General Hacking Questions

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General Hacking Questions Anonymous 12/03/14 (Wed) 02:17:43 No.475

Hey /g/ents. I'm new to computer science, so this is going to come off as a retarded question. Still, it's one I'm interested in asking.

I was wondering how hackers gain information from people. I know that getting people to download / click things online is one way, but for example, people who "dox" someone and get information from them that is not publicly accessible - well, how do they do it?

Finding information via social media isn't that difficult, but if it's an anonymous person onsay a tumblr page and the hacker doesn't have any information about them, how would he go about getting it? What's exploitable about the site, if anything?

Also, what's a good place to start if I'm interested in learning about the subject? I'm not going to be hacking anyone, but I'd like to learn about the subject for general knowledge.

Thanks.

Anonymous 12/18/14 (Thu) 19:57:52 No.499

We mostly pray to the gods of Hacking and sacrifice virgins at the full moon.

Anonymous 12/18/14 (Thu) 23:29:15 No.500

They either rely on >>499, social engineering or insecure systems.
There was a talk a while back at DEFCON of some guy who got the address of some CEO's gf. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmO7wQKCMw) He showed some of the best social engineering/insecurities, and how they can be used in conjunction with each other. To be a cracker (not Hacker, because a hacker is somebody who enjoys playful cleverness, not cracking into systems) you have to know a lot about the systems in use, about how people work, and you have to dedicate a lot of time to it.
To gain the knowledge, you need to just accumulate as much general networking, security and hardware knowledge as possible, and when you see patterns that can lead to vulnerability, you should be able to know how to research further. Search engines are a great tool, and in doubt, you can always start a thread on your beloved /gentoo/, which needs some more traffic anyway.
It's good that you're starting out interested and relatively knowledgeable, instead of thinking that computers are magical black boxes, you acknowledge the fact that most of it is social engineering.