What happens when your site is hacked?

Why would someone do that?


How do people do that?

What are the possible harms?

recently all the mails and everything that was stored in my e-mail account for years was gone. The e-mail was with a little known company/ provider. Is it possible that it was hacked?

No, the company probably screwed it up. Always keep a backup.

The term you're looking for is 'cracking'. Hacking is harmless.

Well, let me make it simplier for you on the matter of the first few questions.

Note: Text was copied from www.elitehackers.com

White-Hat Hacker


A white hat hacker, also rendered as whitehat or white-hat, is, in the realm of information technology, a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems. Realizing that the Internet now represents human voices from all around the world makes the defense of its integrity an important pastime for many. A white hat generally focuses on securing IT systems, whereas a black hat (the opposite) would like to break into them — but this is a simplification. A black hat will wish to secure his own machine, and a white hat might need to break into a black hat's machine in the course of an investigation. What exactly differentiates white hats and black hats is open to interpretation, but white hats tend to cite altruistic motivations.



Grey-Hat Hacker


A grey hat is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They hack for no personal gain and do not have malicious intentions, but commit crimes.



Black-Hat Hacker


A black hat or black-hat hacker is a malicious or criminal hacker. The term hacker is also commonly is used as a synonym for "black hat hacker". However, in computer jargon, the meaning of "hacker" is much more broad.
Usually a Black Hat refers to a person that maintains knowlege of the vulnerabilities and exploits they find as secret for private advantage, not revealing them either to the general public or manufacturer for correction. Many Black Hats promote individual freedom and accessibility over privacy and security. Black Hats may seek to expand holes in systems; any attempts made to patch software are generally to prevent others from also compromising a system they have already obtained secure control over. A Black Hat hacker may have access to 0-day exploits (private software that exploits security vulnerabilities; 0-day exploits have not been distributed to the public). In the most extreme cases, Black Hats may work to cause damage maliciously, and/or make threats to do so for blackmail purposes.

That was useful, thanks! But I still have not understood, what does hacking mean?

"Cracker - This is the common term used to describe a malicious hacker. Crackers get into all kinds of mischief, including breaking or "cracking" copy protection on software programs, breaking into systems and causing harm, changing data, or stealing. Hackers regard crackers as a less educated group of individuals that cannot truly create their own work, and simply steal other people's work to cause mischief, or for personal gain."

"Hacker - This is someone that seeks to understand computer, phone or other systems strictly for the satisfaction of having that knowledge. Hackers wonder how things work, and have an incredible curiosity. Hackers will sometimes do questionable legal things, such as breaking into systems, but they generally will not cause harm once they break in. Contrast a hacker to the term cracker."

Looks good. These are definitely two different types of people, so I understand why a hacker would get upset at being called a cracker. This is the part that gets me, though: "Hackers will sometimes do questionable legal things, such as breaking into systems, but they generally will not cause harm once they break in." I have a few problems with this.


from geek.com lol

Really Hackers are nothing to worry about. They know how to do what crackers do but don't typically do it.

Now crackers do give you reason to worry.

That was useful, thanks! But I still have not understood, what does hacking mean?
It means gaining unauthorized access to a computer system. It's generally done by exploiting a weakness in the software running on that machine or by getting around insufficient/poor security measures.

Once access is gained, data may be stolen, destroyed or modified. Often times, webpages will be rewritten. The system may also be used as a "zombie" which can be activated on command to send huge amounts of spam or used in concert with other zombies to attack a specific site. That usually takes the form of creating a "denial of service" which simply means the server is kept so busy (overloaded with service requests) that it cannot be accessed by the general public. In extreme cases, it can cause the server to crash.

i think this guy is a total noob.

u read a crap lot of books on networking and security. (so far got my ccna, need to learn security). yes im a noob still, but i think ur a uber_nooblet.

I find it helps to think of a hacker as the software equivalent of a hot rod builder, they love to modify things and make them work better. Hackers have an attitude towards crackers that resembles hot rodder's attitude towards car thieves. Crackers should be hung, drawn, and quartered. For starters.

The folks who built the Net are true hackers.
Uber-hackers aka hacker demi-gods include:
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of Unix and C), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor of Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux), and most recently James Gosling (inventor of Java, NeWS, and GOSMACS) and Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python).
And the semi-official hacker historian, Eric Raymond. Keeper of the Jargon File.

i think u guys are total noobs.

Just to point something out Hacking just means coding.

any programmer can be classed as a hacker if he's given the opportunity to alter previously written code. So for instance if a games company hires new employee's to replace old ones, and they write a patch, they've actually hired hackers.

The sorts of people that deface websites, and attempt to gain access to your e-mails are lovingly refered to as "Script kiddies". They tend to lack any real talent other than looking for someone elses code to plagurise on the internet and claim their "Cybervandalism" act as their own.

The reason they do it is very simple, it's just a message that "They can". Some psychologists would suggest it's due to a under social development and the individual lacking maturity, as more mature individuals would not gain anything from defacing websites (unless of course the website was inciting racist propaganda, or sexually explicit material).

The usual types to gain access to online mail accounts are perhaps people that sit in your Class at high school (proving their age), I've had requests from people claiming to be boyfriends that want to see if their girlfriend is cheating (However breaching such confidential communique written but a lady, in certain respects is not the way to build a relationship on trust) so simply I tell the paranoid delusionists not to go doing that, Some just want to do it because they are "Irrated" by a particular person in their class etc.

If they can't inject into an already open mail session, or guess the users password, it usually resolts in them sending the user some Trojanised file to run to gain access to logging the password at a later date. So the next time your friend want's to show off an animated slide show or even his own VB program (which is usually a plagurised script) just remember not to log into Hotmail or which ever online e-mail account you use without checking your Process list for "Zombie servers" (Thats when you close a program, yet it remains in your process list)

Real Hackers either admit they hack (namely They are a programmer and define hacking as programming, or at least altering programs), Real crackers will never define themselves as hackers or crackers, since if it's what they do properly Anonymity is craved far more in their line of business than fame.
(Since the Imfamous are just ghosts in a shell, a Cyber "Yuri".)

Heh this is my forté, I'm pretty good at "hacking" and I want to point out that all this "white hat" "black hat" stuff is a load of politically correct crap. To be quite honest the terms "hacker" and "cracker" are obsolete and are used by people who don't know any better and are trying to sound well informed. I'm integrated in the "hacker" culture (look me up on hackthissite.org and criticalsecurity.net) and spend some time in those sites. The sites are filled with newbies but their are some knowledgeable members. Hacking to authorities is a crime no matter what your motivation or cause. And if your site got hacked you should have put in better security.
Regards sas01