Hacking 101; Monday; Period 2

[1stinkinpercent.livejournal.com]

Class was back in the computer lab once again and Riley was leaning against the wall at the front of the classroom. He waited till everyone got settled before he got his lecture started.

"Good morning, everyone," he said, nodding. "Glad to hear nothing weird happened this past weekend so let's get started, shall we? Last week we went over password cracking which is typically one of the easier forms of hacking into a system. But, when you start hacking, you'll find that most of the good stuff is hidden behind more than just some heavy duty passwords."

Riley booted up his own laptop and left it going for a minute. "Most of the time there'll be firewalls, networks, security programs, malware blockers, and sometimes there will be layers upon layers of things. So, you need to know how to bring certain things down or how to wiggle your way around them, right?"

Right. "Ever heard of a rootkit? Rootkits are nasty little things that basically can take over an operating system and are very hard to detect. Their installation is usually obscured and hard to remove. If a hacker is smart, this is what they'll try and make an unsuspecting victim download and install by going to an infected webpage or opening an infected email attachment. It gives the hacker a way into the system and can give them an in to install other forms of malware like keyloggers and other computer viruses. Your job today is to try and get into my system with a rootkit. I've gotten all your computers at least past some of my security but you'll have to crack a few passwords and then get a rootkit past my security software. Now, I've got some pretty stringent security software that's been specially designed to find and delete the most common places for rootkit installation so you're going to have to be both inventive and quick. Think you can do it?"

Riley smiled and gave them all quick instructions on how to build a rootkit, install one and how to properly use it to get the maximum amount of information without being detected by the computer's security software. And then he sent them on their merry way to try and get into his laptop.

7 Ways to Annoy Anakin Skywalker, Monday, Period 1

[demonbelthazor]

Bel had the class meet in the computer room this time around, since today's task was going to require access to the internet.

"Morning," he said cheerfully. He really did look forward to this class each week. He'd been bored recently, and annoying Anakin had just given him life (even if Phoebe strongly disapproved).

"Today's class is pretty simple," he said. "I've got these computers already logged into Amazon. Your job is to select a variety of hair care products, the more unusual the better, to send to Anakin's home. It's a peace offering, really."

No it wasn't.

"Just pick three or four items and put them in the cart. Don't even bother trying to pick something for yourself on the sly, because I'm gonna be reviewing these orders before they ship. Try it and you'll get detention, which will be in the Underworld, and nobody wants that." Admittedly, though, he'd've tried the same thing in their position.

"When you're done and I've reviewed the order, I'll place it to have it delivered to Anakin's house tomorrow morning before he leaves for work. That should put him in a great mood all day, don't you think?"