Introduction

This book is intended to teach skills that will be useful for breaking into computers. If that statement shocks you, then you probably aren't familiar with the legitimate reasons for hacking. These reasons can be security testing, consumer advocacy and civil rights, military interests, and "hacktivist" politics; however, in this book, we're just going to cover the techniques rather than the reasons.

The use of the word "hack" in the title of this book and throughout its pages is deliberate. We're aware that this word means several different things to different people, so we'll explain that in this chapter. We'll also explain how the book is organized and what you might expect for the skill levels necessary to understand the techniques we write about. This chapter will also take a look at what the current climate is in regards to hacking, reverse-engineering, copy protection, and the law. We wouldn't want to hand you a new toy without telling you about all the trouble you could get yourself into.

What We Mean by "Hack"

When I was a kid, the online world (as far as I knew) consisted of bulletin board systems (BBSs). On many a BBS, there were text files with a variation on the title of "How to Hack." Nearly all of these files were useless, containing advice like "try these default passwords," or "press Ctrl- C, and see if it will break out." Calling this chapter "How to Hack" is my perverse way of paying...