?” one of them asks after you exchange names. CCDs are Charge Coupled Devices, used for image sensing. The best digital cameras use 3-CCD arrangements to get top-quality video, and cost you half a kingdom. And CMOS (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) is a cheaper but slightly lower-quality approach to image sensing, but it’s getting better.

Just say, “Oh CCD, no doubt. No compromises on quality”, this will have them swooning at your discerning eye and bottomless wallet (Ahem!).

Regular video is interlaced —the image is divided into two sets of lines that are displayed alternately to fool the human eye into believing it’s seeing a high-quality image. Progressive Scanned video displays all these lines in sequence, storing five times as much information in the frame. The result is High Definition Video (HDV), where faster movements appear much crisper than in interlaced video.

Video usually runs at 24 frames per second (fps). Saying “I’m shooting my next with a 24P camera” means that your video will run at 24 fps and is progressively scanned, and roughly translates to “I’m a George Lucas in the making!’”

DV25 is the standard compression format for DV; an hour of DV25 video takes up about 13 GB of space and is the best possible quality outside of raw, uncompressed video. MPEG-2 is another compression format that started out as a format for distribution, but is now used in recording as well.

“Real Men don’t compress,” you scoff, leaving them burbling something about more video on the same tape while you beckon a cab to take you home.

Computers Through The Ages

Computers Through The Ages

Not much hair on your chin? Do people poke fun at you for never having braved the times of Windows 3.1? Here’s how to show them that even though you haven’t been there or done that, you still know more.

The Baby: On June 21, 1948, the University of Manchester made its first successful run of a computer program on the Small Scale Experimental Machine, affectionately called the Baby. It was the first machine that had the same basic set-up as the modern computer and could store both data and programs in memory.

The IBM 604: This was an electron-tube based computer that could read and process punch-cards. Its 2x2x1 m frame and a petite 640 kilo weight made it the first commercially available miniature electronic calculator. It ran at 50 KHz and was built out of 1600 vacuum triodes.

The ENIAC: Following the success of The Baby and its successor, the Mark I, researchers developed the ENIAC—the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer, which shattered the 2000-tube barrier with its 18,000 vacuum tubes in its 1800 square-foot cabinet. It could add, multiply and calculate square roots, though some claim its real agenda was to take over the world.

The Altair: In 1975, Popular Electronics magazine began selling the Altair as a kit. Based on the revolutionary Intel 8080A microprocessor, this monster could be picked up for $397 and required dedicated geek-time to be assembled and finally used. It had 256 bytes of memory, and was programmed in 0s and 1s by flipping switches on its front panel.

So the next time anyone mocks at you for not knowing computers, shoot a few classics at them.

Chipsets

Chipsets

If you ever hear a conversation involving Buses, Northbridges and Southbridges, and think that the speakers are having another boring chat about travel routes, look again. Do these “travellers” wear thick glasses and appear malnourished? If so, you seem to have stumbled upon a collectionof geeks, and they’re really having another boring chat about Motherboards and Chipsets. And to prevent your brain from shorting out, we present… a handy-dandy geekdecoder!

Chipset n.: The real definition is just “a collection of chips designed to act as one,” though it’s been corrupted to refer to the chipsets on a PC’s Motherboard. Note that true Geeks are fully aware of this.

Usage: “Well, I’ve got an nForce for my Motherboard, a GeForce for my Graphics, and an Audigy for sound. Which one did you want to know about? Front Side Bus n.: Like a real bus, it’s a way for data to travel around the motherboard—a connection between two components.

Northbridge n.: An Intel Chipset that talks to the CPU and Memory at really high speeds via ‘lanes’ (different paths for different data) on the FSB.

Recommended Geek Joke: “Let’s take a Bus down Memory Lane.”

Southbridge n.: You guessed it… another Intel Chipset—this one talks to the other, lesser devices on the motherboard—the USB ports, power management chips and so on. To speak to the, it needs to go through the Northbridge first.

HyperTransport n.: A superfast means of transporting data on motherboards, used by AMD Processors. It can let the processor talk to the memory and other devices without any chipsets in between.

Usage: “So do you think HyperTransport will kill the Northbridge?” (Note: Use with caution near Intel fanatics)

Chip Fabbing

Chip Fabbing

If you have a one-track mind that thinks chips and wafers are only about food, think again. There’s a lot of jargon you’ve probably heard every day that applies to the manufacture of chips (the silicon kind you put in gadgets), too.

Fab: 1. v. To “fabricate” chips once they’ve been designed. E.g. “These designs are ready to be fabbed.” (also see foundry). 2. n. The production system itself—“Did you hear about AMD’s new fab line in <insert city name here>?”

Note: Should never be interpreted as “fabulous.”

65nm n. : The latest chip manufacturing process. The name means that the transistors on the chip are 65 nanometres (a billionth of a metre) wide. For reference, your hair is about 80,000 nanometres thick.

Nanoacre n. : An area about 2 square millimetres on a chip design—the smallest acre. Really, though, a nanoacre can cost as much as an acre of land if you factor in all the expenses. Foundry n. : The company that does the fabbing. Few chip design companies have their own foundries—these facilities eat up billions of dollars just by existing.

Wafer n. : What results when you cut up a silicon crystal into thin slices. Chips are built on wafers. Note: These wafers are inedible, and perhaps even toxic.

Doping v. : The process of adding silicon to make it conduct electrons better—in its pure form, silicon is about as useful as the sand it’s made from. So if you hear someone talking about “doping silicon,” the connotation isn’t as negative as it might seem. And now, the best way to explain away a chip malfunction:

Magic Smoke n. : A supposedly magical blue smoke that is present inside all chips and keeps them from going “poof!”. E.g. “It failed? All right, WHO let out the magic smoke?”

Apple Mac OS X Tiger

Apple Mac OS X Tiger

There are operating systems and then there’s Tiger. In its latest avatar, Mac OS X is faster, better and as graphically appealing as ever. Chances are, though, that you’ve never used it. There are times when you want to stand out of the crowd and throw jargon, but with a Mac, it isn’t straightforward. But that’s what we’re here for!

Tiger includes a lot of new additions such as Widgets and the Spotlight. Spotlight is the lightning-fast search technology that displays results as fast as you can type them! You can search everything on your system—files, e-mails, contacts, images, movies, calendars, and even applications. Just say “I’m throwing the spotlight on some files” when you want to talk about searching your desktop!

The new Dashboard (a.k.a. Expose) hosts a ton of miniapplications called Widgets, which appear instantly and keep you up-to-date with information from the Net. View stocks, check weather forecasts, track flights, convert currencies, even look up businesses in the phone book. Think of it as the inbuilt Google Deskbar. Usage: “Let me check the Dashboard for the latest price of Digit stock”. Of course, there is no Digit stock—so substitute for that wisely!

And since we’ll be bluffing anyway, remember that the Mac OSes are built around the UNIX platform. Here’s some worthwhile info you could pass along as you make small talk: “Under the hood, the easy-touse interface and rich graphics are powered by Darwin, an open source, UNIX-based foundation built on technologies such as Mach and FreeBSD.”

Also, Tiger has significantly improved support for dualprocessor performance when reading and writing files to disk and when using Mac OS X with NFS file servers.

A suggestion: memorise!