Computer Information for my story -

[silentprincess]

I'm writing a story about people hacking into computers and trying access data that is locked. I have been doing research, but it can be confusing and I'm not very good at computer things. Basically a set of hackers hack into a hotel and start making the computers and all the things running from computers not work, they mess with the phones and the locks of the hotel rooms, as well as steal credit card numbers and personal information to sell.

Also there are people trying to hack into the main characters computer, and I was wondering which kind of computer would be better to deal with that sort of thing? Which computers are easier to hack into? Are Mac's a lot safer than Windows computers? And is there a way of locking a computer so that it doesn't work if you type the password or are not recognized? Is there a way to track the computer when stolen? Is there a way to lock a jump-drive or stick drive so that nobody can get into it? Are there ways to make programs for this sort of thing by yourself?And all sorts of things about hacking and computer information in general, like hard drives, key-logging, motherboards and so on.

I hope this doesn't sound suspicious, I seriously don't know anything about computers or hacking, it's just for my story so it sound more realistic. If the admins would like to delete this thread, it is okay, and I understand why and I am very sorry for starting any trouble.

 

[CatParty]

 

[DC 740]

Lol no offense to you OP but there's a reason that movies and TV shows act really obnoxious when it comes to "hacking" stuff. You know, frantic music, the nerd person typing furiously, etc. The reality is is the best type of malicious action is the quietest... As in, you either have some amazing social skills for "social engineering" like Kevin Mitnick (being smooth enough / acting natural enough no one would suspect a thing), or stuff like that recent Target/department store breach where basically no one knew what was happening for months.

There totally are some elements you could bring from that though and keep it realistic/exciting, like people disguising themselves as technicians to get access onto a network.

I'm reading through your post again... What specifically are the characters trying to do? I'm no expert or anything, you're just kinda asking a lot of questions.

Your post does remind me of some audio logs I listened to from the Phone Losers of America. They basically get around with staff information on a hotel phone board and started fucking with people like they were the front desk at like three in the morning. Pretty funny.

 

[BatNapalm]

You should read the book "Hacking for Dummies" by Kevin Beaver (I'm not calling you a dummy, that's just the title of the book).

While it is more of an instructional thing, just reading it dispels a lot of the myths that the media and entertainment have constructed to make hacking seeming interesting and glamorous. For what you need, it's all the information about the subject that you could ever want and the writing is very clear, so you don't need a big technological background. Plus, it's only 400 pages long and you can either download it from a torrent site or something or get a used copy for about $8.

 

[OtterParty]

It's fiction. You don't need to sweat the trivia. Don't go into too much detail about what programs or brands went into the hacking - that's what really brings the nerds out with their pitchforks and tar and feathers and console wars.

 

[HG 400]

You have to type really super fast and use the arrow keys to dodge the giant animated skeletons that pop out at you while you're hacking past the defenses. It works best if you have two people.

 

[BatNapalm]

No wonder why NCIS gets such huge ratings in America. If that clip is any indication, it's one of the best comedies on regular TV.

 

[silentprincess]

Would it be better to write hacking realistically or write in a fictional way?

You should read the book "Hacking for Dummies" by Kevin Beaver (I'm not calling you a dummy, that's just the title of the book).

While it is more of an instructional thing, just reading it dispels a lot of the myths that the media and entertainment have constructed to make hacking seeming interesting and glamorous. For what you need, it's all the information about the subject that you could ever want and the writing is very clear, so you don't need a big technological background. Plus, it's only 400 pages long and you can either download it from a torrent site or something or get a used copy for about $8.

Thank you so much for the suggestion, I've ordered myself a copy of the book and it should be coming tomorrow.

 

[DC 740]

I think you should write it however you want, either could be amusing.

Just try not to do this:

[youtube]hkDD03yeLnU[/youtube]

edit: Basically what Some JERK said below me said.

 

[Some JERK]

Would it be better to write hacking realistically or write in a fictional way?

If you write it fictionally (AKA: black technology magic voodo) then people will criticize you for getting everything wrong and having no idea what you're talking about

however, if you make a serious effort to learn the concepts, technology, and realities of "hacking", and apply them in a realistic manner to your story... those same people will criticize you for getting everything wrong and having no idea what you're talking about.

So write the story you'd like to write. Don't worry about getting it exactly right, you won't make everyone happy anyway.

EDIT: you could also just take the route that they took in all of the Star Wars movies and not explain how a god damned thing works. Just have it work and rely on the fact that if people already understand how a thing works, they don't usually spend any time explaining how it works to each other (like they do in Star Trek, for example.) because that kinda' doesn't make any sense anyway. A 30 second speech about how and why you are "modulating the shield frequency" (IE: turning the knob) would be pointless on a ship where anyone who is already on the bridge likely had to receive training on operating the shields in an emergency.

My point is, you can just have them do it and not really waste too much time on "how".

 

[Dr. Meme]

http://hackertyper.net/

 

[BatNapalm]

Would it be better to write hacking realistically or write in a fictional way?

Ultimately that's up to you to decide but either way, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the actual mechanics of the subject at hand because even if you take the more fantastical route, you will have a much better chance of making it seem believable enough to the readers.

http://hackertyper.net/

I had way more fun with that than I thought I would.

 

[hellbound]

If you write it fictionally (AKA: black technology magic voodo) then people will criticize you for getting everything wrong and having no idea what you're talking about

however, if you make a serious effort to learn the concepts, technology, and realities of "hacking", and apply them in a realistic manner to your story... those same people will criticize you for getting everything wrong and having no idea what you're talking about.

So write the story you'd like to write. Don't worry about getting it exactly right, you won't make everyone happy anyway.

EDIT: you could also just take the route that they took in all of the Star Wars movies and not explain how a god damned thing works. Just have it work and rely on the fact that if people already understand how a thing works, they don't usually spend any time explaining how it works to each other (like they do in Star Trek, for example.) because that kinda' doesn't make any sense anyway. A 30 second speech about how and why you are "modulating the shield frequency" (IE: turning the knob) would be pointless on a ship where anyone who is already on the bridge likely had to receive training on operating the shields in an emergency.

My point is, you can just have them do it and not really waste too much time on "how".

I'm no big writer, but this is how I'd do it. Just don't bother explaining how. Instead of "Oh shit he locked out the thumbdrive with asftgl modulation VI encryption using a BuRRITo algorithmic turboencabulator hardcoded to a SQUID ring, we can't break it" cut out all that extra text and have them be like "oh shit he locked out the thumbdrive, we can't break it." If your reader doesn't know what all the actual stuff means, they won't care. If they do know, I guarantee you will get something wrong and they'll scoff, but if you gloss over it they won't care unless your story actually hinges on the technical details.

The exception is if you're Neal Stephenson and have an ungodly ability to do research.

What I DO know is: yes, you can encrypt just about any data (including a thumb drive) to where the only ways to break it are to have access to NSA-level cryptanalysis and lots of time, or access to a person with the password, a pair of needlenose pliers, and a callous disregard for human life.

Yes, you can lock out a computer to only be accessible by password but I believe it's much, much harder if it's connected to the internet at all; even the big hush-hush government agencies get hacked.

Yes, you can track a stolen computer but unless you have some sort of GPS tracker in it that also has a data transmitter it would really only be able to report if it gets connected to the internet and then may not have access to good location data. I believe such GPS beacons do exist, but they are probably expensive and presumably have limited battery life.

IIRC Macs aren't inherently safer than Windows PCs but because Windows has by far the largest market share more efforts focus on it. This is even less of an issue when it comes to cross-platform stuff like websites.

 

[Some JERK]

I'm no big writer, but this is how I'd do it. Just don't bother explaining how. Instead of "Oh shit he locked out the thumbdrive with asftgl modulation VI encryption using a BuRRITo algorithmic turboencabulator hardcoded to a SQUID ring, we can't break it" cut out all that extra text and have them be like "oh shit he locked out the thumbdrive, we can't break it." If your reader doesn't know what all the actual stuff means, they won't care. If they do know, I guarantee you will get something wrong and they'll scoff, but if you gloss over it they won't care unless your story actually hinges on the technical details.

The exception is if you're Neal Stephenson and have an ungodly ability to do research.

What I DO know is: yes, you can encrypt just about any data (including a thumb drive) to where the only ways to break it are to have access to NSA-level cryptanalysis and lots of time, or access to a person with the password, a pair of needlenose pliers, and a callous disregard for human life.

Yes, you can lock out a computer to only be accessible by password but I believe it's much, much harder if it's connected to the internet at all; even the big hush-hush government agencies get hacked.

Yes, you can track a stolen computer but unless you have some sort of GPS tracker in it that also has a data transmitter it would really only be able to report if it gets connected to the internet and then may not have access to good location data. I believe such GPS beacons do exist, but they are probably expensive and presumably have limited battery life.

IIRC Macs aren't inherently safer than Windows PCs but because Windows has by far the largest market share more efforts focus on it. This is even less of an issue when it comes to cross-platform stuff like websites.

The Mac thing is debatable. Mac doesn't have the largest market share, but it's got a really big one. Big enough to make it an attractive target to virus/malware coders. Newer Macs are built on a unix/BSD core which is absolutely inherently more secure than windows because of its permissions/escalation model. It's pretty compartmentalized. But it doesn't matter that much. I think you hit it on the head here. Instead of throwing out jargon (which would, as you say, annoy and confuse non-technical people, and likely only irritate technical people) you could just generalize, and let the end results speak for themselves.

"This drive is encrypted. We're locked out."
"All of the hotels in this chain use the same hardware, and I know a guy at XYZ semiconductor who owed me a favor.... long story short... we've got a way in" (cue inconspicuous looking black box that gets switched on, shutting down all the widgets, grommets, and waffle irons.)

 

[silentprincess]

Thank you all for your help, it's been a little easier to understand now. I am going to ask another question if that is okay, and doesn't sound stupid?

When you open a computer, can you extract files from the hard drive? Also if the hard drive is encrypted, are you still able to look inside the drive?

Sorry for the stupid quesitons, I know I sound like a thick person. Thank you once again.

 

[hellbound]

Thank you all for your help, it's been a little easier to understand now. I am going to ask another question if that is okay, and doesn't sound stupid?

When you open a computer, can you extract files from the hard drive? Also if the hard drive is encrypted, are you still able to look inside the drive?

Sorry for the stupid quesitons, I know I sound like a thick person. Thank you once again.

What do you mean, when you open a computer? Like, physically open the case? Sure, but you don't need to. The hard drive is sort of a sealed unit, it doesn't really matter if it's in the computer it was built in or not, it just needs to be hooked up to something. Actually if you have access to some specialized stuff and training you could even take apart a damaged hard drive and recover data from the platters themselves. Not unheard of in computer forensics or damage recovery.

There's something called RAID which is used for both backing up hard drives and/or making them more efficient, and part of that can be what's called "striping" the data across multiple drives, which basically means some parts of files are on one drive and some are on another, and if you had that going on you'd need to have access to at least one full set of drives. I think.

Hard drive encryption, well, it depends. They may have the whole drive encrypted, pretty much (I think you would probably need some stuff unencrypted at least if it's the drive you're running the OS and encryption software from, so it can actually run it, but I'm not sure). They may have a part of it that's encrypted and the rest open. They may have individual files encrypted. They may have it encrypted AND hidden so that if you don't know about the encryption, you don't even know there's anything encrypted there (known as deniable encryption). Any of these are possible. What it boils down to is, whatever's encrypted is going to look pretty much like random junk unless you can decrypt it.

So you could look through the hard drive and when you come across something encrypted you aren't just going to see "SECRET PLANS.txt" that's locked out, you're going to see what looks like trash. The data's there, if you have the drive and the equipment you can see it, you just can't figure out what it is (or, possibly, even that it is something of note at all) without decrypting it.

 

[silentprincess]

I also wanted to ask, would a hotel have on site computer programmers and nerds working on programmes and upgrades, or would they be offsite?

Would hotels be using Windows or Macs?

How would a computer upgrade work in a hotel? I was going to have them upgrade that night making the computers more vulnerable.

Would someone be able to hack and change the reservation? The room needs to be changed so that the Deputy of Homeland Security can be in the room facing the ocean, so that a rocket launcher can be launched.

Is there too much chaos going on with all the computers and such being hacked?

Sorry if these questions are stupid, I don't mean to be slow in the mind.

 

[sikotik]

They'd most likely be running Windows.
What kind of 'upgrades'? Hardware, or software?

A software update could cause a vulnerability that could be exploited