Intro to Hacking – Real Hacker Stories Are Even Better than the Movies

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This is the first post in the Intro to Hacking series. In future posts I will go into technically how hacking works and how you can protect yourself, but first I’ll whet your appetite with some interesting stories.

Hacking is a broadly defined word with so many different meanings: writing clever computer code, creating an ugly yet effective solution, finding a shortcut, playing a practical joke, or the act of breaking into a computer. Guess which one I am interested in? Well I guess I’m interested in all of them, but I will be writing about breaking into computers. This subject is chock-full of incredibly entertaining stories and interesting things to learn.

There are a zillion different types of hackers. Some are good guys (white hat), some are bad guys (black hat), some it’s even hard to tell (grey hat). Some know only one way to hack and some are computer wizards who seemingly have no barriers holding them back (1337). And some technically know very little about computers and instead rely on tools built by others (script kiddies).

AIM Punters
I remember my first introduction to this world. The year was 1996 and I was finally online. America Online. AOL. And the best part about AOL was the ability to chat instantly with friends or strangers thousands of miles away. Oh the possibilities!

What does this have to do with hacking? Back in the early days of AIM (AOL instant messenger) the program wasn’t exactly robust. There were tools called punters (or IM-bombs) that exploited these weaknesses – you could use them to kick another user off AIM or even make their entire computer crash (they worked by sending HTML code or tons of invalid characters that would cause the other person’s computer to explode like the fembots in Austin Powers when he touches himself). Did I have any idea how it worked? No, and that’s the best part! The barrier was so low – all you had to do was download a program and you had incredible power over your buddies (or strangers). These AOL punters were a likely starting place for many script kiddies.

Anonymous
The motivation for this post was a hack that was recently in the news. It was so bad ass I felt compelled to share it with a larger audience. Keep reading…

Forget Bottled Water, Boxed Water is the Future

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This is one of those ideas that just makes you wonder, why didn’t I think of that? Everyone knows bottled water is horrible for the environment, yet that doesn’t stop people from buying it. It’s just so darn convenient to grab a bottle on the go or from a vending machine. And then there is the extreme – the primadonas that refuse to ever drink tap water. With such a diverse marketplace, it sells even without sex.

Let me introduce you to BOXED water. Boxed water solves many of the problems of bottled water. The boxes are made from a renewable resource, ship flat to the filler, ship more efficiently when full, and are recyclable. To top things off, 10% of the company’s profit is donated to water supply charities and another 10% to reforestation foundations. Not too shabby.

Yes, drinking tap water is still better for the environment, but this is a pretty good solution to sate the world’s incredible demand for premium water on the go. What do you think?
 

 
For some reason they still haven’t started selling boxed water in the hippie capital of the United States, the San Francisco Bay Area. It could be fun to help the company launch and promote here and I’m sure they could use the help.
 
Embarrassing story alert: I found out about boxed water from a Hillary Duff celebrity tabloid photo. I guess I saw a link about her new tattoo and had to click it (wouldn’t you?). But then the nerd in me quickly got interested in boxed water …

Secret Recipes Revealed – Does it Matter?

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There has been a lot of buzz recently around the possibility that Coke’s secret formula has finally been revealed to the public. Is it true? Does it matter?

Did you know only two Coca-Cola executives are allowed to know the recipe for creating the sugary syrup that goes into Coke? And that those two execs aren’t allowed to fly on the same plane for fear that it may crash and the formula will be lost forever?

But don’t think Coca-Cola is unique. There are similar stories for Dr. Pepper’s 23 flavors, KFC’s blend of 11 herbs and spices, and many others. Did you know KFC’s 11 herbs and spices are mixed at two different locations and then combined at a third so that the mixers don’t learn the formula?

Does it actually matter? I love all the secrecy, but I hate to break it to you, Coke isn’t successful because of their product. It’s their brand. It’s their advertising. It’s the memories.

And Coke knows this. All the secrecy is good publicity, so they aren’t about to publish the formula in the New York Times. But they know their true assets. As any good product manager knows, it is not all about the product.
 

 
This all reminds me of when one of my friends worked at a cookie store in town with a top secret cookie recipe that yielded the most delicious cookies of all time. When he was quitting, we asked him for the recipe. He said, “No problem, I have it memorized. 2 pounds of butter …” We didn’t have that much butter so we lost interest.
 
It turns out Coke has another secret weapon up its sleeve: one of the ingredients is illegal in the United States, unless you’re Coca-Cola. That’s right, one of the ingredients is fluid extract of coca, taken from coca leaves that have had all the cocaine removed. The DEA currently only allows one plant in New Jersey to import these leaves and I bet you can guess the company with whom they have formed an exclusive deal.
 
Sources:
  • Snopes.com on the Coke secret formula
  • ABC news on the possibility of the formula recently released. Check out the second page for other food industry secrets and rumors.

Photo: Morgan

Fan Fiction is Fascinating, But What About Fan Non-Fiction?

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Fan fiction is an absolutely fascinating cultural phenomenon. These are the people that sit down and write anywhere from a chapter to multiple books in the world crafted by an existing fictional work. When they can make any world they can possibly imagine, why would they limit themselves to a world they previously read about? Sure, I can understand how a few people could be into this, there are some ridiculous hobbies out there. But it is much bigger than that. Way bigger. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Harry Potter is by far the most popular book world for extension into fan fiction and fanfiction.net is the most popular site for “authors” to post their stories. So let’s check out their HP section. There are over a half million stories in over 20 languages! But taking a closer look, many of these are not short stories involving a character or two. They are full on books even longer than the original Harry Potter books!

There are 1,084,170 words in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling spread over 7 books. If we define a book as over 100,000 words (similar in size to the first couple HP books), there are over 4,000 on fanfiction.net in English alone! And 62 of those are longer than half of the entire series. Can’t get enough Harry Potter? Don’t worry, there’s plenty more out there for you to check out.

What else is fascinating? Most authors of fan fiction release chapters as they write them. I am intrigued by this way of releasing written material – in yesteryear this is how most fiction was done. Ok, maybe not as it was written, but released by chapter. For example, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens was originally published in 36 weekly installments. Only a year later was it condensed into three books. Publishers take note: this could target a larger market – anyone and everyone can read a chapter a week but a full book seems so daunting. Oh, and it gives you the opportunity to earn more money from the biggest fans. In order to get the book ahead of everyone else, you have to buy it in 36 parts that will cost more than if you just waited a year. Brilliant!

Keep reading…

Recursion Like You’ve Never Seen Before

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One of the first novel ideas you learn in computer programming is the concept of recursion: functions that call themselves. It is a new idea to most and extremely powerful in the world of computers. It is also the point in the programming class where you figure out if you “get it” or if you should just stop now.

So let me explain the basic idea to those who don’t think in terms of functions or methods, or even know what they are. It is all about dividing a problem into a set of smaller problems. Imagine you are at the end of the line for Splash Mountain at Disneyland and they come tell you they need everyone’s phone number to give them a free ticket on a Disney cruise. But you don’t know everyone’s phone number! In fact, you can’t even see to the front of the line. How do you solve the problem?

You break it up into a smaller problem of course. You know your phone number right? And you know how to tell the person in front of you to do the same (smaller problem because that person has one less phone number (yours) they are responsible for). And if you do that enough times, pretty soon you are at the front of the line. Easy.

Keep reading…

Is the Internet Actually a Playground?

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It’s no secret that I love the internet. If forced to, I could keep myself entertained for weeks, maybe even months, just poking around and seeing everything that is out there. (Un)fortunately I have friends that keep this from becoming a reality.

What is it that I love about the internet? Well first there is the information. I’m pretty nerdy when it comes to learning outside of the school environment about the things I want to learn. I think there is something out there for everyone – every single subject you can imagine from academic to silly to somewhere in between. From text to videos to audio.

What else do I love? The internet is a playground for mischief! Can’t keep a straight face when making your crank calls? No problem, try your luck on the internet. My favorite is the 7 legged spider email correspondence. Even if you don’t participate, you can check out all the different ways people are creating a disruption on the web. Obama’s internet IDs idea better not bring this to an end.

Are you creative? How would you like to create money out of thin air? There are numerous examples of people doing one simple, creative thing on the internet and making boatloads of money off of it. My favorite example is the Million Dollar Homepage – a 21 year old decided to pay for his college (and a whole lot more) by selling 1 million pixels of advertising at a dollar a pixel. It peaked at the 127th most popular website on the internet and in half a year brought in a million dollars for a pittance of effort. Check out the Wikipedia page and FAQ for some more background.

Your brilliant idea might not be too far away. Clay Shirky’s book Cognitive Surplus is chalk full of interesting ways that the internet is changing the world both socially and economically. Clay is the go to guy for anything internet related – his essays are oozing with ideas and opportunities on the web.

I must conclude that the internet is a playground. But it is also the classroom. It is also the teacher’s lounge, bulletin board, club meeting space, and gymnasium. And it is absolutely a work environment. If I had to sum it up, I’d call it a social experiment – here is this brand new way of communication continuously being reinvented. Really it’s just about anything you want it to be.
 

 
The “somewhere in between” link above is highly recommended. In fact, check out all the Drunk History videos. And looking for a way to contribute to Wikipedia? Believe it or not, there isn’t a Wikipedia page for Drunk History yet!
 

Photo: Vincent Lock

The Difference Between Politicians and Pundits

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I don’t follow politics closely at all. It’s just not a passion of mine. But I do get all riled up when people are idiots and confuse politicians with political pundits. Politicians should be held to a higher standard, they have the difficult job of making unpopular decisions and compromises for the sake of progress. Pundits are there to discuss the work (or potential work) of politicians, nothing more. Please don’t tell me your favorite pundit would make a great politician – sure they can talk, but can they actually solve any problems? Oh, and once you decide to be a pundit you shouldn’t go back to office.

I have no problem with a politician like John McCain – I believe he is attempting to make the United States a better place. Sure he does it by playing hard partisan politics (not supporting any Democratic initiatives), but it’s so that when the Republican party is in office the “real” progress can be made. He is such a team player that he puts Republican party official stance ahead of his own beliefs (whatever they are) by flip-flopping whenever it will help the party.

But then you have a guy like Glenn Beck, popular Fox News pundit, heralded by the conservative media and a huge Tea Party advocate. He is a troublemaker. That is his goal (no he is not stupid). It’s pretty obvious. In fact, he is even quoted in Forbes saying as much: Keep reading…

Disjointed Things You May or May Not Enjoy

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I don’t have any coherent thoughts to share with you today, so I thought I would go with two completely disjointed things that I enjoyed in the last week.

The first is one of my favorite paragraphs I have read in a while (mainly because there are so many links). From a TechCrunch article about how the startup Tagged underwent a major pivot:

First, some context. We’re not at all unique. Many successful startups go through some form of pivot, changing their direction when their first idea was not successful. PayPal was beaming money between Palm Pilots. YouTube was a video dating site. Twitter was group SMS, which came out of a struggling Odeo. Pandora started as a B2B music recommendation service. Groupon started as The Point, serving collective political action. The list goes on.

And a silly math video. Check it out if you like word problems that make no sense, videos designed to look older than they are, or even just dry humor.

Why Did a Google Engineer Get 6 Million Dollars for Keeping Her Job?

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A couple months ago there were reports of absolutely absurd bidding wars taking place between Google and Facebook for the top engineering talent in the valley. How absurd? Millions. And we aren’t talking about high level executives here. Just mid-level staff engineers that happen to be good at what they do. When Facebook came calling for their services Google refused to be outbid – the two biggest engineer payouts leaked were $3.5 and $6 million in stock from Google. Wow!

And the best part about it? Facebook didn’t have to offer them $6 million. Just the idea that Facebook stock would be worth obscene amounts of money when there is an IPO. All it would take is a fairly standard offer of 1/20th of a percent of equity, which could/should be worth tens of millions is just a couple years. That’s all it takes to make Google pay out the wazoo.

This begs the question: what could these engineers possibly do that makes them so valuable? And for Facebook – what are they doing that they think they need to lure these engineers away from Google? At first glance Google is the company that really needs the top tier engineering talent, what with their secretive search technology, complex advertisement algorithms, and cars that drive themselves. Plenty of challenge for the best engineers. But Facebook? They just have one thing: a website that is already way too cluttered. How hard could it be? Haven’t they already done the hard part? Couldn’t they get by with paying way less for someone else?

Keep reading …

Crunching the Data of Your Measured Life

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heatmap

One of the first Pedantic Posts was about recording various data about your habits in the hopes of finding trends and improving your life. After hours of research, I ultimately decided that I didn’t want to record every aspect of my life. Sure there are tools that make this record keeping easier, but you still have to think about it. It is way too OCD to voluntarily start.

Today I bring the news that there have been great advancements in this field over the last 8 months. The most obvious gain is the ability to track certain activities passively – you just go about your life as you normally would and data is gathered automatically. This might not always be a good thing, but there is also a trend emerging to make this data more accessible to you. And since you have access to your data, numerous tools are popping up to help guide your analysis.

Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter have an incredible amount of interesting information about your life and they are now willing to let you use it. It is yours to keep (and share). But you don’t want to have to scroll through hundreds of tweets over the last few months. Rather, you want to see how they trend over time and splice the data any which way suits your fancy. Well now you can.

A recent Wall Street Journal blog post by Zach Seward opened my eyes to the possibilities. The author didn’t record any data on purpose – applications he was already using had plenty of data about him – Foursquare, Mint, iTunes, Last.fm, Google Earth, Google web history, and Twitter. All he had to do was use some third party tools to graph and analyze the data.

The results are astounding – a heat-map of where he spends his time (above), graphs of his temporary addictions to certain bands, how his music taste trends compared to other users, various graphs that show his most productive computer time and even his decline as an email potty mouth over the last two years. And these are just some of the possibilities.

What is next? It is still slightly too difficult for the general population to take advantage of this – most people don’t want to pull together various tools like Graph Your Inbox or Where Do You Go. But it will only get easier. Will your 2013 Foursquare heatmap become a lazy-man’s scrapbook that you can readily share and take with you anywhere? Only time will tell …

It is also a possibility that people will oppose having their data tracked automatically and actually do something about it. In other words stop using Google! Blasphemy, I know. Check out this “illustrated guide” as to why all this automatic tracking is bad.
 

Photo: Zach Seward of the Wall Street Journal with the help of Foursquare, Google Maps, and Where Do You Go