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New Technical questions or hacking?

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by trockii

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Has anyone else been noticing the weird and unusual questions that have been asked in the Technical Q&A section? I have read about 4 today that ask about "cracking" passwords and getting free cracks for software and such. I always considered this website a place for the professionals of our trade to come and get help from others in the same profession. I feel now it's becoming a place for hackers to come and find out ways to hack into a co-workers or some other computer they may have come in contact with along their way. I for one will not assist in helping anyone "crack" someone else's password protected screensaver or password protected BIOS. If you are an administrator and need access you can always reset an unknown pw if for whatever reason the password creator is unavailable (fired, death, or anything else) Does anyone else feel this way? or is it just me?

2 replies

by tomsal

You'll always have the non-professional types, the script kiddies, the teenagers, etc. coming to this site (and any such like it) because there is no criteria for membership and its free. For an "IT professional only" site you'd need to charge a fee, and preferrably have it open to folks who validate their professional experience somehow like by showing proof by attaining a certain certification or multiple certifications, a degree, or at the least attest (using the honor system) that you have certain experience within the industry, etc.

Even after all that you still can't promise professionals only to use the site, nor can you promise the integrity of the professionals. There is always the human factor that no fees, certs, degrees or experience can account for. It would however greatly reduce the chances of "kiddies" from using the site.

Now as for the password thing..any one even a little savvy with a search engine can pretty easily find utilities to crack passwords -- from cisco router passwords, MS office files, admin and root accounts (both Linux and Windows server produts), etc.

And bios passwords are among the easiest to hack.

So where there is a will there is easily a way.

But yes, I'm with you and I wouldn't help someone who didn't pass my own internal "smell test" of integrity.

PS. don't you love the folks who go "Um...can someone please give the product key for Windows Server 2003, I lost mine."

by support#netropole.com

why would they want to sift through all the tech babble to find the little clues they need. its so much easier to find a cracker/hacker website where everything is spelled out in black and white. they are all over the net and easy to find. i find this forum is a good place to assist people in FIXING computer issues not breaking them.

personally i come for the techno babble :)
and the people that think in 3 letters lol

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