How To Hack Your Facebook Account with Greasemonkey & Javascript

Facebook is pretty awesome, but it is far from perfect. More than once, I’ve heard complaints about some of Facebook’s technical aspects. Sadly, Facebook isn’t open-sourced, so users can’t change anything themselves – or can they?

By using simple pieces of Javascript code, or by applying Firefox Greasemonkey userscripts, users can change the appearance and workings of Facebook themselves.

Learn how to hack Facebook accounts for fun, or tweak something useful. Believe me, it really is all in your hands.

Facebook Account Javascript Hacks

In these following hacks we’ll be using basic Javascript to toy around with Facebook. Note that we’re not going to hack into Facebook accounts, or anything of the like. Most of these ‘hacks’ are temporary and will disappear once you refresh the page. They also won’t be visible to users on other computers. So why are we doing it? – Because it’s fun!

These Javascript snippets, which we’ll supply below, simply need to be pasted into the address bar. Hit enter, et voila!

Changing Profile Colour

This will change the colour of your Facebook bar to a color of choice.

Just paste the following code in your address bar and hit enter. You can replace ‘red’  with any color you want – black, white, green or even orrange. If you want to reverse the effect, press Ctrl+F5 for a hard reload of the page.

javascript:void(document.getElementById('fb_menubar').style.background='red');

View Chat History with Offline Friends

Unfortunately, you can’t normally view the chat history of online friends. If you’re trying to remember something that was said, waiting for them to come back online is one hell of a bother. Instead, you can just use this – pretty useful – Javascript hack.

First of all, we need to get your friend’s Facebook ID. When you visit his page indirectly (through your friends list or by using the search engine), you’ll be able to see it as a number in the address bar.

Another way to retrieve someone’s ID is by going to the Friends widget on their page, and right-clicking See All. Then you’ll have to copy the link location and paste it in your address bar.

Once you’ve got someone’s ID, simply paste the following code in your address bar, replacing 1122334455 with the relevant number.

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(1122334455);

Other Javascript hacks

The preceding two hacks are without doubt the most impressive or useful ones. Below are some of the other tricks you can pull off by using Javascript. We’re not going to deep on this because they’re all things you can do manually as well.

Change chat status to invisible:

javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(false);

Change chat status to visible:

javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(true);

Close all chat windows with person 1122334455:

javascript:chatDisplay.tabs[1122334455].tabXOnClick();

Open application tab:

javascript:applicationDock.toggleTab();

Bring up notifications:

javascript:presence.toggleTab('chat_status_control','chat_status_control_tab');

Bring up friends list:

javascript:buddyList.toggleTab();

Facebook Greasemonkey Hacks

Greasemonkey is one of the best firefox add-ons in existence. By using ‘userscripts’, you can customize nearly every website. Read more about Greasemonkey in .

Today we won’t be focusing too hard on Greasemonkey itself, but on some of the great Facebook-specific userscripts.

Facebook Auto-login – One of the simplest, but perhaps also one of the most useful userscripts you’ll find. This one will automatically log into Facebook, as long as Firefox remembers your password, saving you a lot of hassle.

Auto-Colorizer for Facebook – This script will recolor your Facebook page by applying the color scheme of the most dominant picture currently showing on the page. As you can imagine, this can create some exciting, and also ambient effects.

FacebookDeletes – If you want to get rid of a lot of people at once, this is your man. This script can bulk delete friends, making the masacre all the easier.

Remove All Facebook Ads – Adblock still tends to miss a lot of Facebook ads. This script, frequently updated, will remove all thinkable Facebook ads, creating a completely click-safe Facebook environment.

External Apps Blocker – One of the most irritating things on Facebook are the abundance of quizzes, quote generators, and the like. Filtering all external app ‘stories’ from your homepage will be a lot easier if you use this script.

If you know any other cool Javascript tweaks, or Greasemonkey hacks, feel free to mention them in the comments section below!

Heart Symbols on Facebook

Have you been dying to know how to make heart symbols on Facebook for the purpose of chat talking with your friends or just updating your status with a heart? How to make heart on Facebook? Hearts are the most popular icons usually people use in chatting to any social networking sites. The symbols are used to convey affection. Emoticons are used to make the conversation lively. Instant messaging now seems boring without them. Not only these symbols make your chatting lively or status but also to express your emotions that words cannot tell. These are mostly used by people who are in love. So, how can you get those fun little emoticons added into your test?


Here are simple ways to make heart symbol Facebook:

While being logged in to your Facebook account, click the Chat box or the text field of your status update. If you are chatting, be sure that you have picked up a friend that is online and active using the chat feature. To know, you can find the green and gray circle. The green circle indicates the active users of the chat box. By using the “ALT” button on your keyboard, press it and then press also number 3. Now you can see that you have entered a heart icon. Also be sure that you have enabled the Num Lock, found on the top right of your keyboard. The numbers you found on the top of your keyboard won’t work. So, it is better to use the numbers found on your right i.e the numlock keypad on your keyboard.

Right now you are able to enter heart icons as much as you want. You can now express your affection to which you are talking. There are many other emoticons which you can use, not only the heart symbols. These emoticons are embedded for you to be use to express what you want. Facebook is now the widest social networking site that people use. A part of being a lively social network is the emoticons created by the programmers of Facebook. Through this, people will love chatting and talking with each other.

IE Flaw Could Allow Hackers Access to your Facebook, Gmail, Twitter Accounts

Regardless of the version of Windows you use, if you also use any versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, then you might not want to do any drag-and-dropping within your IE browser, or you might be done in by "cookiejacking." It's not the CookieMonster or Firesheep, but there is a zero-day hole in IE that allows an attacker to steal any session cookies from any website.

At the Hack In A Box conference in Amsterdam, Italian security researcher Rosario Valotta demonstrated a cookiejacking attack. A session cookie holds information like your username and your password. Once those cookies are stolen, it allows an attacker to access wherever the victim is logged in like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter or other online accounts. His code to exploit the flaw explicitly targets cookies issued by Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, but Valotta says his technique can be used on any website. The attacker is only as limited as his imagination.

The vulnerability was found in IE security zone mechanisms which are supposed to keep Internet zones from mixing; it's meant to prevent sites in the "untrusted" Internet zone from embedding content to the "trusted" local zone. Yet Valotta discovered that cookies were exempt from the security mechanism and could be loaded into iFrames. The cookies were marked with invisible text and moved by the HTML5 drag and drop feature to the main browser window. "This breaks the Cross zone interaction policy as a Internet page is accessing a local file," Valotta wrote on tentacoloViola where he explained the entire exploit.

For his hijack cookie exploit to work, however, it requires some social engineering to get the victim to drag and drop an object in the browser. Although that might sound challenging, Valotta, with a proof-of-concept Facebook application, showed that it's not too difficult at all. He said he used an "advanced Clickjacking technique called 'content extraction' and some little JS tricks in order to lure my victim into drag&drop the cookie into an attacker controlled HTML element." He created a puzzle game (video) and shared it with his friends, secretly stealing the victim's Facebook session cookie. "I published this game online on FaceBook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server. And I've only got 150 friends," he told Reuters.

Microsoft is not too worried about this zero-day hole in all versions of IE. Microsoft spokesman Jerry Bryant said, "Given the level of required user interaction, this issue is not one we consider high risk. In order to possibly be impacted a user must visit a malicious website, be convinced to click and drag items around the page and the attacker would need to target a cookie from the website that the user was already logged into."

H Security noted, "The researcher notified the Microsoft Security Response Center of the original hole on 28 January 2011 and Microsoft solved the problem before the final version of IE9 was released on 18 March. However, only two weeks later, Valotta found a slightly modified approach that also allowed him to steal cookies from IE9 users, which he demonstrated (direct download PowerPoint file)" at Hack In the Box security conference.

5 ways to stay safe from fake anti-virus malware attack on Macintosh

Macintosh users are finding out the hard way what Microsoft Windows users have known for a long time: Criminals want to sell them fake anti-virus software by scaring them with lies that their computer is infected.

Apple admits Mac scareware infections, promises clean-up tool

This week the scareware targeting Mac OS X users is known as "MacDefender," with variants called "MacProtector" and "MacSecurity." Here are some tips for dealing with it:

1) Apple's advice is to first try and navigate away from the dangerous fake antivirus page by "force-quitting" this dangerous application. Apple support describes the process as "chose Force Quit from the Apple menu (or press Command---Option-Esc), then choose the unresponsive application in the Force Quit window, and click force Quit."

2) In some scenarios, the Apple browser may automatically download and launch the installer for this malicious software, Apple points out. If this happens, Apple says "cancel the installation process; do not enter your administrator password." Deleting the installer immediately involves going into the Downloads folder "or your preferred download location," according to Apple, dragging the installer to the Trash and emptying the Trash.

3) One real anti-virus vendor, Intego, says if users do unexpectedly see an installation screen from MacDefender, they should not go further and install the application. "This installation screen is the normal Mac OS X installer screen, but this should only display when you expect to install software." Intego says to uncheck the "Open 'Safe' files after downloading" option in Safari, or similar options in other browsers. If a browser asks you if you want to run an installer when you did not expect to download an installer, always click the No or Cancel button.

4) Apple says it plans to have a signature-detection tool for MacDefender in the next few days. You may not want to wait. Instead, you may want to turn to real anti-virus vendors for ongoing protection against Mac-based malware, even though the Apple Macintosh has been far less a target for malware than Windows.

5) If you need to clean the MacDefender off your computer, Apple describes how to do this in its statement from May 24, noting that the malware also installs a login item in system preferences. Apple says it's not necessary to remove the login item but does explain how to do it.

Microsoft downplays IE 'cookiejacking' bug

Microsoft today downplayed the threat posed by an unpatched vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that an Italian researchers has shown can be exploited to hijack people's online identities.

The bug, which has been only discussed and not disclosed in detail, was part of an attack technique described by Rosario Valotta, who dubbed the tactic "cookiejacking," a play on "clickjacking," an exploit method first revealed in 2008.

Valotta combined an unpatched bug, or "zero-day," in IE with a twist on the well-known clickjacking tactic to demonstrate how attackers can steal any cookie for any site from users duped into dragging and dropping an object on a malicious Web page.

He had demonstrated the attack at a pair of security conferences in Amsterdam and Zurich earlier this month, then published more information on his blog Monday.

By hijacking site cookies from IE7, IE8 and even IE9, attackers would be able to access victims' Web email, Facebook and Twitter accounts; or impersonate them on critical sites that encrypt traffic, like online banks and retail outlets.

Jeremiah Grossman, co-founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, called Valotta's attack "clever" and said he could see hackers taking to it as a fallback to clickjacking, which he and Robert Hansen uncovered and publicized nearly two years ago. "In the event they can't find a cross-site scripting or clickjacking vulnerability, this would be a nice fallback plan for [attackers]," Grossman said.

But Microsoft didn't think cookiejacking was much to worry about.

"Given the level of required user interaction, this issue is not one we consider high risk in the way a remote code execution would possibly be to users," said Jerry Bryant, group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). "In order to possibly be impacted, a user must visit a malicious Web site and be convinced to click and drag items around the page in order for the attacker to target a specific cookie from a Web site that the user was previously logged into."

Grossman strongly disagreed.

"I think they're wrong," he said. "Like many esoteric attack techniques, until they've seen it used in the wild, they'll downplay it. It's actually a very simple attack, but it's not technically difficult, so their take is 'Nothing new to see here.'"

Valotta's proof-of-concept attack was relatively simple: He built a Facebook game that baited users with a simple puzzle of an attractive woman, and with it was able to collect dozens of cookies from unsuspecting Facebook users.

"I published this game online on Facebook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server," Valotta told the Reuters news service this week.

The puzzle required users to drag and drop pieces on the Web page; unbeknownst to the victims, when they did so they actually dragged cookies to a specific spot on the screen where a clickjacking attack captured the data before sending it Valotta.

Valotta said that all versions of IE, including the just-released IE9, on all supported editions of Windows, including XP, Vista and Windows 7, were vulnerable to cookiejacking attacks.

Bryant added that the IE vulnerability was not serious enough to trigger an emergency, or "out-of-band" security update. "We are also not aware of it being used in any active way outside of the demo at [the Amsterdam] Hack in the Box [conference], he said.

Sony's PlayStation Network to reopen in Asia

Sony's PlayStation Network online gaming service will reopen for millions of gamers across Asia on Saturday, more than five weeks after it was taken offline following a cyber attack.

Sony pulled the plug on the PlayStation Network and the companion Qriocity audio and video streaming service on April 20, a day after detecting what it later called a "very sophisticated" intrusion.

When service resumes on Saturday in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, there will only be two more countries where service is still offline: South Korea and Hong Kong. Sony is still in discussions with authorities in those markets and can't name a date for the resumption of services in the two countries.

"It's going to take a little while longer," said Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment in Tokyo.

Gamers in Asia were kept waiting while Sony briefed authorities in several countries on the hack and its response, but service returned for users in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand on May 14 and 15.

The incident began when an unknown hacker or hackers penetrated three firewalls to get inside Sony's system and steal data on all 77 million registered accounts.

The stolen data included user names, e-mail addresses, login IDs and passwords. It was originally feared that millions of credit card numbers had also been leaked, but a subsequent computer forensics investigation failed to find any evidence that the credit card database had been accessed by the attacker, said Sony.

PlayStation users are required to download a firmware update for the console before they can reconnect to the network. Then, as a security measure, users must change their password upon login.

Sony has initially resumed a subset of the full PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. Back online are: online gaming, playback of already rented video, "Music Unlimited" online audio streaming, access to third-party services like Netflix and Hulu, PlayStation Home and friends features such as chat.

Full service is expected to resume in all markets, except South Korea and Hong Kong, by the end of May.

The attack and Sony's response to it will cost the company around ¥14 billion (US$170 million) this financial year, it said Monday. That includes the cost of calling in several computer security companies, a rebuild of its security system, identity theft monitoring for users in some countries and the offering of several free games to users.

SIPVicious Tool Suite v0.2.6 – SIP/VoIP Security Auditing Tool

SIPVicious suite is a set of tools that can be used to audit SIP based VoIP systems. Why the name? Because the tools are not exactly the nicest thing on earth next to a SIP device. And the play on the sound seems to work. As an extra bonus, it rhymes with the name of Sex Pistol’s bass player.

It currently consists of five tools:

• svmap – this is a sip scanner. Lists SIP devices found on an IP range
• svwar – identifies active extensions on a PBX
• svcrack – an online password cracker for SIP PBX
• svreport – manages sessions and exports reports to various formats
• svcrash – attempts to stop unauthorized svwar and svcrack scans

Requirements

Python – SIPVicious works on any system that supports python 2.4 or greater.

There’s a good blog post covering the new stuff here too, mainly svcrash:

How to crash SIPVicious – introducing svcrash.py

You can download SIPVicious v0.2.6 here:

sipvicious-0.2.6.zip

Or read more here.

Exploited Hotmail bug stole email without warning

Attacks targeted email contents and contacts 
Microsoft has patched a bug in its Hotmail email service that attackers were exploiting to silently steal confidential correspondences and user contacts from unsuspecting victims.

The vulnerability was actively being exploited using emails that contained malicious scripts, Trend Micro researcher Karl Dominguez said Monday. Successful attacks required only that a Hotmail user open the malicious email or view it in a preview window. The commands embedded in the emails uploaded users' correspondences and user contacts to servers under the control of attackers without requiring the victim to click on links or otherwise take any action.

The scripts also also had the capability of enabling email forwarding on the targeted Hotmail account, allowing attackers to view emails sent to the victim in the future.

Trend Micro researchers learned of the in-the-wild attacks after a colleague in Taiwan received one of the booby-trapped emails. The email purported to be a security warning concerning the victim's Facebook account.

Trend first disclosed the bug on May 13. Monday's blog post said Microsoft has since plugged the hole, which resided in CSS, or cascading style sheet functionality, but didn't say when.

"The attack takes advantage of a script or CSS filtering mechanism bug in Hotmail," Dominguez wrote. "Microsoft has already taken action and updated Hotmail to fix the said bug."

The vulnerable code helped inject a character into a Hotmail filtering mechanism that changed the way it behaved. The result was a platform that ran arbitrary commands in a user's Hotmail login session.

It's unclear how many Hotmail users may have been affected by the exploits and whether Microsoft has adequately warned users they may have been compromised. Microsoft spokesman Bryan Nairn wouldn't say how many subscribers were targeted or when the patch was put in place.

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50 Tricks to Get More People To Like Your Facebook Page

There are over three million active facebook pages, and these pages are gaining millions of new fans every day.

Yes, I just said fans.

Although the button has changed from “Become a fan” to “Like,” the action of joining a brands page remains the same. Facebook pages are still fan pages.

With Facebook’s announcement of The New Messaging there are more reasons to like Facebook, and Facebook pages, than ever.

I hope you enjoy this post about 50 Ways to Get More People to “Like” your Facebook Page, and if you do I would really appreciate it if you share these tips with your friends, and join the ProHackingTricks fan page.

Here are the tips:

1. Post a Status Update

Post a status update mentioning your facebook page.

Don’t be afraid to outright ask people to join your facebook page.  Ask and you shall receive.

Give them a great reason why they should join, tell them news, or find a creative way to mention and link to your page

2. Get fans to upload and tag photos

If you host (or attend) an event with several of your fans take a bunch of pictures, post them to your page, and then ask your friends to tag themselves in the pictures.

If you can get your fans to upload pictures to your page, or tag themselves in pictures you uploaded, this will post to their walls as well and will lead to additional traffic for you.


3. Offer an incentive for people to sign up

Using some static fbml you can create a dynamic facebook landing page with a “reveal tab” that contains content that is visible only to fans of your page.

The more valuable your incentive is, the more people will be compelled to click the “Like” button to access it.

Examples of exclusive content could be: An exclusive Video, an exclusive whitepaper/.pdf, exclusive pictures.

Stay tuned to ProHackingTricks.  In one of our upcoming posts will explain how to set up a “reveal tab.”

The image below shows different levels of increasing effectiveness for acquiring new fans.

Involver offers apps (and several of them are totally free) that make it easy to create a “Fan Gate” containing incentives, like a file or coupon, that will cause more people to “Like” your page.

4. Contact admins of groups related to your page

Groups are more powerful than pages in terms of their messaging ability. Pages send updates, but groups send messages directly to a users facebook inbox, triggering an email alert.

If you contact the admin of a facebook group with some valuable content that adds value to their readers then this can help them nurture their community and help you build yours.

5. Get people to join your page via SMS

Send a text message to 32665 (FBOOK) with the words “fan yourusername” OR “like yourusername” (without the quotes).

This feature is ideal when you’re in front of a live audience.

6. Install a page Badge

Facebook Badges are a simple, yet effective way to link to your facebook profile.

Unlike widgets, badges are simply images, and will load much faster.

7. Install a facebook “Like Box” into your site

Installing a “Like Box” is an excellent way to allow visitors to your site become fans without even leaving your page.

The like box builder tool makes it easy to customize the size of your like box, the number of connections to display, and even the color scheme.

Shown in the image below is the rarely used “dark” color scheme.

8. Use status tagging

Status tagging is a cool and fairly new feature of facebook.

This feature allows you to tag any page or person by entering the @ sign and then typing the name of the page or person you want to tag.

9. Suggest your page to friends

Use the “suggest to friends” feature of your page. Use this feature sparingly. Personally, I try to only invite people go my page once because I know it annoys me when multiple people invite me.

If you have many friends you might want to consider using the “invite all” Google chrome extension, rather than clicking hundreds or thousands of times.

10. Install a Like Button into your site

Installing a like button allows visitors to like your page, and when they do this posts the their activity stream.

This can send more traffic to your site and if you have a facebook “Like Box” and other content promotion your fan page, since this will help you convert your visitors into fans.

11. Connect your page to Twitter

Connecting your page to Twitter is an excellent way to convert your twitter followers into facebook fans.

Using this strategy will cause all of your posts to be sent to twitter, with a link back to the facebook version of the post.

www.facebook.com/twitter

12. Link to Your Page as  a Place of Employment

The info box uner profile pictures is being phased out, so now if you want an omnipotent link on your profile to your page you will need to list your Page under employment.  Once you do this your Facebook Page will appear under your name on your Profile.

13. Install commenting on your landing page

This will allow people to comment on your page, even if they are not a fan.

Any comments made can broadcast to news feeds and lead to more traffic to your page.

Setting up facebook commenting requires registering a facebook application, so act on this tip with caution unless you are comfortable with code.

14. Leverage Traditional Media

Since facebook is so widespread you can use any forms of traditional media and achieve results.

Newspapers, Media Buys, Radio, and TV all work, but are often very costly.

To maximize your promotion offer a free gift to those who join you page.

15. Newsletter Promotion

If you do email marketing send a message to your subscribers letting them know about your fan page and consider including a link to your fan page in every email.

16. Email Signature

Every email you send is an opportunity to link to your facebook page.

Check out the email signature tool wisestamp for a creative way to link to your social profiles.


17. Get business cards promoting your Facebook page

Business cards are cheap.

You can get 500 business cards from Vista Print for $1.99.

For this minimal investment you can get up to 500 new fans for your page!

Throw a link on your card and people will almost certainly check it out.

If you’re pressed for space in your design all page urls can be shortened from facebook.com to fb.me, or fb.com.

For example, www.facebook.com/prohackingtricks, www.fb.me/prohackingtricks, and www.fb.com/prohackingtricks all point to the same page.

18. Fiverr

Fiverr is an online marketplace where services are sold for five bucks.

Check out their “Social Marketing” and “Advertising” section and here you will find some people who are willing to suggest your page to 5,000 of their friends for just $5.

You will need to make the person who will suggest your page to their friends an admin in order for them to do this for you, but if you are willing to place your trust in someone to do this and they come through for you this will allow you to pick up dozens if not hundreds of new fans.

19. Create a Landing Page with Static FBML

By creating a custom landing tab for your facebook page you can increase the conversion of visitors to fans.

20. Run a “fans only” contest

An excellent way to run a fans only contest is using wildfireapp.

There are rules and regulations around running a contest on facebook so be sure to check out the facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (“Statement”) before you run one.

21. Link to your page from your profile

Edit your Facebook profile information to include promotion for your Fan Page.

At the bottom of the info section of your profile you can include links to any websites you are affiliated with.

The more links you can build to your Page, the more traffic you will be able to send to your Facebook Fan Page. I am constantly seeking new opportunities to build links that will send traffic to my Fan Page.

22. Blog Commenting

Comment on blogs and in the website section use a link to your fan page.

23. Link to your facebook page from your linkedin profile

Linkedin gives every user three slots for links to whatever you’d like right on your profile.

You can make the anchor text of these links whatever you like, so I recommend using a call to action such as: Join my facebook page.

24. Upload video to facebook

Facebook video is very underrated, and exceptionally powerful.

When you embed a facebook video on another website this video includes a watermark link in the top left corner to the fan page it came from.


25. Watermark your videos with a link to your website

Using a video editing program include a link to your website.

I use camtasia to add my watermarks, and to record any screencast I create, and this program comes with a free 30 day trial.

26. Create a memorable URL

If you go to facebook.com/username you will be able to create a custom URL for your page.

Remember that this cannot be changed once it is set, so choose wisely.

27. Deliver an exceptional experience

Although facebook pages are no longer officially considered “fan pages” if you work to create fans of your brand many of them will certainly seek out and join your facebook page.

Strive to deliver an awesome experience for those who interact with your brand. Go above and beyond when engaging with your community and they will spread the word.

A famous article called 1,000 true fans maintains that they are all you need to create a thriving business. Don’t try just to get people to click “like” but instead seek to create raving true fan who will spread your word far and wide.

28. Link it up

This tip comes from @garyvee and it’s a good one: link it up!

Hyperlinks are what weave the web together so use them often and every time you do you are opening up another gateway into your fan page.

29. Flip the funnel

Drive your fans back to your website for new blog posts.

Make sure that your blog has social sharing and many of your fans will “like” your blog posts and tweet it out to their followers on twitter as well.

30. Track your growth with Facebook insights

Facebook insights shows you how many fans you have over time, and some fairly detailed demographic information as well.

Using this knowledge you can analyze what activities drive the most growth, and then duplicate your success.

31. Analyze your demographics with insights

Facebook demographics are a powerful feature of insights that allows you to determine the gender and age of the people in your page.  Once you know this information you can focus your content to appeal to the age group and gender of your fans.

Here is the demographic information of the FacebookFlow fan page:

32. Talk and Blog about your page

Word of mouth does not start itself. Get the conversation going by mentioning your facebook page in blog posts and in every day conversation.

33. Learn more about Facebook

The more you know about facebook the more you can use this knowledge to drive the gowth your community.

34. Drive more traffic to your website

Use these tips to get more free traffic to your website. Make sure that your “Like Box” is featured prominently, and plenty of this traffic will “Like” your page.

35. Produce Epic Content

If your blog content is epic this will drive the growth of your page in a serious way.

Epic content has the best chance of going viral and if a blog post goes viral this also causes it to move up in the rankings in Google, leading to even more traffic, a percentage of which will convert to fans.


36. Install a like button into your posts

Installing a like button into your posts will help drive extra traffic to your posts and it will also show that facebook is an integral part of your brand.

If you have a self hosted wordpress blog I recommend installing the WP FB Like plugin.

The more you can integrate facebook with your site the more likely people will be to join your facebook page.

37. Make a Facebook like sign

Blue Sky Factory created a  Facebook “Like” sign tool that you can use to create a cool image that will help promote your facebook page.

38. Buy Them

Although I do not recommend this option, there are several services out there that sell facebook likes.

The first 1,000 fans are usually the hardest to get so a service like this might help you get the critical mass needed to get more genuine organic fans.

39. Run a targeted ad campaign

Facebook advertising is exceptionally powerful due to the ability it offers to hyper target your market.

Facebook ads can be targeted based on age, location, and interests.

40. Turn your customers into fans

If someone likes you enough to buy your product then there is a good chance that they will like you on facebook as well.

Rig up your “thank you” page with a facebook “Like Box” and you’ll be good to go!

41. Advertise your page

The more you advertise your page the more fans you will be able to achieve.

Facebook advertising is a smart way to promote since you can target specific demographic and interest groups.

You will need a sales funnel in place in order to justify an advertising budget and I recommend setting this up prior to advertising on Facebook.

42. Use Hootsuite to manage your page

By using Hootsuite to manage your facebook pages you can maximize engagement by scheduling your posts ahead of time to go out when they will get the most attention.

Facebook posts get the most engagement early in the morning and a few hours before bed.

43. Get an attractive profile picture

A picture says a thousand words, so to really optimize your business page you should use the largest profile picture possible.

Currently the maximum profile picture size is 200 x 600 pixels.

44. Do a “fan of the month” promotion

By highlighting one of your best fans every month you indirectly encourage fans to engage more, so that they can win the coveted fan of the month title the next month.

Offer a monthly prize, such as a cool free product or service related to your brand, and the competition for this title will only increase.

45. Message your friends and ask them to join

This tried and tested method takes more ground work, but this method will allow you to build relationships and target the friends that you think are the most relevant to your page.

46. Include a link to your fan page in your forum signature

If you are active in any forums you will have the option to attach a “signature” to every post that you write.

Throw a link in your signature to your facebook page, and it will be clicked.

Do your best to add value and answer questions with your posts, and people will be more inclined to click your link and join your page.

A link with a call to action is more likely to get clicked than a link alone, so go with “Join my Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/prohackingtricks” instead of simply: “www.facebook.com/prohackingtricks”

47. Create a redirect URL

Creating a redirect to your facebook fan page is one way to “presell” the people who click it on joining your page.

For example, if your link is: www.yourdomain.com/joinmyfacebookpage anyone who clicks it will probably join your page.

48. Give away fan page swag

Websites like Zazzle make it easy for people to customize swag, such as the nifty “you like this” t-shirt below.

If you gave away shirts (or mugs, or stickers) like this with your facebook url included you could easily amass an army of walking billboards for your facebook page.

49. Find more facebook friends

The more friends you have, the better your chances will be that some of these friends will join your fan page.

Facebook has a “Find Your Friends Tool” that allows you to import your contact list from a variety of email clients, or an email list.

This tool also displays “People you may know” which I have found is very good at suggesting people that have many mutual friends as me.

50. Share this article with your facebook friends

If you share this post with your facebook friends and it will become obvious to them that getting more fans important to you, and if you have included a link to your facebook page in your info box or the “Website” section of your website there is a good chance that they will click it.

Feedback

What strategies have you used to get people to like your page? Let us know in the comments below!

pytbull – Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS) Testing Framework

pytbull is an Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS) Testing Framework for Snort, Suricata and any IDS/IPS that generates an alert file. It can be used to test the detection and blocking capabilities of an IDS/IPS, to compare IDS/IPS, to compare configuration modifications and to check/validate configurations.

The framework is shipped with about 300 tests grouped in 9 testing modules:

• clientSideAttacks: this module uses a reverse shell to provide the server with instructions to download remote malicious files. This module tests the ability of the IDS/IPS to protect against client-side attacks.
• testRules: basic rules testing. These attacks are supposed to be detected by the rules sets shipped with the IDS/IPS.
• badTraffic: Non RFC compliant packets are sent to the server to test how packets are processed.
• fragmentedPackets: various fragmented payloads are sent to server to test its ability to recompose them and detect the attacks.
• multipleFailedLogins: tests the ability of the server to track multiple failed logins (e.g. FTP). Makes use of custom rules on Snort and Suricata.
• evasionTechniques: various evasion techniques are used to check if the IDS/IPS can detect them.
• shellCodes: send various shellcodes to the server on port 21/tcp to test the ability of the server to detect/reject shellcodes.
• denialOfService: tests the ability of the IDS/IPS to protect against DoS attempts
• pcapReplay: enables to replay pcap files

It is easily configurable and could integrate new modules in the future.

There are basically 6 types of tests:

• socket: open a socket on a given port and send the payloads to the remote target on that port.
• command: send command to the remote target with the subprocess.call() python function.
• scapy: send special crafted payloads based on the Scapy syntax
• multiple failed logins: open a socket on port 21/tcp (FTP) and attempt to login 5 times with bad credentials.
• client side attacks: use a reverse shell on the remote target and send commands to it to make them processed by the server (typically wget commands).
• pcap replay: enables to replay traffic based on pcap files

The official documentations is available here: pytbull documentation.

Changes/Improvements in V1.1

• Issue #2 fixed (test number incrementing twice just after the last test from multipleFailedLogins test)
• Issue #3 fixed (pcapReplay module not present in the checks on STDOUT)
• Code factoring in pytbull.py
• Timing options are now in parameters (config.cfg)
• Automatically checks and informs if a new version is available (use PROXY section in the configuration file if needed)
• New basic checks: Checks that paths are valid
• SVN tags added in source code

You can download pytbull here:

pytbull-1.1.tar.bz2

Or read more here.

Apple, Google, Facebook to talk privacy with Senate

A second U.S. Senate hearing over location privacy has been scheduled, a move intended to highlight how well companies notify their customers about when and how their whereabouts are stored and transmitted.

Following the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about mobile privacy last week, representatives from Apple and Google are expected to again appear in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers in a new hearing that will also include Facebook.

The topic of a hearing, put on by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance, is "consumer privacy and protection in the mobile marketplace." It's being led by chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia).

On the docket to testify as part of a witness panel is Bret Taylor, the chief technology officer for Facebook; Catherine Novelli, Apple's VP of worldwide government affairs; and Alan Davidson, Google's director of public policy for the Americas. Joining them is Morgan Reed, the executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology, and Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, the president and COO of Common Sense Media. Ahead of that panel is David Vladeck, the director of the bureau of consumer protection for the Federal Trade Commission.

Notably missing is the U.S. Department of Justice, which made up part of the opening act in last week's hearing, as well as a representative from Microsoft, which also collects location information from Windows Mobile 7 devices with a unique ID. During last week's hearing, the Justice Department discussed forward-looking policy initiatives to require mobile providers to collect and store information about their customers, which is likely to be a topic at Thursday's hearing.

Location tracking has become a particularly high-profile area of interest for consumers and lawmakers alike. Last month, researchers highlighted a location database file that was being stored on iOS devices including the iPhone and iPad. The file contained information like nearby Wi-Fi hot spots and cellular towers, which Apple later came out to say was a smaller part of a private, crowd-sourced database it maintains and makes use of on its devices to help them more quickly locate where they are.

Along with describing what the database did and what its intentions were, Apple promised to secure the location data, fix a bug that kept it from being logged for more than a few days, and delete the entire database when users disabled location services--all things it did with a software update released a week later. The company has also promised to fully encrypt this database on the phone itself as part of the next major iOS software update.

Despite those actions, and an extended testimony from Apple vice president for software technology Bud Tribble, lawmakers like U.S. Rep. Edward Markey still have questions for Apple, particularly about who else can access its location database. In a letter to Markey last week, Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs, noted that the company was indeed sharing the anonymized location information with a partner, something Markey said he was following up with the company about. That topic could be broached once again this week.

Google, for its part, has similar crowd-sourced efforts on its Android platform that grabs Wi-Fi hot spots and MAC addresses, as well as location information to help source traffic information for its mapping service. That traffic component is also built into the Google Maps application that ships on Apple's iOS, which Apple hinted that it might be working to replace later on down the line with its own data.

As for Facebook, which is a newcomer since last week's hearing, location has become an increasingly important part of the service since it unveiled its "places" feature late last year. That feature lets users check themselves and their friends into locations like restaurants, movie theaters, and other businesses by using the Facebook app on their mobile phone. More recently location has played a part in the company's deals service, which offers coupons, discounts, and other rewards to users nearby participating businesses, competing with Groupon and other sites like it.

Still, Facebook would definitely seem the odd company out compared with Google and Apple, which both create the system software and marketplaces that allow customers to acquire applications on their phones. Late last year, a report suggested Facebook was working toward that goal itself, though that did not come to fruition. Nonetheless, Facebook is integrated into millions of mobile devices, both as an app and a way to sync contact information, which could end up being the focus of the Senate's inquiry.

Mac Malware Is Gradually Becoming A Serious Threat

Apple -- and many Mac users -- argue that Mac OS X has a special recipe for security that makes it less likely to be infected with malware. Many security researchers counter that the Mac's seeming immunity stems not from its security, but from its lack of market share.

The debate may finally be settled.

The emergence of a serious malware construction kit for the Mac OS X seems to mimic a 2008 prediction by a security researcher. The prediction comes from a paper written in IEEE Security & Privacy (in .pdf), which used game theory to predict that Macs would become a focus for attackers as soon as Apple hit 16 percent market share.

Last week, security researchers pointed to a construction kit for creating Trojans for the Mac OS X as a major issue for Mac users. Currently, three countries -- Switzerland, Luxembourg and the United States -- have Mac market share around that level.

"The kit is being sold under the name Weyland-Yutani Bot and it is the first of its kind to hit the Mac OS platform," Peter Kruse, partner and security specialist at security firm CSIS, writes in a blog post. "CSIS finds this crimekit to be quite disturbing news since Mac OS previously to some degree has been spared from the increasing amount of malware which has haunted Windows-based systems for years."

Weyland-Yutani Bot, named for the corporation in the 1979 movie Alien, is currently being sold by its developers. While it is not the first attack on the Mac OS X, crimeware has enabled criminals in the past to scale up attacks quickly.

"What is happening is that people are testing the waters," says Adam O'Donnell, chief architect of the cloud technology group at SourceFire and the author of the 2008 paper. "It just becomes economically viable to do it, so you start seeing these attacks becoming more common."

The 2008 paper used game theory to calculate when attackers would start seeing a payoff in focusing on the Mac OS X over Windows. It simplified the problem by assuming that all PC users ran antivirus software and that no Mac users did. The assumptions helped reduce the problem down to two factors: the effectiveness of the defenses and the marketshare of the dominant platform.

With detection rates for antivirus in the 80 percent range, the Mac OS X becomes an attractive target around 16 percent marketshare. If PC defenses are better than 80 percent, then the Mac market share at which attackers become interested drops. For example, if antivirus programs detect attack 90 percent of the time, then attackers will focus on the Mac OS X at approximately 6 percent marketshare, says O'Donnell.

"It is much more of an argument that at the low rates of penetration of the Mac in the market is why there is no malware," he says. "You get a few points up, and like we are seeing now, you will start seeing malware."

Will the same model work to predict when significant malware will appear on smartphone handsets? Not necessarily. One of the assumptions is that the value of compromising a PC and Mac are identical. That assumption is less likely to hold up between a PC and a handset.

"The difference between a PC and a handset is that there is going to be different values in attacking each," O'Donnell says. "That difference will be a big factor in when people move to attacking a new platform."

Facebook Launches Login Approvals, New Way to Secure Access to Your Account

Yesterday morning, Facebook launched a new feature called "login approvals," which offers users the ability to further secure access to their Facebook account through the introduction of a second step to the login process. Once opted-in to this security feature, users enter in their email address and password as usual, but will then receive a second code sent to them on their mobile phone. This short, numeric code must also be entered before being able to access Facebook from that computer.

While an extra step may not be to everyone's liking, for those looking for additional ways to secure access to their account, this feature will be welcomed.

Two-Factor Authentication Increases Security

This type of security feature is known as "two-factor authentication," a term which refers to the two separate steps taken to ensure a user is who they say they are. A username (in this case, the email address registered with Facebook) and a password can easily become compromised, as anyone who's had their Facebook account hacked can tell you. What's less likely, however, is for anyone else to gain physical access to your mobile phone.

By requiring that this second code is sent to a device you have in your possession, you can easily keep unwanted third-parties from getting into your Facebook account.

How to Use the Login Approvals Feature

To turn on login approvals, you'll first need to confirm what computer you'll be using, by entering in a security code sent via text message to your phone. Once you enter the code, you'll be asked to save the device to your account, so you don't see the message again when using that same computer.

After this initial setup is complete, if you ever login from an unrecognized device, you'll be asked to enter in another security code sent to your phone. You will also be notified of this change upon the following login to Facebook, and asked to verify the attempted account access.

If it wasn't you who had attempted to sign in from the other device, you'll be able to change your Facebook password to re-secure the account immediately. However, you can be assured that the person who attempted to hack into your account would not have been able to access it, as they did not have the code sent to your mobile phone at the time.

And if you ever lose your phone, you can return to any previously authorized device to log back into Facebook.

To enable this feature, go to the "Account Security" section of the Account settings page on Facebook, and look for the new "Login Approvals" option. You can access your Account settings by clicking on the "Account" link at the top-right of the Facebook homepage.

Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion

After rumors that first Facebook and then Microsoft were in talks to acquire Skype, the latter announced that it has acquired the VoIP giant for $8.5 billion in cash.

Skype will be integrated into Microsoft devices and systems such as Xbox and Kinect, Xbox Live, the Windows Phone, Lync and Outlook, Microsoft said in a statement. The company has pledged to continue supporting and developing Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

The deal, which was spearheaded by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with assistance from Charles Songhurst, the company’s head of corporate strategy, was completed Monday evening, AllThingsD reported earlier.

The acquisition is an expensive one for Microsoft. Not only is it the largest price Microsoft has paid for a company in decades, Skype is not yet profitable. Despite revenues totaling $860 million last year and operating profits of $264 million, the company lost $6.9 million overall, according to documents filed with the SEC. And the company carries $686 million in debt.

Much of the company’s appeal rests in its largest user base of 663 million, 145 million of which use Skype monthly (Update: Microsoft says Skype has 170 million regular users), and 8.8 million of which are paying customers.

There is one clear set of winners here: Skype’s investors. A group including Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board purchased the company from eBay for $2.75 billion in September 2009.

In August, Skype filed for an IPO but put plans on hold after Tony Bates joined the company as CEO in October. Bates will take on the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division and report directly to Ballmer.

Facebook caught exposing millions of user credentials

Facebook has leaked access to millions of users' photographs, profiles and other personal information because of a years-old bug that overrides individual privacy settings, researchers from Symantec said.

The flaw, which the researchers estimate has affected hundreds of thousands of applications, exposed user access tokens to advertisers and others. The tokens serve as a spare set of keys that Facebook apps use to perform certain actions on behalf of the user, such as posting messages to a Facebook wall or sending RSVP replies to invitations. For years, many apps that rely on an older form of user authentication turned over these keys to third parties, giving them the ability to access information users specifically designated as off limits.

The Symantec researchers said Facebook has fixed the underlying bug, but they warned that tokens already exposed may still be widely accessible.

“There is no good way to estimate how many access tokens have already been leaked since the release [of] Facebook applications back in 2007,” Symantec's Nishant Doshi wrote in a blog post published on Tuesday. “We fear a lot of these tokens might still be available in log files of third-party servers or still being actively used by advertisers.”

While many access tokens expire shortly after they're issued, Facebook also supplies offline access tokens that remain valid indefinitely. Facebook users can close this potential security hole by changing their passwords, which immediately revokes all previously issued keys.

The flaw resides in an authentication scheme that predates the roll out of a newer standard known as OAUTH. Facebook apps that rely on the legacy system and use certain commonly used code variables will leak access tokens in URLs that are automatically opened by the application host. The credentials can then be leaked to advertisers or other third parties that embed iframe tags on the host's page.

“The Facebook application is now in a position to inadvertently leak the access tokens to third parties potentially on purpose and unfortunately very commonly by accident,” Doshi wrote. “In particular, this URL, including the access token, is passed to third-party advertisers as part of the referrer field of the HTTP requests.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said there is no evidence the weakness has been exploited in ways that would violate the social network's privacy policy, which steadfastly promises: “We never share your personal information with our advertisers.” Facebook on Tuesday also announced it was permanently retiring the old authentication routine.

Doshi, who was assisted by fellow researcher Candid Wueest, said there's no way to know precisely how many apps or Facebook users were affected by the glitch. They estimate that as of last month, almost 100,000 applications were enabling the leakage and that over the years “hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties.”

Facebook over the years has regularly been criticized for compromising the security of its users, which now number more than 500 million. The company has rolled out improvements, such as always-on web encryption, although users still must be savvy enough to turn it on themselves, since the SSL feature isn't enabled by default.

As indicated above, all previously issued access tokens can be cleared by changing your Facebook password. Readers who aren't sure if they're affected might want to err on the side of security and update their password now. ®

VUPEN Whitehats break out of Google Chrome sandbox

Researchers say they've developed attack code that pierces key defenses built into Google's Chrome browser, allowing them to reliably execute malware on end user machines.

The attack contains two separate exploits so it can bypass the security counter measures, which include address space layout randomization (or ASLR), data execution prevention (or DEP), and a “sandbox” designed to isolate browser functions from core operating-system operations. So far, there have been relatively few reported exploits that can penetrate the sandbox, and that's one of the reasons the browser has managed to emerge unscathed during the annual Pwn2Own hacker competition for three years in a row.

“While Chrome has one of the most secure sandboxes and has always survived the Pwn2Own contest during the last three years, we have now uncovered a reliable way to execute arbitrary code on any installation of Chrome despite its sandbox, ASLR and DEP,” researchers from France-based Vupen Security wrote in a blog post published on Monday.

They included a video showing the latest version of Chrome running on a 64-bit version of Windows 7. By loading the address of a specially designed website, the researchers are able to force the browser to download and run a calculator application without crashing or showing any other signs of anything amiss.



The Vupen researchers said they plan to share technical details of the exploit only with government customers “for defensive and offensive security.” Neither Google nor the public will be privy to the specifics.

“We're unable to verify VUPEN's claims at this time as we have not received any details from them,” a Google spokesman said. “Should any modifications become necessary, users will be automatically updated to the latest version of Chrome.”

Google to date has awarded more than $150,000 under its bug bounty program, which pays as much as $3133.7 for reports of serious security bugs.

As is typical with attacks that bypass security sandboxes, the Vupen proof-of-concept actually contains two separate exploits, said Chaouki Bekrar, the company's CEO. In an email, he expanded:

The first one results in a memory disclosure and corruption leading to the bypass of ASLR/DEP and execution of the first payload as low integrity level (inside the sandbox). A second payload is then used to exploit another vulnerability which allows the bypass of the sandbox and execution of the final payload with Medium integrity level (outside the sandbox).

Bekrar described one of the exploited flaws as a memory-corruption vulnerability and the other as a design error. ®

Chat Anonymously through Command Prompt

1.What you need? > you need your friend's IP Address and Command Prompt

2.Open Notepad and write this code :

@echo off
:A
Cls
echo MESSENGER
set /p n=User:
set /p m=Message:
net send %n% %m%
Pause
Goto A

3.Save this as "Messenger.Bat".

4.Open command prompt

5.Drag bat file over to Command Prompt and press Enter

6.This should came up

7.Now, type the IP Address of the computer you want to contact and press enter
You will see something like this:

8.Now all you need to do is type your message and press Enter.

Enjoy.

Dont forgot to post your reply and share it with your friends.

Skype for Mac update will fix a dangerous security hole

VOICE OVER IP (VoIP) and chat Skype for Mac users will get an update this week closing a dangerous security hole that can allow a hacker to take over a Mac computer simply by sending a message.

Gordon Maddern of security firm Pure Hacking first discovered the vulnerability and created a proof of concept exploit using the Metasploit tool. He said, "The long and the short of it is that an attacker needs only to send a victim a message and they can gain remote control of the victim's Mac. It is extremely wormable and dangerous."

Skype didn't make it easy for Maddern to flag the hole, with the researcher claiming he had "a lot of trouble trying to find the right person to notify". Then over a month later, Maddern thought the vulnerability was still open as Skype hadn't informed him of any patch release.

But it turns out that Skype did release a patch, but very, very quietly. In a blog post, Adrian Asher of Skype security said it released a patch for the problem on 14 April, but only a manual update as there were no reports of the exploit being used in the wild. Users aren't prompted for the update, but can download it now by clicking on 'Check for Updates'.

This week will see an update for Skype for Mac that will notify users with a prompt that they need to download it. This release will carry some additional updates and bug fixes.

Skype has been pretty busy on the security front recently. Last month there were some fairly major vulnerabilities with the Skype Android app.

Learn How to Hack Like A Pro From Top Hacking Sites

Whether you’re a college student, a middle-aged networking guru or a wife and mother fascinated by the world of online games – everyone occasionally comes across a situation where some form of hacking would make life a whole lot easier.

Maybe you’ve lost the license that came with your legitimate software package that you paid for. Maybe you want to make a backup copy of your favorite DVD movie, but there’s copy-protection encoded onto the disk. Or maybe you’re just stuck on a popular online game and you want to know if there are any hacks available to level up in the game without the required effort.

Whatever your specific needs or situation – I’m not here to judge. In the field of computers and Internet technologies, just about everything is written in one programming language or another. No programmer is perfect – they all make mistakes. There are back doors, secret codes and vulnerabilities in just about any application you come across. Because of that, if you learn how to hack on your own, or just following the efforts of active hacking communities can provide you with tremendous eye-opening insight into the inner-workings of even your most “trusted” software applications.

Where You Can Go To Learn How To Hack Like a Pro

One thing that’s obvious when you visit the websites where professional hackers hang out – there’s so much about programming that even the most seasoned professional programmers don’t know. Professional hackers are an exceptional, amazing and terrible breed of individuals all packaged into one. While I write this, I realize that I am also describing over half of our readership – you know who you are! These folks take programming to an extreme that’s simply astounding when you see it in action.

While many of us write applications using all of the standard techniques that you learn in programming classes in college, these folks take programming into a realm where there are no rules. They can test all aspects of an application until they find a chink in the armor, and then exploit those vulnerabilities.

As we explore the world of hacking, it should be noted that there are two major forms of hacking – we’ll call it “white hat” and “black hat.” The “white hat” hackers call themselves “ethical hackers,” in that they find vulnerabilities and exploits only to make the programming and application communities more secure for everyone. However, there’s a whole other community of hackers who find vulnerabilities to do nothing more than exploit them as much as humanly possible. Now that you know what sort of community you may be entering, let’s get on with the list of top sites where you can learn how to hack.

#1 – CyberXtreme: Hacking and Warez

CyberXtreme is an impressive forum with a significant hacking section, but also entire sections on technology, graphics and even a tech support area. Here you’ll find cracks, secret codes, free download packages (some containing cracked software which may be illegal to download in your area, so be careful). The forum is very protective of its content, so you’ll have to register with a valid email address before you can even get a glimpse of the content that’s on the forums.

The hacking section is very detailed and, as shown above, includes not only free tools and software exploits, but if you want to learn some coding tricks from the resident hacking gurus, just enter the “Coding & Programming” forum and you’ll get your fill. Before long you’ll be writing up your own customized hacking tools!

#2 – EvilZone Hacking Forums

While the name, EvilZone, isn’t exactly the most inviting – it is easily one of the largest forum communities that you’ll find on the subject of hacking. With over 6,500 members and over 100,000 posts (and counting), this community likely has the skills and knowledge to answer any programming question you could possibly have. Just be careful about coming across as a “noob” – these guys don’t handle newcomers with kid gloves, so be careful.

You’d definitely be best off working through the programming and encyclopedia sections first, where you’ll find projects, tutorials and a lot more that will help you become educated and well-versed in hacking techniques and terminology.

#3 – Hack a Day

While I certainly don’t want to offer a nod to any blogs that may be considered competition, you really have to give credit where credit is due when it comes to a particular niche like hacking – and Hack a Day definitely offers an amazing library of information for anyone looking for specific categories like cellphones, GPS or digital cameras. You’ll find all hacks organized by category in the right column.

More than any other site, this particular “hacking” site is very much hardware based, and they redefine the meaning of the word hacking by literally hacking up electronic devices like a Gameboy or a digital camera and completely modifying it. Of course you’ll still find the occasional software hack, such as how to remove the Blackberry download limit.

While I personally don’t find the articles themselves very detailed (as an EE, I like schematics and elaborate descriptions) – but the site makes up for it with video demonstrations throughout.

#4 – Hack In The Box

If any site could be classified as the most comprehensive site to learn how to hack, this would be it. Hack In The Box is more about security and ethical hacking than anything else – and that’s more than obvious reviewing the classes and conferences listed on the main page.

The manage page is an informational portal that includes information from all other areas, including recent forum posts, conference updates, E-zine and news articles and a lot more. To be honest, there’s so much information stuffed on the main page that it’s almost overwhelming.

 

There’s a lot of material available, but if you’ve so interested in learning how to hack that you wouldn’t mind paying to attend a class or a conference – then this is the place to do it.

#5 – Hack This Site!

As always, saving the best for last – I’d like to introduce Hack This Site! This website is one of the coolest, free programmer training sites where you can learn how to hack accepting one of the challenges.

The site designers offer various “missions,” where you need to figure out the vulnerability of a site and then attempt to use your new-found hacking skills (you’ve carefully studied all of the articles on the site, right?) to hack the web page. Missions include Basic, Realistic, Application, Programming and many others.

If you’re able to figure out how to properly hack any of the most difficult missions on this site, then you’ve definitely earned the title of professional hacker.

Have you ever tried any of the tips offered at any of these websites and do they work? Do you have any good resources of your own for readers to learn how to hack like the pros? Share your insight in the comments section below.