Data Mining

[morpheous]

Hello,
I have a friend who is very knowledgeable in programming and hacking. He says the majority of his hacking ventures have been to data mine servers for information. I was wondering what this and and how it works. He said what he mainly does is monitor net traffic of the target, and when it updates, he gets information from server. I have tried asking but he says its incredibly "dangerous" hacking because its hard and easy to get caught? i dont know but any ideas would help

Thx,

Morpheous

[lupin]

Sounds like your friend is breaking the law. I suggest you don't follow his lead - accessing computer systems without appropriate authorisation is illegal, and we wont tolerate discussion of illegal activities here, so Im asking everyone to keep this in mind when responding.

If you want to know whether what your friend says about it being likely that you can get caught doing this type of thing is true, my answer is Yes. He is right about that. Especially if you are an amateur.

Once you get enough experience in the area of penetration testing you will understand that capturing information from a compromised server is not really that complicated. However given the context of this thread, and given how hard it is to tell someone without the proper background knowledge "How to Hack" I am obviously not going to go into detail about it here.

If you want to learn about the subject that's good, there's plenty of information here and on the Net for this. Make sure you learn on your own test systems though, and don't go breaking into other peoples systems without permission.

[Snayler]

Well, unless you have a server of your own to test it, which I highly doubt it, what you're trying to achieve is illegal (when you said "easy to get caught" I red "illegal"). Given this last statement, I don't think it's needed to recall you the forums rules.

BTW, google has tons of information about Data Mining.

[morpheous]

Noooo!!!!! i am not even considering doing this, i understand its hard to trust me when i say this. I wanted to know only because its in interesting topic to me, getting info from a server that you dont have access to is intriguing. If i am indirectly being asked not to pursue this topic within backtrack forums i will gladly oblige. Yes, what my friend does is very illegal, and i dont think he is smart in doing it, but he is good enough to know what he is doing and i just like learning about new things. And yes, i do own my own servers, so i have a place to pen test.

Thx

Morpheous

[streaker69]

Noooo!!!!! i am not even considering doing this, i understand its hard to trust me when i say this. I wanted to know only because its in interesting topic to me, getting info from a server that you dont have access to is intriguing. If i am indirectly being asked not to pursue this topic within backtrack forums i will gladly oblige. Yes, what my friend does is very illegal, and i dont think he is smart in doing it, but he is good enough to know what he is doing and i just like learning about new things. And yes, i do own my own servers, so i have a place to pen test.

Thx

Morpheous

If your friend were truly smart, he wouldn't be committing crimes. He should consider another line of work. FPMITAP is not a fun place to be.

[lupin]

If i am indirectly being asked not to pursue this topic within backtrack forums i will gladly oblige.

No, if that's what I wanted I wouldn't have been indirect about it. Its fine to discuss this as long as we don't go into outlaw territory... Im not sure if anyone will really be able to help with this if you don't already have strong networking knowledge however. In fact I think I have a pretty good idea of what type of responses this thread will get...

[morpheous]

I have a moderate understanding of networking, i was just curious to see what this was about. Data mining should be in a pentesters arsenal anyway right? if a server is vulnerable shouldn't you be able to find why? Anyway ill google it for awhile and i have any questions that aren't noobish questions, then ill ask lol. thanks for your patience

Morpheous

[xX_Spiidey_Xx]

If i am indirectly being asked not to pursue this topic within backtrack forums i will gladly oblige.

You are being informed _directly_ that this _activity_ is not material for these forums. discussion on how the technology behind it works, presumably, is invited.

...but he is good enough to know what he is doing...

good enough to know what he is doing and being good enough to not get caught are two different things. i for one know that i wouldn't want to be his friend when he gets caught. i'd say your best bet is to keep a safe distance from this guy, and probably choose a more... legitimate mentor.

[morpheous]

Lol, i would but when you come from a town of 6 thousand, its hard to find anyone who will take you seriously and not get annoyed by your tons of questions. Mainly what he gives me is a method name, or a program, or a website, and when it comes from him i look it up to see if i can learn about it. he isnt a good mentor, actually he really sucks, he is the only one i catually know, who knows almost everything.

Thanks,

Morpheous

[lupin]

I have a moderate understanding of networking, i was just curious to see what this was about. Data mining should be in a pentesters arsenal anyway right? if a server is vulnerable shouldn't you be able to find why? Anyway ill google it for awhile and i have any questions that aren't noobish questions, then ill ask lol. thanks for your patience

Morpheous

I didn't worry about correcting you before, but you might have the wrong idea of what data mining is. Its not a term usually used in pentesting, its usually used more in the context of retrieving information from large datasets, usually via the use of DBMS or other specialty software. The Wikipedia article Snayler linked to is a pretty good explanation of what it really is.

You seem to be talking more about capturing network traffic... and yes that is something a pentester should be able to do.

At this point I am also going to remind people here about our forum rule concerning members not acting like self appointed moderators.

If a post concerns you, then please report it. If a moderator has already posted in the same thread after the post that concerns you, you can take that as a sign that if any forum rules have been broken, the issue will have already been dealt with.