[wplug] RE:one more question for today

[Richard Farina]

This message sent MANY people on this list over the edge and very 
quickly.  I urge all of you to stop and think.

Hacking past a firewall that you have setup, is the single BEST way to find 
the flaws in your firewall setup so that you can adept it and make it 
better.  Hacking your web server is the best way to find the security holes 
that need to be patched.

Hacking someone else's firewall or webserver or anything, is the BEST way 
to get a long stay at a free hotel.

Steve is young, and I want him to know that I think he is going in the 
right direction, however, hacking into your cousin's boxes, even with his 
permission, may be against your ISP's TOS, and it may be against his ISP's 
TOS.  I suggest you learn on a private network.  For instance, if you have 
your cousin setup a web server for you at your home, then you can try to 
break into it without any trouble.

I personally volunteer my assistance in any way that I can help.  Careers 
in computer security need knowledgeable people, and with CERT here in 
pittsburgh, I wish you the best of luck to learn all that you can!

You can find me in #wplug on irc.freenode.net some of the time, and you 
will find that I respond well to direct emails.

To the rest of the list that exploded instead of helping a budding security 
professional:

Your irate responses were unnessesary and unwarrented.  Despite the fact 
that Steve said his cousin gave him permission to hack those boxes (and 
that action still may have been against the law) doesn't mean you need to 
flip out and ban someone from the list.  This was obviously an attempt to 
learn computer security and network forensics.  Help this young child learn 
what is right, and what is wrong.  Teach him so that he may lean and be 
better than the rest of us some day.

that, is all I have to say.

-Richard Farina aka Zero_Chaos



At 10:07 AM 2/22/2005, Steve Bierly wrote:
>     I am a teen and was told by my cousin to start
>programming now and gave me a few sites he wants me to
>try and hack into they are all his so I can't get in
>any trouble. He said to use linux red hat and set up a
>tower to be web server. And one to be a firewall. Then
>get a laptop with redhat on it and try hacking into my
>web page. i am learning shell and pearl but not really
>positive what to do. He said that I need to learn
>networking and to write and break firewalls anything
>else you can think of or anything wrong with this plan
>can you give me help.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Steve
>
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