Thebroken Videos

From a reader: "The guys over at thebroken have put together a fun hacking videozine ( .torrent here ). This episode covers Windows password hacking, destroying your hard drive with 3,000 degree molten iron, console modding, and an interview with Kevin Mitnick. Think "The Man Show" meets computers. Divx Required. "

Comments

Can I make it clear...

[JoeBaldwin]

That if you do not use BT to DL this then you are officially a TOOL?

This message brought to you by People With Vested Interests In Things Like Downloading Large Files.

You sure?

[Moth7]

And you say this on a community that lives off downloads of large files? Think linux iso for a second...

Re:Bandwidth Usage here we come!

[DrStrangeLoop]

i would image that you download each chunk only one, but upload it multiple times to different peers?

Re:BAH

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what do you expect?

"TheBroken" is a project of Kevin Rose, a co-host of Call For Help and Screen Savers on TechTV. He's a smart guy, but you have to remember who his audience typically is!

torrennts...

[minus_273]

hmm the bittorrent paper says that it does not scale beyond roughly 2000 users. Now, given the number of people who come to /. and the duration of the downloads, it would be interesting to see if the torrent really does die. I have seen the graphs of results going beyond 2600 and it looked prettly bad. Observing the torrent die may prove itself to be more interesting than

Goddamnit!

[GoNINzo]

Now there are zero 100% completed people on this torrent because everyone is hitting 100% and disconnecting. This defeats the entire purpose of a torrent!

At least do it for a half-hour after you've completed... that way someone else has a chance of finishing and covering for you after you leave!

Re:Goddamnit!

[cheide]

Unfortunately some ISPs are rather fascist about limits. I'd rather not exhaust my entire upload allowance for the month in a single day!

I do try to let it run until I've uploaded at least the same amount as downloaded though.

Re:Goddamnit!

[Ninja Programmer]

This speaks to a weakness in the torrent architecture. If, instead, they did a random offset rotational down load (i.e., the download would start at an arbitrary offset, then return to the beginning for each user) then this would not be an issue.

get over it

[seven5]

It sounds like every one here is just too cool for theBroken. Get over yourselves and knock the chip off your shoulders.

Re:why bt and not archive.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot would DESTROY 500mbits. Are you kidding?

Re:BAH

[proj_2501]

you have done nothing except prove the parent's point.

Re:Spin-Off

[Str8Dog]

Now if we can get Kevin and Sara to quit kissing each others asses on the show, it might be a little more entertaining...

I personally can't stand Leo and the combination of Pat and Kevin I think will be very fun to watch. Especially with Pats lowfi leanings and Kevins darkside tendancies...

Re:oh god not him

[samhart]

I have to agree. The thing that really bugs me is that he's presenting this stuff like it's really new or unknown. Sure, it's unknown to some script-kiddie wannabe who thinks they are 1337 because they can bring up a DOS prompt in their WinXP, but if you are even the slightest bit experienced as a sysadmin, then nothing in this video should be news to you.

*Yes, we know, LM password hashes (and authentication) are crap. If anyone is still using these in a modern network they deserve to have their networks owned.

*Yes, we know, you can change/reset the password on any Win32 machine using the Linux-based password & registry editors. Well, you can also change the password on a Linux box, or any freaking machine using similar techniques. Once someone has physical access to your drive, you're pretty much screwed.

Anyway, as I mentionned in another comment in this article, the video is for posers and script-kiddies. No serious systems or security person will find anything remotely interesting here. Hell, Kevin Mitnick would probably find the whole thing irritating if he were to see it as a whole.

I guess it goes to show that the slashdot audience has changed over the years....

Re:it's not thermite

[thx2001r]

And they're idiots. not only was their premise of "destroy your data" poorly thought out (it's a switch sticking out the side of the laptop, with no safety), but it also probably didn't even damage the hard drive platters.

Dude,

It's a joke! If you've seen the rest of the episodes with Ramzi (he's in all of them so far), any segments with him in it are a joke (as in on purpose to get a laugh or two).

Also, the whole thing kinda mildly mixes (some) tech reality with humorous stereotypes of Hackers (the dudes drink beer throughout the whole show... every show). Most conversations I've had with "real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue" would probably make extremely boring tv (Not to say that it isn't possible (never say never) to have a good show with real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue, but imho, it is less likely).

Since this is an unofficial spin-off of TechTV's "Dark Tips" with Kevin Rose (Kevin in TheBroken), they are instinctively trying to be entertaining (sparing those who just want a laugh from a seminar in hacking windows (not to mention, sparing themselves from DMCA implications of getting that specific... everything is kinda vague on purpose)). I suspect that most of their regular viewers are also regular TechTV viewers (and probably not "real" hackers (no matter how bizzarly spelled)).

Re:Speak for yourself

[NineNine]

That's why BT is so great. Paranoid and/or selfish people such as yourself either can't get the file at all, or it could take weeks to download what I can download in half an hour. Long live bit torrent!

Re:Speak for yourself

[fm6]

Thanks for the tip. But while I might concede ignorance and stupidity, I find "hysteria" a tad patronizing.

Re:oh god not him

[Anonymous Coward]

"I guess it goes to show that the slashdot audience has changed over the years...."

Yup. It's no longer made up of only assholes like you.

Re:oh god not him

[Glamdrlng]

I guess it goes to show that the slashdot audience has changed over the years....

Actually, after looking through the moderated comments, most of them are discussing the way .tor's work or alternative means of hosting video content, or they're echoing a sentiment similar to yours. I'm sure browsing thorugh at 0 or -1 will show the usual smothering of fr1st p0ts as well as the d00d +|-|15 \/1d30 15 t3h 7337!!!!! posts, but it seems to me that the /. moderating system is scaling with the numbers of such posts and keeping them modded down.

It's easier to tear something down than to build

[severed]

I'm the guy that created HaXXXor, and it's very interesting because while reading through this thread, I hear a lot of the same things said about these guys' video that was said about mine. It make me wonder if someone has hacked a version of beagle to spam discussion on hacker videos... :-)

But seriously, here's my opinion. I'd like to think it counts for something being a producer and all...

There seems to be two types of people that comment on projects like The Broken, and HaXXXor, and 2600, et al.

First there's the people who say, wow that's cool.

To them, I say: Thank You.

Then there's the people who act as those the presence of any material, whether it's a video, or a print magazine or whatever is a direct threat to their way of life. Then the screaming begins.

It's not the type of thing a REAL SYSADMIN should care about, it's only worth reading if you're 15 (obviously doesn't apply to HaXXXor), it's stupid, why bother, and on and on and on.

I don't really see why the negative points are really valid, besides from the obvious fact that freedom of speech means freedom of all speach. Once you get past the freedom of speech part though, it really doesn't pan out.

First, it's a good thing that people are making videos and books and magazines talking about this sort of thing. While it may be old hat to some people, there's a lot of other people out there that haven't even heard of this stuff. So the next time that you want to lament the masses for their ignorance, remember the heaps of criticism that anyone who produces any material that might help a few more people who aren't as L33t as you to bridge the gap.

Second, for the people out there who throw out the massively insightful, this is stupid and pointless, why bother, type of remarks. Just remember, a lot of really cool things have been created because someone spent a lot of time working endlessly on something that was considered pointless, and then an occassion would come up with something that proved to be useful.

Here's the deal, just remember that there are people actually creating these things. There's a person on the other side of the video, or book, or magazine, or whatever, that's put a lot of time and work in to it. If you think you can do better, then pick up a camera and give it a shot. But if you've never even tried doing something like that before, then why don't you try to appreciate the work that was put in to it, and what was done right, before you rush to tear it apart.

In this community, it is common that a program that still needs a whole lot of work gets gushed over, but the moment someone makes a video it's an instant target? You really should be supporting these efforts (or at least constructively criticizing them). It's hard enough to be a small independent producer. However, it's small independent producers that are the competition to Hollywood and the big television networks. Do you prefer them to be the only people who talk about hackers?

Anyways, that's my take on it...