Appendix A. Tools
When I was young, I had a lot of fun playing a game called
Neuromancer, which takes place in a world created by William Gibson,
in the book with the same name. The game was very good at giving a
similar feeling (I now know) to that of a hacker learning about and
making his way through a system for the first time. The Internet was
young at the time (1989), but the game had it all: email, newsgroups,
servers, hacking, and artificial intelligence. (I am still waiting
for that last one to appear in real life.) I was already interested
in programming at that time, but I think the game pushed me somewhat
toward computer security.
In the game, your success revolved around having the right tools at
the right time. It did not allow you to create your own tools, so the
action was mostly in persuading shady individuals to give, trade, or
sell tools. In real life, these tools would be known under the name
exploits. (It was acceptable to use them in the
game because the player was fighting the evil AI.) Now, many years
later, it is funny to realize that real life is much more interesting
and creative than any game will ever be. Still, the security business
feels much the same as in that game I played ages ago. For both, it
is important to do the following:
This appendix contains a list of tools you may find useful to perform
the activities mentioned throughout the book. While some of these are
not essential (meaning there are lower-level tools that would get the
work done), they are great time-savers.
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