The hacker test

Post Reply New Topic

I found this website, blackhathacking.net, which is a forum geared towards hackers and crackers. It's relatively new, seeming to have only been created in early December 2009, and there's not much on it, but I joined the site, just to see what it was like (even though I'm not a cracker, and don't intend to be one).

Anyway, there's this one post on the forum that is a "hacker test". It's described as a compendium of hacker knowledge cleverly disguised as a test. I sort of liked it, because it showed me how little I know about computers.

It's like there's a whole new world out there, one that I still have yet to discover in my career as a computer geek. Half of the stuff on there I've never even heard of. Check it out:

http://blackhathacking.com/showthread.php?tid=96

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with that stuff, or knows how to do things like write device drivers or fix hardware problems from software, but I just thought it would be an interesting thing to share.

Interesting post.

I can give you a tip about firmware, you need to learn assembly code. It only feel like yesterday when I went around installing Trojans on people's computer, purely for the fun of it all and because those people gave me a hard time so I though I would get revenge.

Get into reverse engineering, it will benefit you when it comes to writing drivers and it lets you learn about companies secrets too.

Perhaps, it's a very old one: yes, I scored well but I've been in the trade since the seventies. You probably have to be a certain age, as well as aspie, to feel proud of a score in a test like that.

Certainly, it hasn't been updated yet for this millenium

I found some information on the test. Apparently it was written way back in 1989 by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas. It appears it hasn't been updated in 20 years. If it were to be updated for the 20th century, they would take out the parts about line printers, punch cards, Multics, phreaking, and VAXen, because those are all long gone, and there would probably be more questions about things like Perl, XML, Ajax, and Web 2.0.

I actually looked up phreaking after seeing this test, and I found it rather interesting. It sort of makes me wish I had been alive back then.

I am sure Lau and some others will be around to tell you how they still use punch cards and line printers (just joking)

If you like this sort of thing you should check out http://www.hackthissite.org/

I actually did use punch cards and line printers... Just not for hacking...

Me too. Core memory. Paper tape. Hell, I still use relational databases, and we all know what the productivity numbers look like for those...

Um, relational databases? I thought everyone used those. As opposed to what?