A black hat (also called a cracker or Darkside hacker) is a malicious or criminal hacker. This term is seldom used outside of the security industry and by some modern programmers. The general public uses the term hacker to refer to the same thing. In computer jargon the meaning of “hacker” can be much broader. The name comes from the opposite of White Hat hackers.

Usually a Black Hat is a person who uses their knowledge of vulnerabilities and exploits for private gain, rather than revealing them either to the general public or the manufacturer for correction. Many Black Hats promote individual freedom and accessibility over privacy and security[citation needed]. Black Hats may seek to expand holes in systems; any attempts made to patch software are generally done to prevent others from also compromising a system they have already obtained secure control over. A Black Hat hacker may have access to 0-day exploits (private software that exploits security vulnerabilities; 0-day exploits have not been distributed to the public). In the most extreme cases, Black Hats may work to cause damage maliciously, and/or make threats to do so as blackmail.

Black-hat hacking is the act of compromising the security of a system without permission from an authorized party, usually with the intent of accessing computers connected to the network (the somewhat similar activity of defeating copy prevention devices in software – which may or may not be legal depending on the laws of the given country – is actually software cracking). The term cracker was coined by Richard Stallman to provide an alternative to using the existing word hacker for this meaning. Use of the term “cracker” is mostly limited (as is “black hat”) to some areas of the computer and security field and even there is considered controversial. A definition of a group that calls themselves hackers refers to “a group that consists of skilled computer enthusiasts”. The other, and more common usage, refers to those who attempt to gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Many members of the first group attempt to convince people that intruders should be called crackers rather than hackers, but the common usage remains ingrained.

Techniques for breaking into systems can involve advanced programming skills and social engineering, but more commonly will simply be the use of semi-automatic software, developed by others – often without understanding how the software itself works. Crackers who rely on the latter technique are often referred to as script kiddies. Common software weaknesses exploited include buffer overflow, integer overflow, memory corruption, format string attacks, race conditions, cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, code injection and SQL injection bugs.

The reference to colored hats comes from Hollywood’s use of hats in old black-and-white Western movies to help an audience differentiate between the good guys (white hats) and the bad guys (black hats). The ‘hat’ terms do not fall under common use. Even inside the computing field they are very controversial.

A grey hat commonly refers to a hacker who releases information about any exploits or security holes they find openly to the public. They do so without concern for how the information is used in the end (whether for patching or exploiting).

Technorati Tags: Blackhat

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3. Black Hat Affiliate Marketing – Legal? Yes. Ethical? Hmmm…

There seem to be numerous methods that affiliate marketers use to earn their commissions these days. Adding affiliate links to websites, emails, instant messengers, articles, e-books, pay-per-click ads, banners, and any other form of media are all popular affiliate marketing strategies. Success comes to them when people click those links, get tracked by a cookie uploaded to their computer and then make a purchase from the affiliate program’s website. Then the affiliate gets a check in the mail for all the commissions earned.

Recently though, there have been some new affiliate marketing tactics that are creating a bit of a stir in the affiliate marketing communities. It seems that an elite group of marketers are using some questionable methods to increase their commissions that have been labeled as “black hat” affiliate marketing tactics. So who are these elite, and what are their black hat tactics?

The elite group of black hatters is headed by a sly programmer named John Reel. He’s created a program that cloaks affiliate links like no other link cloaker you’ve ever seen before. That’s right; this one does a few things differently.

- One of the black hat features is that it will create framed links. This means that the link you see in the address bar will not be for the actual website you land on by clicking it. Also, the title bar in your browser will say whatever message the black hatter affiliate wants you to see.

- Another one of the more powerful features of this black hat affiliate tool is the ability to embed affiliate cookies into your links. This allows the affiliate marketer to load their affiliate cookie onto your computer before you even land on the destination URL, and therefore there is no need to use the affiliate code tagged onto the end of the URL. It will appear as though the link is not an affiliate link at all, and yet the black hatter will still secretly earn the commission.

- Taken a step further, this cookie embedding process can also allow the black hat affiliate to embed multiple affiliate cookies into their link for the affiliate program that they’re promoting as well as any competitors cookies. This way, if the customer doesn’t buy from the site you send them to and then later ends up on a competitors’ site, the black hat affiliate still earns the commission.

- Now taking this feature another step further, this black hat affiliate tool can secretly hide rotating affiliate cookies embedded within a webpage. This sneaky tactic allows for cookie after cookie to be added for numerous affiliate programs that are all tracked to the black hat affiliate.

- Going even further upon this feature is the ability to embed any link with multiple rotating affiliate cookies. Again this can load your computer with affiliate cookies for any and all affiliate programs that the black hat affiliate desires to earn commissions from. What’s more, is that this sneaky black hat affiliate link will innocently look like any other link, and can be published anywhere without anyone knowing what it’s capable of when clicked!

Sounds like the invention of a mad scientist trying to take over the affiliate marketing world through the exploitation of ingenious black hat programming loopholes.

So are these black hat affiliate tactics legal? Yes, if the affiliate program doesn’t specify otherwise within their terms of service.

Are these black hat affiliate tactics ethical? That all depends on your personal code of ethics, and whether you would use the tools ethically, or whether you would use them in every way possible to earn as many commissions as you can with no respect for your customers.

Do you want this black hat toolkit? Forget it! There are only 1,500 available, and by the time you read this they’ll probably already be gone. After that, John Reel will be parading as an angel, selling his white hat tools, but don’t be fooled by this wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate, Blackhat, Legal, marketing

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Google Chrome Vs Mozilla Firefox

The hype hasn’t even settled on Google Chrome’s release and already Mozilla is reeling under its influence. Google claims that Chrome is the fastest internet browser than anything currently available on the world wide web. Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. As of now it supports almost 43 languages and it automatically detects your language. For now, Google Chrome seems to be the fastest internet browser in the online industry. In response to this Mozilla is gearing up with Firefox 3.1 which the company claims will be faster than anything Google can muster with Chrome.

In February 2008 Mozilla announced that they had reached 500 million downloads of Firefox, and 150 million active users.

Let’s see how many people switch to Google Chrome and how many stick to the usual Mozilla Firefox.

Try both the browsers you will easily make out the difference.

With the competition heating up between the two giants its the common internet users who can look forward to benefiting the most from this.

Google chrome is running v8, an open source javascript engine which is written in C++ whereas Mozilla will be using TraceMonkey, an evolution of Firefox’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine for Firefox 3.1

Performance wise Tracemonkey was found to be better than Chrome beta.

In Firefox if one tab crashes we can see its impact on other tabs but its not the same in case of Google Chrome. Google Chromes each tab is an independent process. If one tab crashes there won’t be any effect on the other tabs. Every tab is on its own due to which memory management becomes very easier, eradicates the reasons for memory seepage.

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Technorati Tags: Computer & Internet, Google, Mozilla

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