Community Byte: HackThisSite Walkthrough, Part 5 - Legal Hacker Training

Welcome to the fifth Community Byte for coding in Python and beating the challenges given to us from HackThisSite. These sessions are created to bring our community together, to learn from each other, and essentially grow together. Everyone is welcome, from novice programmers to aspiring hackers—even people that are nearly computer illiterate.

We're having a schedule change starting this week to better accommodate our programming director's (Sol Gates) schedule. This will also benefit other members, myself included. I noticed a lot of people like to go out on weekends (as people tend to do), so learning programming during the work week seems to be a more convenient option. So here you have it! The new day and time for programming will be every Monday and Wednesday at 5 p.m. PST.

HackThisSite will remain on Friday nights, as discussed in IRC.

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. 

Python is an easy-to-learn and fun programming language. It was made with readability and simplicity in mind. This keeps things speedy and simple, which helps novice programmers grasp the concepts and ideas pertaining to programming more easily.

This week's mission on HackThisSite will begin educating on basic cryptography. This is a different aspect of computers that we have not yet explored, but it is incredibly essential in your journey to becoming a hacker. Our job is going to be to reverse a cryptographic algorithm using nothing but our brains.

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 out 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 (Mondays and Wednesdays), and I am in charge of HTS missions (Fridays).

When Does It Start?

Programming

Every Monday and Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. PST. If you need to convert the time from your time zone, go to the Time Zone Converter.

HackThisSite Missions

Every Friday at 5:00 p.m. 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 weeks project:

• Get more people in IRC.
• Learn a bit of cryptography.
• Inspire some people to learn on their own time out of free will.

Follow and Chat with Null Byte:

Twitter

Google+

IRC chat

Image via sciencemag