Hacking Essay, Research Paper

In the following file, all references made to the name Unix, may also besubstituted to the Xenix operating system. Brief history: Back in the early sixties, during the development of thirdgeneration computers at MIT, a group of programmers studying the potential ofcomputers, discovered their ability of performing two or more taskssimultaneously. Bell Labs, taking notice of this discovery, provided funds fortheir developmental scientists to investigate into this new frontier. Afterabout 2 years of developmental research, they produced an operating system theycalled “Unix”. Sixties to Current: During this time Bell Systems installed the Unix systemto provide their computer operators with the ability to multitask so that theycould become more productive, and efficient. One of the systems they put on theUnix system was called “Elmos”. Through Elmos many tasks (i.e. billing,andinstallation records) could be done by many people using the same mainframe. Note: Cosmos is accessed through the Elmos system. Current: Today, with the development of micro computers, such multitaskingcan be achieved by a scaled down version of Unix (but just as powerful).Microsoft,seeing this development, opted to develop their own Unix like systemfor the IBM line of PC/XT’s. Their result they called Xenix (pronouncedzee-nicks). Both Unix and Xenix can be easily installed on IBM PC’s and offerthe same functions (just 2 different vendors). Note: Due to the many different versions of Unix (Berkley Unix, Bell SystemIII, and System V the most popular) many commands following may/may not work. Ihave written them in System V routines. Unix/Xenix operating systems will beconsidered identical systems below. How to tell if/if not you are on a Unix system: Unix systems are quite commonsystems across the country. Their security appears as such: Login; (or login;)password: When hacking on a Unix system it is best to use lowercase because the Unixsystem commands are all done in lower- case. Login; is a 1-8 character field. It is usually the name (i.e. joe or fred)of the user, or initials (i.e. j.jones or f.wilson). Hints for login names canbe found trashing the location of the dial-up (use your CN/A to find where thecomputer is). Password: is a 1-8 character password assigned by the sysop or chosen by theuser. Common default logins ————————– login; Password: root root,system,etc.. sys sys,system daemon daemon uucp uucp

tty tty test test unix unix bin bin adm adm who who learn learn uuhost uuhost nuucp nuucp If you guess a login name and you are not asked for a password, and haveaccessed to the system, then you have what is known as a non-gifted account. Ifyou guess a correct login and pass- word, then you have a user account. And,if you guess the root password, then you have a “super-user” account. All Unixsystems have the following installed to their system: root, sys, bin, daemon,uucp, adm Once you are in the system, you will get a prompt. Common prompts are: $ % # But can be just about anything the sysop or user wants it to be. Things to do when you are in: Some of the commands that you may want to tryfollow below: who is on (shows who is currently logged on the system.) write name (name is the person you wish to chat with) To exit chat mode try ctrl-D. EOT=End of Transfer. ls -a (list all files in current directory.) du -a (checks amount of memory your files use;disk usage) cdame (name is the name of the sub-directory you choose) cd (brings your home directory to current use) cat name (name is a filename either a program or documentation your usernamehas written) Most Unix programs are written in the C language or Pascal since Unix is aprogrammers’ environment. One of the first things done on the system is print up or capture (in abuffer) the file containing all user names and accounts. This can be done bydoing the following command: cat /etc/passwd If you are successful you will a list of all accounts on the system. Itshould look like this: root:hvnsdcf:0:0:root dir:/:joe:majdnfd:1:1:Joe Cool:/bin:/bin/joehal::1:2:Hal Smith:/bin:/bin/hal The “root” line tells the following info : login name=roothvnsdcf = encrypted password0 = user group number0 = user numberroot dir = name of user/ = root directory In the Joe login, the last part “/bin/joe ” tells us which directory is hishome directory (joe) is. In the “hal” example the login name is followed by 2 colons, that means thatthere is no password needed to get in using his name. Conclusion: I hope that this file will help other novice Unix hackers obtainaccess to the Unix/Xenix systems that they may find. There is still wide growthin the future of Unix, so I hope users will not abuse any systems (Unix or anyothers) that they may happen across on their journey across the electronichighways of America. There is much more to be learned about the Unix systemthat I have not covered. They may be found by buying a book on the Unix System(how I learned) or in the future I may write a part II to this……..