reflecting

As the school year comes to a close, I think back to the first day of school and how I felt then. What I find extremely interesting is the difference in the way that I felt about my teachers then and the way I do now. One of my teachers is a middle aged man, who is short and stout, un-married and perhaps had every job there is to have. A lawyer, a disc-jockey, a sharpshooter in the military etc. Probably the hardest history class I've ever been in. Naturally I hated him from the very first day, as I figured he was just a douche. Well he didn't like me very much either and on several occasions he lied about not receiving my work. I learned to bring multiple copies of important assignments around with me. My other teachers for the most part were rather lazy and I was gradelocked in English my whole year :(. Well to summarize what happened is I went from really hating this History teacher to finding out his experience allowed him to teach some pretty interesting lessons. I suppose he was able to see my interest in the class as he got progressively nicer as the year went on. I was able to learn from the class the most out of any others this year. Looking back, that class was easily my favorite of the year.

In the above video a cat tries to revive its dead friend. Truly a heart breaker and the music really pulls it all together. Personally I love animals and to see something like this kills me, but I thought it should be shared with all of you as you can appreciate any pets that you might have. Having a dog myself, the loyalty he has is unlike anything I have ever seen.  There's something about animals, whether it be a dog, cat, or even a gerbil, that the undying affection shown is unlike anything a human can display.

Hacking?

It turns out that password cracking is far easier than anyone ever could of thought. As a project I decided to try to get a hold of my fathers password. Heading downstairs to the computer room I realized that I didn't have an administrative account on his computer. Well after ducking around with the command line for a little and with the help of some youtube videos I found a command to make a new Admin. I downloaded pwdump and fgdump along with johntheripper from openwall. Now what goes on with these programs are you use the programs to literally dump the password hashes into a file. Passwords are encrypted either by LM or NTLM hashes. LM if the password is 7 characters or less and NTLM if its over 7 characters. NTLM hashes are just the LM hash plus a NT hash and its generally easier to crack a NTLM hash than a LM. It could be easier to crack a NTLM hash if say your password was 'porkbean'  than if it were the LM hash for 'appless'. This is because you'd just crack both the NT and LM hash (respectively)  for 'pork' and 'bean' separately which is far easier than cracking 'appless' as a whole. Well after you dump the hashes into a file you can use a number of techniques to crack the hashes but i just navigated to the folder that had johntheripper in it, dragged the dump file into the run folder, then navigated  to the run folder on the command line and typed "john-386.exe {name of dumpfile}" and about an hour later i had my dads 9 character (4 numbers, 5 letters) password. Guess that means I get to use his fancy i7 quad-core laptop :)

Resolute

(PICTURE FROM  http://3rd-axis.com/) 

Sam slowly turned to his side as he heard the droning of his alarm clock break the silence of his dark room.  Rolling up the shades, Sam was forced to squint as the morning light engulfed his room. Sam heard the pipes whine as his father turned on the shower in the room next to his. Sam turned to face his digital clock. It read 5:00 AM, leaving Sam with two hours before his parents would come to ‘wake’ him.  Sam quickly dressed himself, making no more noise than the smallest susurration. Sam opened his door in a covert fashion, and quietly slipped downstairs. Stepping over the unmoving dog, seemingly impervious to anything around him, Sam quietly departed from his house. He quickly hopped over the fence dividing his neighbors house and his, and took a longing glance at the specious BMW M5 sitting in the driveway.  A mouse scuttered across Sam’s feet, breaking his trance.  Sam reached down and grabbed a small rock, and tossed it up at the dark window. After several seconds, a light turned on and Sam heard a strident bang as Archer rolled out of bed onto the floor. Not long after the window slid open, Archer, grinning with embullience gracefully dropped from his window the dew sodden grass. Rolling his eyes Sam turned and walked towards the street, unable to gesticulate his amusement initiated by his goofy friend. 

As they turned onto the street, they both flipped their hoods over their heads as to conceal their identities. Moving more quietly than a panther stalking its prey, the two boys weaved through backyards and slipped over fences as if they weren’t there. As they arrived to pick up the third member of their crew, they noticed something was askew. There was the sound of a ringing phone in the distance. After approximately half a minute, there was a click and the noise was no more. The cessation of the ringing was Kobin, a small, built boy with dark hair.  He smiled, almost diffidently, but if you knew him you’d know Kobin is not one to doubt himself.  Walking over to greet the boys he was tacitly greeted, with a head nod from each Sam and Archer.  Archer checked his watch, “5:20” he informed his friends. Archer nodded and inquired “So, where are we off to?”. “To the village” Sam replied furtively. All of the boys were known to go on errant journeys, yet never seemed to get in trouble. If any of the boys get caught, they would be plagued with mortification for weeks after the incident, and receive derisive  insults from those who did not get caught for weeks. The thing about these three boys is they do not make mistakes. While such a thing is impossible to say for most, these boys have been in control of all things around them for as long as they could remember. For that reason, the ululation of a police siren wouldn’t so much as make these boys flinch if they were in a bank with their pockets stuffed with another man’s money. Of course, these boys are not thieves or bandits. There is no saying what they are, for it is not good, nor bad. Regardless, these boys were on a journey. They squeezed through a hiatus in the fence and trudged by a church embossed with looked like what was gold. The sounds of matins floated through the open doors, and the boys caught a glance of the precentor placing a festoon next to the motif on the back wall of the church. “A little early to be immured inside of a church, don’t ya think?” Kobin asked the boys. Sam shrugged and was about to reply as a strident shriek came from behind them. Startled they turned the corner into an alley way and picked up their pace. The vissitude in their speed probably was not necessary, but as I said before, these boys do not make mistakes, and it must have been for a reason. The boys followed Sam to the center of the village, a tall clock tower. Sam opened the door and glanced towards Archer and Kobin. Archer opened his mouth as if to rebuke, but he must have changed his mind as he stepped inside. Archer derisively shook his head and followed after Kobin. As the boys made it to the top of the tower, they must’ve wondered what was at the top of this levaithon, because Archer asked “Sam, what on earth are you doing, taking us up here with all of these cameras?”. Sam glanced down thinking of a witty recrimination and having thought of nothing, he replied, “you’ll see”.  Finally, the iron door came into view, and Sam gently pried the door open. As he opened it a wave of cold slapped the boy’s faces, and they stepped out onto the roof. From the roof of this building, it appeared they were looking down upon stick figures, and toy cars. Outside of the coffee shop stood four police officers, over by the supermarket there was a small lady standing outside. At 5:45 AM the village was busier than one would think, yet the boys were paying attention to none of this. Sam grinned smugly, while Archer and Kobin stared with open mouths, having realized the opportunity that awaits them down below.