Dd is a tool that is often used in computer forensics because it is extremly low level and effecient at creating exact duplicates of hard drives. For this reason it is often the tool for which all other tools are compared to. But is it useful for us regular Joes?. Can we use dd to create digital copies of our hard drives for backup reasons? Yes we can, and I actually find that it is easier to use than commercially available solutions Read more »

Fork bombs are basically a never ending loop. They open a processes that opens other processes that open even more processes exponentially. Causing any computer to lock up within a matter of seconds. Although they have to be ran from a logged in user they are still a threat. Users can unintentionally cause a complete lockup of a production server. Read more »

SSH by default is very strong. It has protection against various hacks and known vulnerabilities. For instance SSH has a password retry wait time of five seconds. This makes the time for brute force attacking an SSH server very long and probably not effective. However, sometimes script kiddies will fork their hacking program making multiple processes of the brute force attack. Sometimes they are able to fork it off upwards of 1000 attempts every 5 seconds. This drastically minimizes the time to crack short passwords. Read more »

1. The classic prank. Take a screen shot of their desktop and set their wallpaper to that screenshot. Then hide all the icons by doing a right click > Arrange Icons By: > Show Desktop Icons.

2. Modify C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts to redirect their favorite website to http://youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU Read more »