Hello, I was wondering what the steps would be once you discover a botnet.  In the USA is there an agency to report it to that would actually make an effort to investigate and pursue to botmaster or is it more of the kind of thing that gets reported, entered into statistics and forgotten about?

Hey, I recently came across a very very small 8gb USB flash drive on newegg, a bit bigger than the tip of your pinky and I was trying to think about uses for it.  The security-minded side of my head came out and wondered about using it to automatically install a keylogger or some other proof of concept program like calc.exe or notepad.exe

I did some googling about Autorun.inf and apparently the "open" option in Autorun.inf files is disabled for removable storage like usb flash drives and only really works with DVD's and CD's.  Granted I'll probably never use this for any kind of malicious intentions its turned into a challenge to just see if I can find out how to do it.

So my question is.. is such a thing possible?  I heard about incidents where a program on a usb drive was renamed to picture.jpg.exe so the user opens it and the program runs  but I was hoping for no more interaction than simply plugging it in and letting it run on its own.

Any suggestions, advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Meh, no problem.

Just wanted to make sure i wasn't misunderstood. 

I appreciate the response but thats not quite what I was looking for.

I am fully aware that knowledge of linux is important, I have had several years experience with it, as a development, desktop and server environment.  I also realize the need for networking knowledge.  However, I thought my question was focused in a different realm than general Linux and networking and more towards low level programming and reverse engineering and how to get started in that area.  Maybe ideas for a project or something thats a little more within reach than reverse engineering/altering the kernels of embedded devices to be able to build up to that level.

If there is more of a correlation between the two areas than what I'm seeing, let me know.

Hello everyone,

I have a question/request for whoever wants to answer.  I've been interested in the whole hacking/security field for a while now.  However, what I would really like to do is lean more towards research and development than pen-testing.

Its been in the back of my mind for a while now but since I got a shiny new iPod Touch and was very disappointed when I found out that it doesn't support packet injection and that the wireless driver was built into the kernel which makes "hacking" it to do wireless packet injection more difficult.  I spent hours searching the web looking for someone that might be working on it with no results when I came to realize that I would love to be able to do that kind of stuff on my own.  I read H.D. Moore's blog posts about hacking the iPhone and thats exactly what I want to be able to do, however... I'm severely lacking in the needed skillset.

Trying to think about what I would need to learn is at least slightly intimidating and I have no clue how to ease into it or even find a good place to jump in head first.  I suppose some of the topics might be driver/kernel internals and development, assembly language and a few others.  I took a programming class at a local college and we didn't even use a compiler the whole class (it was a c programming class) and the instructor even seemed to be learning some of the things as he went, stuff I had known for years.

In other words, I want to take it up to the next level or two (or down to the lower levels) and have no idea where to start.  What would be nice is a project thats not quite as dfficult as hacking/modding a proprietary kernel (is that even legal?) to start on and to learn from so the stuff I read and find out gets put to use so I don't lose it by the next week.

Btw, sorry for making you read such a long post 

Is this the book you were talking about? "Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery"

Would you recommend it?

Hey, I've been hearing quite a bit about fuzzers and their potential.  I've heard some good things about a fuzzer called SPIKE but I can't seem to find that much documentation on it.

Also, I've been looking for something to try it out on but I can't seem to think of anyway to get some decent practice/experience with it.  Can I get some ideas or advice or something, something simple to practice on for the first time would be wonderful.

Alright, I think I get it.  Basically its just for practice with using the tools, like making sure you know how to use a backdoor or rootkit and all the other stuff in your toolbox, right?

But wouldn't a single computer with the OS your attacking or VMWare suffice for that?

Oh, and thanks, I think I'm gonna like it here 

I had been under the impression that a big part of penetration testing was to find vulnerabilities in a way the client's network is setup and finding your way around it, and stuff like weak passwords and other oddities?  But if you set it up yourself doesn't that pretty much eliminate that aspect because you are the one that set it up?

A question I've had for a while, if you are performing a penetration test and you find out that all their computers are patched up and they aren't using any dynamic technologies in their website that would be vulnerable to any attacks from that vector what do you do short of social engineering or looking for an 0day?