So, let's try this for a change, the number topic is getting a bit old. so how about we try to post
as many "hacks" we can think of, and not flame about how good/bad/stupid they are

Basically anything qualifies, but the idea is that you use a program/service (on or offline)
in such a way that might not be intentional. but is still useful.

[thread slightly trimmed pending future event]

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DISCLAIMER: The following information you are going to read in this post will be for purely educational purposes only. They potentially include the act of bypassing payment for services, which can truly be illegal. So watch your step, and don't forget that Big Brother is watching you.

Headers have always been a source of an identification of authentication. So here, I list a few examples (some of which were existent, some of which are now not in use anymore, but bear with me - they're just examples here for educational purposes )

If you remember a few years back, MegaUpload (http://www.megaupload.com/) used to complain that "all slots allocated to your country is full - subscribe to a premium account to download" or something like that. With a little research, I found out that anyone with the Alexa Toolbar installed was considered a premium user. Thus, a simple modification of the User-Agent headers to "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; Alexa Toolbar) " easily bypassed the restriction. Now, a few months back, they required you to install a "MegaUpload Toolbar" before allowing you to access its uploading feature / downloads. So, a slight modification to the modified headers would give "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; MEGAUPLOAD 1.0)". Now, MU has removed its toolbar promotions and you're free to upload / download as per normal now. So as I said - this is just for educational purposes

Next, I'm not sure about the status of it now, but this used to work.. Windows Magazine, .NET Magazine, Nature Magazine etc used to require subscriptions to allow viewing of their content. However, Google always seemed to be able to crawl for the content, albeit not showing it in their cache. The only plausible reason for this (to my knowledge) is because it's Google the Googlebot has the ability (and authenticity) to crawl through these websites. Thus, a simple modification of headers (again, but this time from the registry) -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
@="Googlebot/2.1"
"Compatible"="+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"

would easily achieve the effect of spoofing the Googlebot and thus giving you access to those sites.

Well, I'm off now. More to come.

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I Element, am in no way responsible for the jail time and or tossed sallad that you may or may not receive from attempting this. This article is intended for educational purposes only. I am in no way liable for the havoc that may insue <from it being attempted.

Tools Needed:
Firefox
Flashget
Some Basic HTML knowledge

Okay, even though I posted this information in another thread, I felt that I should add it the collection that is already in here. I guess by most definitions this is not really a hack, but since we can't download limewire here at school, I needed a way to snag some free music.
So, first of all, visit http://www.musicjesus.com. The site is pretty easy to use, and makes finding songs quite easy. In this example I will be using the song Bohemian Raphsody by Queen. Just type "Bohemian Raphsody" (without quotes) into the search bar, and click enter. You should only get 1 result. If you get more than 1, select the one that is by Queen. Now, when you click on the link, you get another page open that has an embedded music video in it. If you know anything about html, then you know that the first thing that you need to do is view the source to check out what's going on. So, right click, and view source. For that music to be in there, there must be an embed tag. So search for the word "embed" (without quotes) and you should see this tag:

<embed type="application/x-mplayer2" pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/"
src="http://www.musicjesus.com/asx.php?id=19802" width=340 height=300
autostart=true showpositioncontrols=0 volume=-20 showstatusbar="1"></embed>

Now, you see that URL that's in there? You need to follow that. Paste it into your address bar and click enter. You should now be at a page that says this:

<ASX VERSION="1.0">
<ENTRY><REF HREF="http://corbilla.com/video3.php?vid=2146210" /></ENTRY>
</ASX>

Here you see another redirect that you must follow. If you are using Windows Media Player as your default media program, then it will automatically start upon viewing that link. Well, we don't wanna just listen to the song, we want to download it. So, go back to your browser and you should have a blank page. I can't seem to right click on it, so I go to view -> Source to get the source of the page. And here you will see an mms:// URL. Here is where the Flashget program comes in handy. Open it up, and click the new button. In the destination box, past that mms URL. You can also select your download location and what you want the file to be named before you click the download button. When you click the button, you will begin "borrowing" the music. I hope that you enjoy the tunes.

Notes:
- There are some important things to point out:

- I can't seem to get this to work with IE. When you go to the page that has the mms url, it won't open. It automatically just opens the video file. I couldn't seem to get it to work in Opera either, although I'm not very familiar with that broswer. I haven't tried to disable scripting yet, so that may be all that is needed to get it to work. If you have any ideas about how to get it to work with IE, please snd me a pm with your thoughts.

- This is very important for me to point out to you. The site has various ways to get the music. For example, some of the links will take you to the asx file, and then the next link will just be the music. There will be no mms URLs on some of them. While this is easier, some of the links are actually harder to get to. Some redirect even more and take an even longer time. This is due to the fact that a lot of the music is derived from other sites and is therefore using their security. But it really doesn't matter, because I haven't found ay songs that I can't get. If all else fails, just keep persisting and you'll get there. I hope that this is a good addition to the collection that we have here. And thanks for all the feedback that has been given to me.I'll give all of these a try at some point and time. I think having a thread like this open helps people see that there are some real world apps to the principles that we learn. Cheers!

in order to keep rhican's brilliant post alive, i've decided to put a old (and somewhat lame) windows "hack" on here. if you ever find yourself at a friend or advisary's home and you need access to their pc, the easiest way to attempt at bypassing the passwords is to:

option A - access the hidden administartor profile:
-power up the pc
-hit F8 to access the windows boot menu
-select safe mode
-wait 'til windows finished loading
-select the administrator account (should be without a password in most cases) and create your own account

option B - back up and delete the sam file:
the drive should contain linux (dsl is my preferred distro) and if the person is using ntfs, dome software to mount ntfs partitions is also needed. now, copy the sam file to the pendrive (usually located in c:\windows\system32\config\sam). delete the sam file and reboot the pc (this time without the pendrive) all accounts and passwords should now be reset. the main disadvantage of this method however, is that you can't access the user's sensitive data.

edit: oh yes, i almost forgot. remember that sam file you copied? to return all usernames and passwords, boot from your pendrive again, mount the partition if required and replace the new sam file that windows created. that should restore the usernames and passwords back to it's original state.

Hola aceldama,

What do you mean by 'sensitive data'? All distros I tried out till now where able to get every single file from an NTFS partition. Only ESF (Encrypted File System) were not readable. At least I think so...

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