Back in the late nineties, around 1999, my mother bought me my first computer. Around this time The Matrix movie was released which as a young boy with a new computer had me Yahoo’ing (Google was largely unknown) for the term ‘hacking’. Back then Yahoo! Chat was still around and had a chat room called the ‘Hackers Lounge’, everyone in there was talking about all sorts of cool things you could do with computers that I had never heard of before. With hindsight, most of the people in the chat room were script kiddies who knew how to run a few Windows GUI ‘hacking’ tools and largely acting like they were the kings of the Internet. At the time I wanted to learn about all of the cool things they knew. I started downloading and learning how to use these ‘hacking’ tools by the use of my guinea pig friends and family (my siblings soon grew tired of me remotely opening and closing their CD-ROM drives).
Some of these tools are still actively developed and used today, invaluable to conducting modern Penetration Testing and security audits. For the sake of nostalgia, I present to you some of the coolest most 1337 ‘hacking’ tools that I and others used ‘back in the day’. Warning: Download links not verified.
Legion by Rhino9
Use: Windows Null Session share scanner.
Released: 1999
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=26263&seqNum=5
Download: http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/14711/legion.zip.html
Sub7
Use: Remote Administration Tool (RAT) AKA Trojan
Released: 1999
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub7
Download: http://www.elite-hackers.com/files/sub7.exe
Netbus
Use: Remote Administration Tool (RAT) AKA Trojan
Released: 1998
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBus
Download: http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/14572/NetB160.zip.html
Knoppix
Use: Linux LiveCD with pre-installed tools
Released: 2000
Platform: Linux LiveCD
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix
Download: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
L0phtCrack
Use: Password auditing & recovery
Released: 1997|2000?
Platform: Windows & LiveCD
Further Info: http://www.l0phtcrack.com/
Download: http://www.l0phtcrack.com/download.html
SATAN
Use: Vulnerability Scanner
Released: 1995
Platform: *nix?
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Administrator_Tool_for_Analyzing_Networks
Download: http://www.porcupine.org/satan/mirrors.html
Brutus
Use: Remote Password Brute Forcer
Released: 1999/2000?
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://www.hoobie.net/brutus/
Download: http://www.hoobie.net/brutus/brutus-download.html
NeoTrace
Use: Visual Traceroute
Released: ???
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Traceroute-Whois-Tools/McAfee-NeoTrace-Professional.shtml
Download: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Traceroute-Whois-Tools/McAfee-NeoTrace-Professional.shtml
Back Orifice
Use: Remote Administration Tool (RAT) AKA Trojan
Released: 1998
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice
Download: http://www.cultdeadcow.com/tools/bo.html
Cain & Abel
Use: Password recovery tool
Released: 1999?
Platform: Windows
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_and_Abel_(software)
Download: http://www.oxid.it/cain.html
Nikto
Use: Web Vulnerability Scanner
Released: 2001
Platform: Windows/Linux (Perl)
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikto_Web_Scanner
Download: http://www.cirt.net/Nikto2
John The Ripper
Use: Password Cracker
Released: ???
Platform: Multiplatform
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Ripper
Download: http://www.openwall.com/john/
Nmap
Use: Port Scanner and More
Released: 1997
Platform: *nix
Further Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nmap
Download: http://nmap.org/download.html
There are a lot more old school tools that were about, which did you use?
11 Responses
I used all of them. When I was creating my first trojan(I think I coded it Delphi 5, sometimes 6-8 years ago), Netbus was my example to look from :)
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Dont forget Borland C++ and Virus Creation Labs.
ChibaCity
Sub7.
Was brilliant, pretending to be an ICQ operative sending out updates via IM. You were pretyt limited to what you could do though on a 56k connection :(
Do you remember the booters and mass voice bot? Thing of the past :-)
dammit, old school tools – bo2k was my favourite one, although sub7/netbus were still ok. I think I owned pretty much all my campus neighborhood (10BT at that time), including all the funny warez http://ftp... so much fun :)
Nice Post..like it very much.specialy your story.
Is it bad I’ve used maybe a handful of those tools recently, JTR is still a cracking tool.
Haha, Sub7 and NetBus were the shit back in the day.
So many memories – I love this post :)
playing with these old-school hacking tools as a boy opened the door into the most enjoyable career I follow today.
I’m sure I still have some of the originals lying around somewhere…
David.
Haha an awesome post. Sub7 and Back Orifice bring back memories of annoying the shit out of people from chat rooms stupid enough to download myphoto.jpg.exe
I still use Cain & Abel on occasions now. Old habits die hard.