i prefer detective hacking to code hacking, that is, finding a password, or getting the password form the victim, rather than bypassing the password entry, or using brute force. its soo much more fun, and i feel much more smug when i get through. yes, code hacking can be fun, but its not personal. if you're trying to hack into, i dunno, a school network, or someones hotmail account, then its obviously personal hate, or if you want to "alter" a bussinesses web page. so getting through with programs or code is just boring, its mundane and dull. but phoning up the company, telling them you're a new employee who has forgotten their password, or emailing the victim telling them they've won a prize from their email server, and all they have to do is send their address, postcode and password, to prove its them, and they'll receive hundreds of pounds. it makes the victim feel as stupid as they are when they find out.
on another note entirely...i beiliev hacking is the only way forward for the internet. as it stands, the internet is becoming commercialised, andther medium for advertising and sales. governments are trying to restrain it and censor it. the internet is free, it exists on hundreds of computers, belonging to hundreds of users, who are contributing to it, some good, some bad. originally it was just the good guys, the uys that could manage to get on the net, to work it all out. now its "user-friendly" meaning idiots are gtting their grubby hands on our realm, and exploiting it. the only way to stop the almost inevitable and complete comercialisation of our domain, is to keep it unsafe. to scare companies and users off with i love you's and melissa's.
to all you hackers, however you hack, HACK!!! keep our world free!!!

ok

and the point being?

I like that kinda hacking too. It's like in WarGames, when the dude needs that one guy's password so he spends hours reasearching him and finds out it's his son's name. It's alot more fun then sitting there waiting for your computer to run through every fucking number between 1 and 10 gajillion. That's for sure.

I hate trashing.

Social engineering vs. Scripts?

Any real crack job requires a shitload of research man, you don't just wake up and do it. To do it right, you should spend at the very least a few days researching you're target, but then again, breaking into someones e-mail account isn't exactly hacking persay. Don't get me wrong, social engineering is a great thing, but it's a tool, not the whole kit and caboodle...

btw, yer proficency as a hacker isn't determined by how fast yer computer can run l0phtcrack....

Yeah, it is.

I didn't like war games that much.

Brute force is needed in Many, Many, Many situations now adays, people becoming more aware that giberish pws are next to impossible to guess and that instead they need to be put under hours of brute force. Of course If your password have a pattern, you can script a dictinary file for them (EX: Last year our schools password were AA#AA, so I magicked me up a perl script that made thos combinations into a dictinary file.) And, voila! it takes roughly 5 minutes to do what would normally be near a 5 hour job.

NAR!!!!

Say, are your school's password's A##AA this year by any chance. Oh, and BTW, WarGames RULED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Z: I was talking about for everyone else but us.

Overlord: Don't get me wrong, it does have it's place, but it ain't the end all and be all as it were..

I saw some lesbians on bart today..

I wasn't on BART at the time bit this hot girl gave me the evil eye.

sure, its a tool, and some situations like giberish passwords do require brute force, but researching your victim is sooooo much more fun, and makes the final hack sooo much more pleasing. just sleeping while brute force works its evil way into a paaword is hardly exciting. you dont even have to have an ounce of intelligence, any 6y.o. kid could do it.

Any halfway secured site will NOT have that kind of password. I know a guy who bought L0pht crack and has a machine decked out to exclusively run it on his own password files. His users have become insanely creative with their passwords to avoid the inevitable changing of their wallpaper to CAT5 IS NOT A GOOD PASSWORD.

Don't depend on that kinda guessing man....