Hacker Handle

A text editor is where a script coder or hacker spends most of his time. Choosing one that we master and feel comfortable with is therefore a crucial factor affecting productivity and speed. A common mistake is made by new hackers: they find a text editor with a GUI and jump towards it because it's simple and similar to standard editors. This is a bad practice because they'll find only later that the capabilities of such editors are limited. It is recommended to start with a more advanced text editor since day one, even if this requires more effort, time and dedication to master. Today we'll talk about Vim, short for Vi Improved, a text editor that has earned the reputation of the most powerful editor out there. Vim, the friendly beast that scared newbies The very first thing we notice about Vim is that it doesn't have a GUI. Instead, it runs entirely in a terminal window. Add to this the lack of functionality for the mouse -- all interaction is done through the ke...

Perhaps the most important skill a hacker should master is programming. This is what makes the true difference between "hackers" and "script kiddies". The latter lacks the knowledge to write his own script: he rather uses programs made by others to attack his target. In contrast, a worthy hacker builds his own program tailored to his needs in order to exploit a specific vulnerability. Does that mean that a hacker never uses material written by others? Of course not. As most of the exploits (i.e. scripts that exploit a flaw) written by/for the Linux community are open-source, hackers often reverse-engineer these programs to understand how they work and potentially modify them to suit their own needs. What's more, when building his own script, a hacker very often integrates some tool from a fellow hacker. This is precisely how malware evolves on a daily basis: a programmer uses his know-how to combine multiple exploits in an effective way. Writing your firs...