Community Byte: HackThisSite Walkthrough, Part 3 - Legal Hacker Training

Welcome to another Community Byte announcement from Null Byte! The goal of the Community Bytes is to teach people in a co-operative, hands-on manner. Learning from experience and immersing yourself in a subject is the best way to learn something foreign to you, so that is exactly what we do! In our sessions, we have started to both code and complete HTS missions. This means that there is something for everyone here, so make sure you join us.

Our mission this week is to complete HackThisSite, Basic Mission 3, as well as to practice coding in the Python programming language. HTS hosts simulated missions on their servers that we are able to hack and exploit. Upon completing every mission, HTS credits points to your account to prove you have completed the mission. Since they own the server, that means that it is completely legal to hack them, since we have permission.

Prerequisites

• An IRC client, like XChat.
• An account on HackThisSite.
• Some will to learn basic JavaScript (getting a head start would help).
• Gobby, a collaborative code editor (programmers).

How Does this Work?

If you're new to IRC, go here to learn how to set it up and use it. I will walk everyone through the mission and give you all of the resources and hints you need to solve it via chat. If none of our users are able to solve the mission, I will walk you through how to complete it, and make sure that you learn why the exploit works. Sol Gates is in charge of community coding, and I am in charge of HTS missions.

When Does It Start?

Every Friday at 5:00 pm PST. If you need to convert the time from your time zone, go to the Time Zone Converter. PLEASE, arrive on time. In the future, you will be left out if you do not arrive on time.

Project Goals

Here are some of my hopes for the community for this week's project:

• Educate about port 80 exploits.
• Learn JavaScript and ways to exploit it.
• Get more people in IRC.
• Learn a bit of HTML and web security.

This week's missions gets a lot more intense, so if you really want to jump in, now is the best time! Follow me on Twitter and G+ for the latest updates. Also, feel free to start your own discussions in the forums or in the IRC. Happy hacking everyone!