HACKER’S MANUAL

Join our security expert Jonni Bidwell to learn the tricks and techniques used by hackers, and how to guard against them

THE 1995 MOVIE Hackers has a lot to answer for. Not only was there egregious product placement for a certain fizzy beverage with red and white branding, but it helped reinforce the notion that hacking was all good-looking edgy types breaking into computers and causing havoc.

Today that notion (along with the idea that an oversized black hoodie and Vfor

Vendetta mask are essential attire for this hacking) is fairly entrenched among the non-tech savvy, reinforced by unlikely movies and shoddy media reporting.

Readers of this fine publication ought not to buy into that. “Hacking” originally meant the breaking, modifying, and repurposing of technology so that it functions differently to how the manufacturer intended. Today, many programmers call themselves hackers, and only a small fraction of those are up to no good.

Be that as it may, we have been asked to write a feature on hacking, and we’re pretty sure they mean the bad kind. But please don’t go getting yourself into any trouble. Sure, here we’ll show you how to use Kali Linux, Metasploit, and other tools. We’ll show you the rudiments of SQL injection, buffer overflows, and other vulnerabilities. We’ll even show you how to exploit them. But we won’t show you how not to get caught. And if you do get caught, you could face serious charges, so don’t do any of this on systems that aren’t yours. These tools and techniques are used by legitimate penetration testers to find weaknesses and secure them, and that’s why we’re sharing them here.

Of course, not everyone is as scrupulous and there are plenty of amateur “how to hack” guides online. So we’ll show you how to trick those nefarious hackers and bots with a Raspberry Pi honeypot.