So what does this mean?

Well, vanity – yes – you could now be facebook.com/fitguy or facebook.com/princess or any other nauseatingly myspace-esque usernames.

But the real benefit in my mind lies in hijacking facebook’s google ranking – just think; you could soon be facebook.com/webdesignuk or facebook.com/weddingphotographer and google will rank your facebook profile highly in the search results. Set your public profile up so that casual surfers get a little bio about your business and an invitation to “friend me to discuss your requirements” and you’ve got a powerful way to reach new customers in a secure, comfortable setting.

Google ranks facebook.com very highly in search results, and if you can snap up a few decent keywords then all of a sudden your profile goes from a great social tool to being a great business tool.

So that’s my take on it. Sure it’d be great to be facebook.com/howard, but I think I’d rather be facebook.com/PHP-developer-uk :0)

So at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, go to facebook.com/usernames and stake out your territory – but think carefully, at the moment the official word is that there’ll be no way to change your name.

Buy or ask to be given old computers (ask companies, friends, family, people who are buying new computers. If you’re rich, just buy a few basic boxes).
Install various brands of linux on some of them. Install a web server on one. Network them together with a hub. Attack services on the linux boxes. Use bugtraq to find exploits. See how the exploits work and start to learn C. Patch the vulnerable services and try again. Set up an FTP server. Sniff the passwords using ethereal while you login to FTP. Re-Network using a switch this time. Code an application to ARP flood the switch so you can sniff it again. Learn how to use hping, netcat, putty, scp, nmap, ftp and http.
Every time you root a box, code an application to automate it. Search the net (bugtraq) for existing exploits, if there are none, publish to bugtraq, if there are, patch and try again.
Keep looking for new tools and techniques, and try to figure some of it out yourself.

Take a look at the categories and tags that are related to web application security/ how to hack / etc and you’ll find some good info on this site :)

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…

Damn kids.
They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950′s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world… Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn underachiever.
They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”

Damn kid. Probably copied it.
They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

Damn kid. All he does is play games.
They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again.
They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all…

After all, we’re all alike.

+++The Mentor+++