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Insecure Education
TEACHING DEVIOUS PRACTICES
Experience is that computer hackers strive diligently, with patience not typical to any other
group, to understand, decompose, analyze, and defeat obstructions to their freedom. The
next few pages' scope the learning process available to anyone. There is a plethora of
documents and interactive tutorials on the INTERNET and BBS for anyone to browse,
download, study and attempt. One does not need to go to school to learn computer
programming, hardware manipulation or networked communications. One only needs
access, a computer, and a modem.
To begin, there are programs that they released in mid to late 1988 geared to teaching
programming to children ages 6-13. Two are well done introductory documents for all
ages. Once a novice has mastered these basics, he moves onto BASIC (Beginner's
All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a near English language a beginner usually
learns. There are Public Domain programs described as BASIC for Beginners, BASIC
made simple, Almost Painless structured BASIC, College-level intro to BASIC
programming, and an Explanation of PEEKS and POKES in BASIC, available to begin an
education. Couple these programs with Apple's BASICA or DOS' GWBASIC user's guide
and you will have the beginnings of a decent BASIC-language programmer. After three
months practice you are ready to go on to commercial packages such as TurboBasic ,
QuickBasic or Visual Basic. Pirated versions of commercial software are available on less
than honorable INTERNET and BBS nodes. They allow you to continue the education
process should you desire to be a BASIC professional.
[The two programs for teaching programming to children are 42,321 and 129,073 bytes
long, respectively, in .ZIP (compressed) format. They released the larger of the two five
months after the smaller one. The BASIC Tutorial programs are, in order, 71,938, 9,290,
19,257, 260,677, and 4,096 bytes long in .ZIP and .ARC format.]
After a novice has mastered BASIC, there are several other programming languages to
learn. You can find tutorials on "C," "C++," Pascal, Turbo Pascal, ADA, and VAX VMS
and assembly language. These tutorials are good-to-excellent introductory and
intermediate-level learning packages. In a short amount of time, a novice can become
proficient in creating program instructions using these languages. Any individual can easily
copy examples of other people's programming code to help his education. Unlike Latin
that lost its vocal characteristics over time these languages and their style samples are
forever. The American Government is an excellent source of free or at cost knowledge.
Service schools will often give single copies away of non-classified technical manuals. The
GPO is a vast disorganized source. Our congressional representatives oblige us within
reason. Democracy can sometimes be its own worse enemy. The next logical step in
one's programming education is to go on to the operating system, in this example,
PC/MS-DOS. Understand the operating system can as easily be OS/2, UNIX or any
available. DOD uses 31 different operating systems.
[There are four "C" tutorials to choose from:
???????? .ZIP 244,735 bytes long in two .ZIP files
???????? .ZIP 191,605 bytes long in three .ZIP files
???????? .ARC 116,351 bytes long in one .ARC file
???????? .ZIP 119,680 bytes long in one .ZIP file
For PASCAL:
A PASCAL Tutorial 179,360 bytes long in two .ZIP files
A Turbo PASCAL Tutorial 201,811 bytes long in one .ZIP file
For ADA:
A Tutorial 259,072 bytes long in one .ARC file
For Assembly Language:
A Tutorial 38,912 bytes long in one .ARC file]
There are dozens of DOS tutorials available. There are also "specialty" learning
programs for specific aspects of DOS. Programs such as "Learn all you have ever wanted
to know about DEBUG.COM","Full description and use of ANSI.SYS, an ANSI Tutorial","a
Discussion and examples of DOS filters", and "Create device drivers." There are also
references manuals to download. The Complete Programmers Reference to MS-DOS,
The Complete DOS Technical Reference Manual, and a Programming Technical
Reference Manual are available for download and use. These programs, and other similar
to them, will have our novice computer programmer flying through PC/MS-DOS and
interfacing his programming skills with his operating system to get full use of his
computer system.
[The programs mentioned above are, respectively (ZIP size): 15,692, 16,256, 13,773,
24,448, and 10,240. The references are 198,751, 206,357, and 202,547.]
If our new computer programmer/user became bogged down by a problem, or has
questions, there are Special Interest Groups and Chat conferences on all the
programming languages, operating systems, and hardware. In effect, a novice has
access to hundreds of willing "teachers" and experts. This resource helps him when he
moves onto other programming languages that do not have tutorials. These include
compilers for COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), Modula 2, LISP, and
PROLOG. All compilers come with documentation and most with examples. Any
unanswered questions will be answered by his hundreds of willing "teachers."
[The compilers are:
COBOL 57,896 in .ZIP format
Modula2 286,720 in .ZIP format in 3 files
LISP 155,012 in .ZIP format
PROLOG 120,148 in .ZIP format
ADA 50,075 in .ARC format]
Compilers, translators, etc. exist for other programming languages as well. Rather than
develop a book I have foregone detail explanations for FORTRAN, SNOBAL, PL/1, RPGII,
etc. Additionally specific machine oriented languages such as NEAT/3 for NCR or the
TI990 or HP3000 are available and tutorials can be found.
At this point, our novice computer programmer realizes that there are many people who
know more than he does about programming. So, he downloads translation utilities to
decompile executable code and/or translate executable code (.EXE or .COM files) into
BASIC or ASSEMBLY languages to see how others put together their programs. This is
our novice computer programmer's first, or probably second, forays into STEALING.
I say "probably second . . . " because he has probably downloaded shareware programs
that he continues to use without sending the requested payment to the author. As for
the "stealing" aspect . . . Our NCP (Novice Computer Programmer) will begin his ethical
slide into hacking by copying coded routines and subroutines from other programs and
using them himself without giving credit to the originator. After he has gotten the hang of
this, he will usually begin to steal ideas because he feels he can do the programs,
subroutines, etc. better on his own using the programming language where he feels most
comfortable. Stealing reduces work (code writing) since he can download (and improve
upon) code using language translators stolen from INTERNET or BBS. Our NCP can
translate or decompile executable code into BASIC; from BASIC to FORTRAN, C,
PASCAL, or ASSEMBLER, from C to PASCAL and back. He can move from PASCAL to
dBase III programming language and back, and from ASSEMBLER to ADA (see diagram
1) He can then recompile modified programs and call them his own. This is a small step
away from PIRACY of commercial packages that our NCP cannot afford to purchase.
***********************************************************************************************
DIAGRAM 1: Translation Map
DB III
I COBOL
I I
PASCAL I
-------------I---------ASSEMBLER-----ADA
I I
"C" EXECUTABLE CODE
I I
---------- BASIC------------
I I
FORTRAN---------------------- I--------BINARY FILES
I I
ASCII-------------
****************************************************************************************************
Translators:
SIZE Creation Description
Date
BASIC: 36,864 ? Convert BASIC programs to C
35,584 1-1-85 Convert BASIC programs to FORTRAN
2,947 3-15-88 Convert .COM files to .BAS files
2,089 3-16-88 Convert binary files to BASIC
3,026 3-15-88 Translate QBASIC to TurboBASIC
41,240 7-7-87 Convert COM/EXE files to BASIC
3,283 3-15-88 Reads binary and converts to ASCII
32,124 3-16-89 Convert BASIC to "C"
33,006 11-12-88 Convert BASIC to QBASIC
46,967 12-16-88 Convert PC/GWBASIC to structured BASIC
PASCAL: 78,928 9-26-88 Translate Turbo PASCAL to "C"
38,979 5-26-87 Convert PASCAL to "C" v1.4
9,460 6-1-86 Read/write dbase files in Turbo PASCAL
15,675 2-13-87 DbaseIII- create T/Pascal source from DBF
24,692 2-7-88 Disassemble PASCAL source
82,815 11-17-88 Turbo PASCAL to "C" Converter
44,919 11-17-88 Turbo PASCAL to "C" Converter -test cases
C: 12,288 2-26-88 C to PASCAL source translator
9,216 2-1-87 C to PASCAL translator
117,373 1-4-89 68000 C compiler (Apple)
ASSEM 3,439 3-15-88 Link ASM programs to QBASIC
BLER: 149,055 3-15-88 ASM subroutines from BASIC
48,128 7-31-88 Convert MASM to A86
22,528 3-21-88 Convert .COM & .EXE files to ASM
26,624 4-1-88 Convert .COM & .EXE files to ASM
26,368 9-12-87 Disassembler of .COM files
2,703 9-6-88 How to raise ADA exceptions from ASM
65,522 5-1-87 80X8X Cross Assembler
OTHER: 6,832 4-4-88 Convert .TXT to .COM file
4,820 3-11-88 Convert HEX to binary and back
29,141 9-7-88 Un-compile .COM programs
In his search for language translators/decompilers, our NCP will also find translators and
emulators for other machines and hardware architectures. He will find emulators for
VT100, VT102, VT200 and the IBM 3270. He will find programs to allow him to read CP/M
(a pre-DOS DOS), AppleDOS, and replace some of his MS/PC-DOS commands with UNIX
or UNIX-like commands. He will also find programs to write and run assembly language
programs for the 8080 microprocessor and Z80 assembler for the IBM mainframes (see
diagram 2). All this new found knowledge and ability will pique his interest in
communications (if his affection for his modem and on-line BBS's already did not).
Curiosity will fuel an increasing desire to learn and know more about all aspects of
computing. This becomes an insatiable appetite to have and do "it all" in the computing
world. He has become a hacker.
****************************************************************
DIAGRAM 2:
VT100
Commercial Board COMMODORE 64 VT200
Products I I
I I
ATARI 8086---8088---80286---80386---80486---80586
I 8085--- MS-DOS ---VM/370
I NEC20--NEC30--NEC40
MACINTOSH I I I I
I I I I
8080 Z80 I 6502
(CP/M) I I
COMMODORE AMIGA I I
I UNIX I
I (GENERIC) I
MS-DOS 68000
I
I
680XX
*************************************************************
Size Creation Description
Date
1,004 3-1-89 VT-100 Emulation (DEC)
803 3-1-89 VT-100 Emulation (DEC)
4,084 3-1-89 VT-100 Emulation (DEC)
10,496 10-6-87 Reads IBM disks on Commodore 1571 drive
11,264 12-10-87 Read CP/M disks on a PC in DOS
179,840 10-24-86 Z80 emulator for the PC
48,402 1-3-89 CP/M emulator to run under DOS
2,048 6-6-88 Fool DOS! run CP/M under any version
106,932 12-9-88 VT-200 Terminal package (DEC)
3,133 3-17-89 Convert IBM BASIC files to APPLE & vice versa
122,368 1-11-89 Make IBM 370 ASM run on your PC
25,600 4-11-88 PC370 assembler compiler v4.2 disk CP
115,712 4-11-88 PC370 assembler compiler v4.2 disk DE
84,992 4-11-88 PC370 assembler compiler v4.2 disk LB
156,672 4-11-88 PC370 assembler compiler v4.2 disk R4
6,175 2-13-88 Run 8080 programs on the NEC V20
65,522 5-1-87 8080 Cross Assembler
190,169 1-29-89 Converts CP/M to/from DOS diskettes v1.24
95,121 1-5-89 UNIX-like CURSES for the PC
16,896 12-18-88 UNIX CP recursive + options
208,384 4-19-88 UNIX-like commands in DOS
159,360 2-26-88 UNIX shell archives for MS-DOS
50,688 12-24-88 UNIX front-end for DOS
14,464 10-13-88 UNIX CP (copy) command recursive
14,208 1-26-89 UNIX LS (directory) command recursive
11,776 10-13-88 UNIX RM (remove) command recursive
226,816 1-3-89 Complete UNIX Utilities (part 1, A-C)
190,720 1-4-89 Complete UNIX Utilities (Part 2, D-F)
236,928 1-5-89 Complete UNIX Utilities (Part 3, G-R)
296,704 1-24-89 Complete UNIX Utilities (Part 4, S-V)
There are tutorials on comm-ports and RS232, guides to build your own RS232 adapters
and cables, and explanations of file transfer protocols. There are other text files on radar
detectors, how to build your own HBO converter, where to aim your satellite dish to
receive whatever, even a tutorial on EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse). Hence does our
NCP begin his descent into Super Hackerdom.
11,827 2-22-89 Tutorial on EMP
12,602 3-3-89 Info on Radar detectors
67,378 8-9-88 Tutorial on COMM-PORTS
35,976 9-13-87 Explanation of 3 file transfer protocols
12,288 6-15-87 Build cables with this info
2,048 2-9-89 Build your own HBO converter
1,024 7-12-86 Build your own null modem
106,496 3-3-88 RS232 Tutorial
6,400 10-19-88 How to build RS232 adapters
59,392 5-28-88 Easy-to-use flowcharts
160,214 4-25-88 Several serial port tools; display & debug
8,059 7-4-88 Satellite Aimer for MS-DOS
The universe of knowledge available to those willing and wanting to learn is impressive.
Another area to be considered is documentation that teaches telephone hacking, code
hacking, and password hacking. The release of Mr. Morris' passwords has caused
their inclusion into automated telephone hacking software such as Thief, AIO, Hacker
Deluxe, and (I'm just a) Fuck'in Hacker. Sobczak has studied the available systems that
simplify the training of hackers. Had we the need, we could mix and match to create a
modified monster combination telephone number/password/ID code hacking system. A
sample of the representation of code Hackers gives you a perception of how easy it is
to follow the instructions and learn by doing. We have now created a telephone phreaker.
In summary, knowledge is a precious resource to which the hacker has access. Those
responsible for national security are at risk from thousands of free spirits who spread their
successes to tens of thousands of others. Jefferson was correct. Knowledge is Power.