Hacking 101: the art of searching

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Hacker: A person who masters the inner workings of an OS and utilities in an effort to better understand them. A hacker is distinguished from a cracker in that a cracker attempts to exploit a network's vulnerabilities for malicious purposes. from Network+ Guide to Networks, fourth Edition from Thomson Course Technology. It is my college text book from several classes ago. Hacker: An enthusiastic computer programmer or user. This is the original meaning of the word hacker. A hacker is someone who enjoys learning and exploring computer and network systems, and consequently gains a deep understanding of the subject.Such people often go on to become systems programmers or administrators, website administrators, or system security consultants. Hackers such as these, because they spend most of their time pointing out and securing against system security holes, are sometimes referred to as white hat hackers. from A complete Hacker's Handbook by Dr.-K For a better understanding of hackers and their subculture: http://catb.org/jargon/ http://catb.org/jargon/html/introduction.html The first thing a potential hacker needs to know is how to find the information they need to learn how to do things. A hacker is by far very self sufficient. So you can't spend your whole life just asking other people how to do this or that. There are many research tools that the hacker should use, but we will focus on one of them that is internet searching. This is from Fravia's basic searching tutorials. Types of web searching Queries Single term query This query specifies only one term for retrieving all documents which contain the term. AND query This query specifies two or more terms for retrieving all documents which contain both terms. You can insert the and operator between terms or you can omit it and separate them by one or more spaces. OR query This query specifies two or more terms for retrieving documents containing either term. NOT query The query specifies two or more terms for retrieving all documents which contain a first term but doesn't contain the following terms. You insert not between the terms to do a not query. Grouping You can group queries by surrounding them by parentheses. The parentheses should be serparated by one or more spaces. ( Linux or Unix ) and Netscape not Windows Phrase searching You can search for a phrase which consists of two or more terms by surrounding them with double quotes "..." or with braces {...} Substring matching There are three types of substring matching searching. Prefix matching inter* Inside matching *text* Suffix matching *net Regular expressions You can use regular expressions for pattern matching. The regular expressions must be surrounded by slashes like /,,,/ Field-specified searching You can limit a search to specified fields. It is especially convenient for mail/news documents. +subject:linux (retrieves all documents which contain Linux in a subject: field) +subject:"GNU Emacs" (retrieves all documents which contain GNU Emacs in a subject: field) +from:foo@bar.jp (retrieves all documents which contain foo@bar.jp in a from: field) +message-id: (retrieving a certain document which contains specified message-Id) This is almost an exact replica of the information on fravia's web page: www.searchlores.org If you want more information go their. On the area of web searching it is good to do some preparatory planning. Come up with a written plan, make sure your query doesn't contain anything unnecessary, run test searches to see what you come up with so as to better be able to plan, go deep into the web by combing (combing is a search strategy where you search those that have already searched. Mylot is a great database to comb for online money making tools.) various sources (i.e. discussion forums, journals, books, articles, etc. what type of sources you use depend on what you are searching for.), find relevant unpublished or not widely distributed sources (This is very powerful, take something you would have to pay for at a bookstore or read from the library that you have never found anywhere else, and search for unpublished sources that contain the same information. You will find that many published information is stolen from unpublished sources.), review your written plan regularly to incorporate new things you have discovered along the way and try out things you have not tried just to be more sure you are not missing anything, try running your query in different languages (You will be amazed by what you can find in other cultures in other languages that you can not find in your own.), and Keep detailed records of all your search activities. Again this was taken from Fravia+ www.searchlores.org/welcome.htm Please ask many questions as it well help me learn as well as you! Hope you guys liked it and more will come later.