Fandom High School

Once again, class was in the computer lab and Riley was at the front of the room, tapping away on his laptop while he waited for everyone to settle down. When it was time for class to start, he got up and got right to it.

"Today, we're gonna work on spoofing attacks," Riley started. "It's basically what it says on the tin, right there. A spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage. In simpler terms, it means that the hacker poses as a legitimate site or person or anything and successfully lures the victim into believing it. Once the victim is lured in, the hacker either now has access to their system or might have even convinced the poor victim to send them money. Ever heard of those Nigerian email scams? That's similar to a spoofing attack."

He hoped no one had fallen for one of those here because, yeah. Those didn't turn out fun in the end.

"Your task today is to work up something that might fool the layman in terms of spoofing. Whether it be a website that you can convince someone to visit and log into so you now have all their information or an email that someone downloads and attachment from and the attachment's really a rootkit which means you're into their system or anything else. I'm going to pass out some more information on spoofing attacks and your computers are all set up with the tools you need to create whatever you might wanna create so it's really up to you. Just remember that it has to look like it's the real deal and it can't be kooky because while the savvy user will know to avoid, that's not who you're looking to lure in. Try to lure in the person who barely knows what social media is and thinks that the email saying they won ten thousand dollars for a contest they don't remember entering is a blessing. Go."

And Riley let them get to work.

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.

Today's class was back in the computer lab. When the students walked in, they'd see both the computers booted up with some possibly unrecognizable program going and they'd also see a long table of disassembled computers. Riley figured they had to start with the basics before they really got into hacking.

"Morning," he said, giving them all a little salute. "Hope you guys had a good weekend and a good holiday if you did celebrate. Today, we're going to really get into the meat of the class. To be a good hacker, you have to know a little bit about computers. So, that's what we're gonna spend today on. On the computers in front of you, you'll see a program that'll help you learn one of the basic languages of computing, Python. If you're gonna hack, you gotta know how a computer works. Python's a lot easier to learn than C and it doesn't take as long either. Python is intended to be a highly readable language. It is designed to have an uncluttered visual layout, frequently using English keywords where other languages use punctuation. That's what makes it easier to learn."

He paused for a second and moved over to the table of computer parts. "Second, we're all gonna be putting together computers. Yes, this might seem more suited to a class on mechanics but if you know the bits and pieces of a computer, it'll make you a better hacker. You'll be able to visualize what you're hacking and you'll know that not all computer is built the same. I've left instructions for each computer but I'll also be around to help you out with both learning the language and the assemblage of the computers. Let's get started."