Community Byte: HackThisSite Walkthrough, Part 4 - Legal Hacker Training

Another Community Byte announcement from Null Byte! The Community Byte projects serve 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. In our sessions, we have started to both code and complete HTS missions. There is something for everyone here, so make sure you join in on the fun learning experience.

These missions are for everyone here, and you can join at any time. Your experience level doesn't matter. HackThisSite is a free, legal and safe practice ground for aspiring hackers wanting to test their knowledge on something real. We have full permission to exploit their servers, and we even get point rewards for it. This week's mission on HackThisSite will be to recover the admin password by manipulating an I forgot my password form action.

Also, members of our community will be teaming up to code in the Python programming language. Python is an easy-to-learn, versatile programming language. This will be led by the community mod, Sol Gates.

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).
• A friendly disposition toward other members (last week we had to kick a few people for misconduct).

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. 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.

Please join up with us! If you have other ideas for a community project, let me know in the forums. Follow Null Byte on Twitter and G+ for the latest tutorial updates. Feel free to drop other members a few lines in the IRC. Happy hacking everyone!