hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0505.txt

Episode: 505
Title: HPR0505: Interview with a blackhat - n0 g00d
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0505/hpr0505.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:55:43

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Hello, my name is Thomas McKenzie and I'm from Team at UK.co.uk.
Just a bit about me, I'm a student currently studying my first year at Northumbria University,
reading ethical hacking for computer security.
This is a new web series that I'm starting and before reaching everyone I would like to just take the opportunity to read the following disclaimer.
The views expressed here are my own and not that of my university and I do not condone any of the actions within this interview and would like to make aware that this was done for educational purposes only.
I condemn any of the actions that this hacker has done that are illegal and any comments made by myself that seem to condone or agree with them is just the way that I speak and act.
I again must stress that this was done for educational purposes only and I do not condone and I do condemn the actions spoken about today.
Thank you.
Okay, so tell her to listen a bit about yourself no good.
Sure thing, man.
Just an average 18-year-old kid, you know, just trying to make a living.
I spend most of my time around computers, pretty much just doing everything in school,
around technology.
That's pretty much it, man.
Just the ordinary life.
Cool.
So, I mean, when how long would you have considered yourself a hacker, so to speak?
I've considered myself a black hat for the past two years.
I've been in the whole hacking scene since 2004.
I mean, basically, I've considered myself a script kiddie since I never actually done anything myself.
Like I used to use programs already made by other people.
Until two years ago, you know, I started using my own ways of reaching into securities and finding vulnerability in websites.
Cool.
And can you remember way back in 2004, what was the first thing that you did hack?
That was a funny story, actually.
The first thing I ever did was create a virus in Visual Basic.
And from there, I kind of, you know, just started going into computers.
The first thing I did was hack a friend of mine, send him a little back door,
gone to his computer, and just flip the screen upside down.
And obviously you said you made that in Visual Basic.
Where did you actually like to learn the skills that you've come to learn now, obviously not at school.
Visual basics, I first started when the goons website was up in a friend of mine used to be a good member.
Most Americans know him as knocks.
You just explain, sorry, who the goons are.
The goons is pretty much an online web hacking security website.
You go there, they pretty much.
If you have a knowledge, some people like you, some people don't,
and pretty much the only way you can get in is if you have a friend who refers you,
they're pretty close to security community.
And since I already knew knocks, you know, he kind of taught me and showed me where to begin,
which was with coding language.
So I chose, you know, Visual Basics to start off with.
And on their forums, they had tutorials teaching and some sample of work.
And I started off with team speak hacking after that.
Cool.
And obviously you've been doing this.
It's like since 2004.
What makes it so why do you hack?
Why do you want to cause, I suppose, problems with people's websites or service?
We don't just do it for fun.
We pretty much want to prove how vulnerable people are.
Some people don't realize the dangers of the internet.
I mean, things we cannot obtain.
We can get people social security number.
We can pretty much close down a whole business over the internet.
I mean, we can even shut down a whole great.
Great system of electricity and the whole city if we want to.
You know, so pretty much we just want to show people the dangers of the internet.
And people don't really realize that until, you know, a hacker comes through and show them.
That's fair enough.
I mean, obviously what I'm learning to do at the moment and what a lot of other people in the UK are doing is an ethical hacking car.
So learning how to break into computer systems to then do it for companies.
You may know it as penetration testing where you're from.
Is there anything over there like that in your colleges or universities at the moment?
Actually, it's prohibited in the United States to have any kind of hacking related material.
It's against our laws.
So pretty much.
We don't have anything that teaches you here.
Okay, cool.
When you have hacked something no good, like let's say a website or a server.
What do you then go on to do?
What would be the next step?
The next step and be first of all, I'd kind of have to see if the thing I'm hacking is arrival.
Let's say gang.
We host hack wars to see which community is best and which person is best.
However, if we do hack just a general website, it's either we're looking for an information or we're just bored of our mind.
If the case of boredom is, you know, we really don't destroy much.
We just kind of try to gather information as much as possible and then contact the owner of probably the domain or the web server.
And, you know, we either tell them to do a little catchphrase that, you know, we'd, you know, pretty much make ourselves look better.
Like the famous, you know, proxy and the prox owns me, which is quite hurt a few, a few times on YouTube.
But it's pretty much just information gathering, which we can use against someone as blackmailing.
And once we get into a site, you know, we can upload our shells and just begin pretty much our own little botnet so we can take down a website anytime we please.
Cool.
So going from what you first hacked with that virus that you created, the visual basic, what has been the biggest thing that you've hacked today?
And how did you go about doing that?
The biggest thing I hacked would be back in 2008 when I was first starting into the whole, you know, testing out my own SQL injections into sites.
And I happened to come across a Naruto gaming website.
I tried a little SQL injection in the PHP and I was able to get in and pull up some of the database information.
Apparently, some lady had a daughter who registered on the site with her mother's email.
And lucky enough, she used the same password.
And it turned out to be that the mother used to be a administrator in a bank of America in California.
Therefore, me snooping around a little bit, I found her most common passwords from my space, Facebook, and I just gathered some Intel's and I was able to log in to one of her jobs, which was an ATM machine in California.
But from there, I just decided not to mess with it because here the laws are pretty strict.
So I just kind of sold the account of the black market.
Crazy. And that leads on to my next question quite well.
Have you ever made any movie from hacking? Obviously you haven't.
If so, for example, how much, how much should that account go for on the black market?
That account went for an easy $500. I could have sold for way more except that, you know, if I made it, in fact, I could have sold it for $2,000 easily.
But I was, you know, I was still new at the whole like black hack and, you know, testing out on my own kind of thing.
So I kept it a little price, you know, to keep a little profile.
That's cool. I mean, over the, over the course from 2004, how much shall average?
Would you say how many dollars do you reckon you've made since 2004 due to hacking?
Since 2004 up to now, I mean, with the whole having my own website, people donating, me hacking into PayPal, I'd say a good $5,000.
Crazy. You mentioned there having your own hacking website. Tell me a bit more about that.
So pretty much after I learned a few things from the goons, I decided to go off of my own and create my own website where I would teach people who would want to learn since the goons did not teach most people since it was an invitation only community.
I decided to open a website that would teach people how to hack from basics.
From there, it kind of grew and over the years, we reached 2,000 members from 2000 members. We kind of had other competitions that wanted us gone.
This is when the hack wars come in. People started dedocing our websites and we did awesome back.
We got to a point where people started calling each other and threatening each other.
So after did it for the laws kind of hacked for channel, the FBI kind of got crazy and went in shutting down most hacking communities along with the goons that defaced the data for the laws, even the prox kind of had a few problems with the FBI.
Thus I had to turn off the website.
That's crazy. I remember talking to you earlier before we started recording.
I was like you trying to bring the prox back up and trying to do it through publicity as well another website he had mentioned.
How did that go and why did you think it didn't prosper as well as the prox did originally?
After I shut down the prox, I decided to make publicity, which was pretty much based off the goons and invitation only community.
From there, we kind of kept everything underground, which we tried to get most ethical hackers in it and keep the script kitties out.
However, over the years, I realized that pretty much the website is ran by script kitties.
If you just try to get professional hackers into one website, it will fall apart.
So it was pretty much ran by script kitties and from there, they just learned.
Because I mean, we got high people teaching from, I mean, since the start of since prox.
And we have them teach new people and new things.
But the going public is what gave prox, you know, it's big name and made it hatred towards others because of its publicity.
So even though you did get shut down and obviously, you know, you did get a bit of trouble with the FBI and stuff.
And would you say that you wouldn't have changed how the prox was run you the definitely kept it public?
Oh, yeah, I would have definitely kept it public, no matter of fact, I'm thinking of bringing it back.
Really?
Well, I mean, I haven't had much time now, you know, life's still going on, but every full once in a while I have some free time.
And I like to bring back the community for everybody.
The thing is, you know, the only problem is you have to be on the web pretty more often, you know, checking out who's dedicating you, making sure those connections are kept at a rate that everybody can maintain.
So you mentioned earlier about not just the prox, but a lot of other websites, hacking website, like I think they said goons and was it did it for the lose.
You said they got shut down as well. And are they still going without a website or are they underground or have you not heard of them?
I haven't heard much of them pretty much everything now is underground.
People usually like the whole website is down.
If you go to like hack you dot org, you know, goons did it for the laws redirects you back to Google, but pretty much all those communities are still going around hacking people.
And they pretty much just stay in their IRC channels, you know, people, people find out through the black market and they go there and they pretty much got their own little small community.
But once they to face pages, you know, they try to keep their own names. They don't put any community names on it.
Most websites nowadays hacked, as you can see, it's called by the Turkish hackers.
The Turkish hackers used to be an actual hacking group from Turkey.
However, over the years since the FBI has been all over those hacking communities, most people just change into their the facing page to pretend to be the Turkish hackers.
All right. Well, they're pretty much just ordinary people from the US trying to avoid a few laws.
All right.
And just you keep talking about the laws. How strict are the laws?
What does it, does it, does it scare you what could happen and does it ever make you think managers stop this?
There were days when I first began hacking where I would hear sirens and I'd automatically shut down my computer.
And the first thing I learned about being a hacker is when you first make your virus, it's always best to make a virus that completely melts your hard drive.
And it's best to keep it on a secret folder that you have easy access to in case anything does happen. You can just double click it and everything will be wiped out immediately.
And I mean, every time I'd hear a siren, I'd always have a look at that file, but it was just me freaking out because I had no idea what I was doing.
But over the years, you realize, you know, like the things you can do to prevent yourself from bringing caught like using a VPN and a proxy server behind it and setting up botnets where you can't be traced back into.
So right now, I feel pretty confident.
Now, obviously, I'm coming from a more white hack experience now being been at the university studying that book.
Have you ever thought about being a white hack and if you ever did become a white hack, would you, would you stop doing what you're doing now, would you always do what you're doing?
Definitely one of my dream jobs is to work for the FBI and, you know, just help out with the whole hacking scene.
Catch, you know, online predators, stop the whole web hacking business, you know, people dedicing actually a few weeks ago, we had a website taken down by a few terrorists.
And because our new president Obama had a talk with them and they were planning on something, the website got hacked.
So, you know, like that's the kind of thing, you know, I hope for like if I did become a white hat, I definitely, you know, be able to help out.
But if he became a white hack, would you stop your black cat ways?
Oh, definitely.
Like sometimes we do it out of anger and boredom, but being a white hat would give us, you know, the honor to stop.
Fair enough.
And just away from the hacking scene now, the obvious stereotypical hacker.
There are a lot of different. There's the eccentric ones who wear the bright colors and have the combed back hair and the glasses.
And then there are the other ones that are, you know, really skinny and really pale.
I mean, what, what are the hobbies do you have away from your computer? What do you like to do away from it?
Away from a computer. I like to be around technology. I take stage group classes. I like to build things.
I like to be around sound. I'm a DJ myself. I love music. I'm currently getting married, you know, planning on starting a family.
And from there on, my life's just building up, you know, as I go.
Just trying to stand a family, obviously, kids. We've been teaching you kids, visual, basic, your age then.
Definitely be learning something.
That's cool. Have you got any questions for me?
Let's see.
What would you ever do if you met a black hat?
Just talk to them, just like I'm talking to you now. I'm really interested in like not just the, you know, what they do and how they do it.
But I'm more interested in like why they do it.
You know, like the, I don't know, the kind of the, did they get a rush like an adrenaline rush or, and they're just doing it like you said, because you bought or, because you're trying to teach people something, because it's strange that you say that because obviously what a white hat does is they do it to teach people that they are vulnerable.
Yeah, but obviously what you're doing is you're doing exactly the same as what I'm doing, but in a way that's unethical, if you understand what I mean.
Next question.
Okay.
Let's see.
Yeah, I'm out of questions.
That's fine. No problems at all. No good. Thank you very much for talking to us today.
And, you know, if you ever want to do a blog post on the website, guess blog posts have been more than happy to allow you to do that. It's been really good talking to you today. Thank you very much.
Yep, no problem. Any time.
Cool. Thank you.
Yep. Have a good night.
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