#firts moodboard in a long time

[rdashkoo]

i forgot about this place (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠) moodboard?

[samgibbsfmp]

Slash dot dash dot moodboards and research:

Now the first thing I am going to be looking into when it comes to slash do dash dot is hackers.

Slash dot dash dot (hackers):

Now hackers are internet geniuses using smart and creative ways to steal information or even money from your bank account.Now as soon as we say hackers we all instantly think of how bad and evil they are and how they just steal your information. However what most people dont know is there are actually 2 types of hackers the first are the ones we all commonly know. These are called The black hat hackers.

Black hat hackers:

Now these hackers are the bad guys who find weak points in internet security and break through them in order to obtain information. The can then at some times sell this at ransom to the company demanding money and in return they promise not to leak or give out any of their information. 

Now of course to every bad side there is a good side. This is where we bring in our other hackers. The white hat hackers.

White hat hackers:

Now most people think that good hackers cant possibly be a thing but I can tell you they can. The way White hat hackers work is that they will approach a company and offer to try and hack into there website. They then once trying will go to the company and point out any of the weaknesses the company has in there security so they could patch them. 

Now fortunately I have actually had the experience of meeting a white hat hacker whos based in Bury st Edmunds and has created there own company called LabSec.

https://labsec.co.uk/

What white hat hackers offer is what is called penetration testing which like I described exposes flaws in a comapnies security. When talking to them they told me about how they did a University degree in whats called “ethical hacking”. They also told me how after the first year at University everyone was then assessed and the lecturer had to decide whether a person was going to indeed use the skills there were being taught for good purposes. The deemed anyone who might intentionally use these hacking skills for bad purposes a danger and would remove them from the course so they couldn’t continue.

Now of course it wasn’t as easy of just having 2 types of hackers. However these are the only 2 I wanted to look into and here I am inserting a link which I used to get this information. In the link they also explain the different types of hackers.

https://www.alpinesecurity.com/blog/hacker-hat-colors-an-inside-look-at-the-hacking-ecosystem/

Now of course there are many films based around hackers but the one I am wanting to look into is DarkWeb unfriended. In the film the guy finds a laptop which is owned by a hacker who is part of a group who kidnap and either sell or murder women. The big mistake he makes is using it to call all his friends which drags them into the situation.Here is a trailer for the film:

In the film it really establishes how much power Hackers have. How they were able to find everyone locations most likely due to the location trackers on laptops and phones and in the trailer how you see they were able to turn off the life support machine of one of the girls mother.

The next one I am going to be talking about is one of the best known hacker games which of course is Watch Dogs. In both watch dogs games you play as a hacker who can use hacking to do multiple things suck as look at security cameras,Listen in to peoples calls, identify people and also change traffic lights.

In this video it helpfully points out all the different ways you can hack and how they can work to your advantage in the game.

Slash do dash dot (codes):

Now lets look into codes. Now when it comes to codes I have took into thought 2 different types. The first is computer codes and the second is secret codes.

Computer codes:

Now the first computer code which everyone knows is of course binary and everything we have on our computer is converted into binary as it is the only language the computer understands. The way binary works is like a light switch. You have 0 as off and 1 as on. Now of course us humans struggle to understand binary and when written down is a bunch of nonsense to us which is why we use hexadecimal to simplifies things. Now binary is normally in 8 bit segments. This means one segment of binary is 2 Hexadecimal numbers. 

As you can see on the chart each hexadecimal number/letter has a binary value.So for example if the hexadecimal was A5 that converts to 10100100 in binary.

Secret codes:

Now secret codes have been around for a very long time and the first use of them was in 1470 in Italy when they first used the cipher wheel. However the first uses of secret codes in the military was not until 1860.This inforation was gotten from this website:

https://ext.vt.edu/content/dam/ext_vt_edu/topics/4h-youth/makers/files/ww1-history-behind-it-codes-ciphers.pdf

Now of coourse there are many different codes such as:

ATBash:

This is a simple one where you just simply flip the alphabet around.So for example if you had written down SVOOL it would translate into Hello.This is a basic code.

A1Z26:

Now for this one the letter corrisponds to its number value in the alphabet.For example if you had 8,5,12,12,15 it translates to hello.Yet again this is a basic code and is easy to decipher.

Morse code:

Now morse code while when firt created would of been hard to crack but now because it is so popularly used it is well know by everyone. Morse code is also a code mainly done over noise. Here is an example:

Caesar Cipher:

Now the Caesar Cipher is one of the most secure codes.This is because the person who receives the information they need to know the key (shift number) in order to decode it. This video really explains how it works and is a good example of how it works.

Now of course not all codes are perfect and are really hard to create. So if you are thinking of creating a code for a game then you need to really put a lot of time and effort into how difficult it is and also if the person will actually be able to solve it. Remember though if you want a challenge to your game don’t make it to easy and definitely make sure it works well. Here is a great comedy example of a bad code.