Date: Sunday, 15 July, 2012, 6:44 PM

On Sun, 2012-07-15 at 02:46 +0530, A. Mani wrote:
> But the FSMK people have decided to use the term "ethical hacking" for
> "hacking + Activism" and possibly beyond.
> http://www.fsmk.org/ethical-hacking 

morons
>> This is what the MORONS  were upto yesterday :) 

      Free Software tools against Internet Censorship - by  FSMK

FSMK had conducted a workshop on' Free Software tools against Internet 
Censorship 'at Bangalore on July 15th. It was a good experience because apart 
from exposure to a
variety of FOSS tools used to provide security,protect privacy and pick-out 
vulnerabilities, I also learnt what to expect from workshops of this kind. 

As FSMK had not specifically mentioned the prerequisites in advance, 
some of us were a bit anxious about adapting to the course. However, the 
volunteers who handled the sessions were able to strike a balance by brushing 
over the basics and getting us to explore through hands-on at the earliest. 

The best way for me was to select a tool(s) which appealed to me and continue 
to understand it. I developed an affinity for TOR( The Onion Router). Being an 
free software  product it enables even non-coders to contribute by configuring 
their system settings to add one more secure link which would increase the 
number of possible paths  packet could
take and thus decrease the chances of an eavesdropper to figure out the route 
from source to destination. Also,the way Mr. Karthik Rao(volunteer who handled 
the TOR session) got across the message was awesome. He conveyed that TOR was 
the successful product of a combined effort to break conventional rules made by 
conventional people. That gave a new perspective about Rules. In this case, a 
handful of people could misuse the net by creating a win-lose situation. They 
could snoop into a user's packets to find out the related information in 
the name of security. Then they just have to impose "rules" to block
content that did not appeal to them. TOR is a solution to such a problem as it 
tries to preserve a person's anonymity by choosing zig-zag paths from source to 
destination and making the intermediate nodes aware only of their immediate 
neighbors. Thus a user can send her message and be more assured of it reaching 
the right recipient(s) only. I checked this out on my system and was delighted 
to note that each time, I refreshed the page revealing my IP Address, my 
(system's) location was a place I had never heard of. This was just the 
beginning. 

We also had sessions on sniffing,snooping,SQL & JS injection etc. I couldn't 
grasp these concepts because I did not pay the required attention. 1 more thing 
I liked was Mr. Rahul's( another volunteer) video about hackers which showed 
that innate curiosity to explore and
open-up the system was a characteristic of most of them. 
The entire FSMK team was very much for the hacking spirit and gave us to
understand that hacking is not something you can do but it is that which you 
should do as it helps you get to know the system and improvise on it

I left a little before the end and missed the last part. The volunteers 
repeatedly stressed on the importance of experimenting further by ourselves and 
provided their contacts to get back to them as we probed the tools. I hope to 
make the most of what I have learned.

Anupama, Chennai.
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