hacking -- Industry guru Dave Taylor answers questions about a wide variety of technical topics, including HTML, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

"hacking" Help and Information



How did Twitter get hacked? (password reminder emails)

The tech gossip blog TechCrunch had a hacker send them confidential business documents from Twitter, obtained by a European-based hacker who had broken into their servers. Not so good. How did he do it, though, and is there any risk of my Twitter account being compromised?...

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Visiting my site may harm my computer? What the heck?

As a contributing author to a weblog about South Africa's upcoming World Cup 2010 (see The South Africa Project) I was rather surprised the other day when I went to log in to our Wordpress blog, just to see the following warning in my Web browser: What does it mean? How can we get this sort of warning from our own site, without ever opening up anything or getting any indication that we'd be hacked...

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What is a CAPTCHA anti-spam system?

My system administrator is telling me that I need to add a "capcha" [actually, it's "captcha"] system to my site so that I get less spam. What's a captcha system and why would I want it?...

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How do I learn how to be a hacker?

I'm really wanting to get into the field of hacking. It's something I've always wanted to do. It seems, however, that whenever the question of "how do I learn to hack" is asked, it is usually responded to with the over-used statement "Teach yourself." I know that hacking is a skill that is built over time, and I'm well aware that it cannot simply be taught. Still, there has to be some form of advice...

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Is email from "Facebook Notification Center" legitimate?

I got the strangest email, unlike anything I've seen from Facebook, telling me that I have a message to pick up on the site, but not giving me any of the message. Then it included a weird URL at which I was supposed to log in (even though I am already logged in to Facebook) so I could pick up the message. I stopped and decided I'd check with Guru Dave. So, is it legit?...

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What's with the Skype Windows Warning Notice?

I was using Skype the other day on my PC and suddenly Windows Security Center popped up a warning message telling me that my computer was infected by a virus and that I needed to install a repair utility of some sort. Huh? What's that all about, Dave?...

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How do I install Ubuntu Linux on a Netbook?

I just bought a slick ASUS Eee PC netbook, model 1000HA, and want to configure it to work with both Microsoft Windows XP, which is already installed, and Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux. How can I do that without having to reinstall WinXP?...

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How do I make a "Search my eBay Store" search box?

I wanted to implement a similar thing to what you show on add a custom eBay search box to your site on my eBay store site, but I'd rather have a neat little box in a position of my choice, instead of using the ugly default eBay side menu. Is there a way to customise the search form so it only searches within my eBay store? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!...

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Can I create a LinkedIn company search feature for my site?

I've been building a reference site for use inside my company and am wondering if there's any way to hack LinkedIn so that we can have a LinkedIn search box for individuals who work in our company? Yeah, we should have a company directory, but the boss is a huge LinkedIn fan......

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Is "Paypal Anti-Fraud Protection" just a scam?

I got a message from Paypal with the subject "Help PayPal to avoid any kind of fraud" but I'm a bit suspicious: is this a legitimate way that Paypal is trying to get my help to avoid online scams, or is it a scam itself?...

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Is this "Problem: Inaccurate whois information" email legit?

I'm a bit concerned, I got an email message from eNom tech support saying that they'd received a "third party complaint of invalid domain contact information in the Whois database" for one of my domains and that I needed up update the domain info or risk cancellation of the domain. But I logged in to eNom and found that there was nothing registered. So... what do I do?...

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eBay a Reported Web Forgery! What the heck?

I got an email from eBay saying that there was a dispute over non-payment of an auction I'd won and I know I paid it, so it's very weird. When I clicked on the "dispute" link, though, instead of going to eBay, I got a big screen saying "Reported Web Forgery!" So has someone hacked eBay, or what??...

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How can people hack my Apache server with Rewrite rules?

A geeky friend of mine just told me that he's been seeing hackers slip a few lines of code into their Apache web server configuration and have all their traffic redirected to porn sites. Now I'm paranoid! How can I detect if this has happened to my own server?...

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What does an eBay phishing attack look like?

I got an email from an eBay buyer saying that he had a question for me about an auction, but it's not an auction I'm running. Will I get into trouble with eBay if I don't answer the question? I mean, I don't really understand what's going on?...

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Can you recover my Hotmail password?

I've been using Hotmail for years without a problem but suddenly it rejects my password, and when I go to the password recovery option, it doesn't like my zip code or other secret information. I have vital information in my inbox! Can you reset my password for me or tell me the new password?...

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Update to Wicked Cool Shell Script #62: define.sh

This is regarding script #62 (define a word): Looks like WordNet has changed their online version again and I tried the following replacement for the url= http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s= But the script doesn't return anything but goes back to the prompt. I tried the url with a word in lynx and I got the source. Could you push me in a general direction?...

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Can hackers read everything on my computer?

My local newspaper's computer guru recently said that it was possible for a hacker to read what you have just copied into memory. The example he used was copying your password from a text file into a password box on a website. Is this true?...

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How do I disable the IR infrared port on my Mac?

After reading about the Gizmodo bloggers wandering CES and flicking off TVs left and right, my company is paranoid someone will do a similar stunt to our displays in our Macworld exhibit booth. That'd would be a huge problem. Short of duct tape, is there some way to prevent this problem?...

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How to recover wifi passwords?

I'm migrating from an old Mac computer to a shiny new MacBook Pro and want to be able to join my brother's network, except we don't remember the password! But my old computer can connect. Is there any way to dredge up that password from Mac OS X so I can enter it anew? I do have Leopard running on both systems......

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External Facebook links to invite friends to connect?

I have a nice external URL for my friends who want to find me and hopefully connect in MySpace and LinkedIn, but Facebook seems like a world unto itself. Is there some sort of URL I can use to get the same result in Facebook?...

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