What does it take to become a hacker?

               What does it take to become a hacker?

        Becoming a great hacker isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen quickly. Being
creative helps a lot. There is more than one way a problem can be solved, and as
a hacker you encounter many problems. The more creative you are the bigger
chance you have of hacking a system without being detected. Another huge
quality you must have is the will to learn because without it, you will get
nowhere. Remember, Knowledge is power. Patience is also a must because many
topics can be difficult to grasp and only over time will you master them.

Hacker Hierarchy

 
Hacker Hierarchy

Script kiddies – These are the wannabe hackers. They are looked down upon in
the hacker community because they are the people that make hackers look bad.
Script kiddies usually have no hacking skills and use the tools developed by other
hackers without any knowledge of what’s happening behind the scenes. 
Intermediate hackers – These people usually know about computers, networks,
and have enough programming knowledge to understand relatively what a script
might do, but like the script kiddies they use pre-developed well-known exploits (-
a piece of code that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in a piece of software that allows
you to take control of a computer system) to carry out attacks
Elite Hackers – These are the skilled hackers. They are the ones that write the
many hacker tools and exploits out there. They can break into systems and hide
their tracks or make it look like someone else did it. You should strive to
eventually reach this level.

What is a hacker?

             What is a hacker?

       A hacker is someone who likes to tinker with electronics or computer
systems. Hackers like to explore and learn how computer systems work, finding
ways to make them do what they do better, or do things they weren’t intended to
do. There are two types of hackers:

White Hat – These are considered the good guys. White hat hackers don’t use
their skills for illegal purposes. They usually become Computer Security experts
and help protect people from the Black Hats.

Black Hat – These are considered the bad guys. Black hat hackers usually use their
skills maliciously for personal gain. They are the people that hack banks, steal
credit cards, and deface websites.

These two terms came from the old western movies where the good guys wore
white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
Now if you’re thinking, “Oh boy! Being a black hat sounds awesome!”, Then I have
a question for you. Does it sound cool to live in a cell the size of your bathroom
and be someone’s butt buddy for many years? That’s what I thought.

Abell, George O. (1927–1983) American Astronomer

Determining the nth occurrence of a day of the week in a month

You may need a formula to determine the date for a particular occurrence of a weekday. For
example, suppose your company payday falls on the second Friday of each month, and you need
to determine the paydays for each month of the year. The following formula makes this type of
calculation:

  =DATE(A1,A2,1)+A3-WEEKDAY(DATE(A1,A2,1))+
  (A4-(A3>=WEEKDAY(DATE(A1,A2,1))))*7

The formula in this section assumes that

      Cell A1 contains a year.

      Cell A2 contains a month.

      Cell A3 contains a day number (1 for Sunday, 2 for Monday, and so on).

      Cell A4 contains the occurrence number (for example, 2 to select the second occurrence
        of the weekday specified in cell A3).

If you use this formula to determine the date of the second Friday in November 2010, it returns
November 12, 2010.

             If the value in cell A4 exceeds the number of the specified day in the month, the for-
             mula returns a date from a subsequent month. For example, if you attempt to deter-
             mine the date of the fifth Friday in November, 2010 (there is no such date), the formula
             returns the first Friday in December.

Determining the day of the week

Determining the day of the week

The WEEKDAY function accepts a date argument and returns an integer between 1 and 7 that
corresponds to the day of the week. The following formula, for example, returns 7 because the
first day of the year 2011 falls on a Saturday:

  =WEEKDAY(DATE(2011,1,1))

The WEEKDAY function uses an optional second argument that specifies the day numbering sys-
tem for the result. If you specify 2 as the second argument, the function returns 1 for Monday, 2
for Tuesday, and so on. If you specify 3 as the second argument, the function returns 0 for
Monday, 1 for Tuesday, and so on.

             You can also determine the day of the week for a cell that contains a date by applying a
              custom number format. A cell that uses the following custom number format displays
              the day of the week, spelled out:

                 dddd

Determining the date of the most recent Sunday

You can use the following formula to return the date for the previous Sunday. If the current day is
a Sunday, the formula returns the current date. (You will need to format the cell to display as a
date.)

  =TODAY()-MOD(TODAY()-1,7)

To modify this formula to find the date of a day other than Sunday, change the 1 to a different
number between 2 (for Monday) and 7 (for Saturday).

Determining the first day of the week after a date

This next formula returns the specified day of the week that occurs after a particular date. For
example, use this formula to determine the date of the first Monday after June 1, 2010. The for-
mula assumes that cell A1 contains a date and that cell A2 contains a number between 1 and 7 (1
for Sunday, 2 for Monday, and so on).

  =A1+A2-WEEKDAY(A1)+(A2<WEEKDAY(A1))*7

If cell A1 contains June 1, 2010 (a Tuesday), and cell A2 contains 7 (for Saturday), the formula
returns June 5, 2010. This is the first Saturday after June 1, 2010.

Where’s the DATEDIF function?

   In several places throughout this chapter, I refer to the DATEDIF function. You may notice that
   this function does not appear in the Insert Function dialog box, is not listed in the Date & Time
   drop-down list, and does not appear in the Formula AutoComplete list. Therefore, to use this
   function, you must always enter it manually.

   The DATEDIF function has its origins in Lotus 1-2-3, and apparently Excel provides it for compat-
   ibility purposes. For some reason, Microsoft wants to keep this function a secret. You won’t even
   find the DATEDIF function in the Help files, although it’s available in all Excel versions. Strangely,
   DATEDIF made an appearance in the Excel 2000 Help files but hasn’t been seen since.

   DATEDIF is a handy function that calculates the number of days, months, or years between two
   dates. The function takes three arguments: start_date, end_date, and a code that represents the
   time unit of interest. Here’s an example of a formula that uses the DATEDIF function (it assumes
   cells A1 and A2 contain a date). The formula returns the number of complete years between
   those two dates.

   =DATEDIF(A1,A2,”y”)

   The following table displays valid codes for the third argument. You must enclose the codes in
   quotation marks.

    Unit Code      Returns

    “y”            The number of complete years in the period.

    “m”            The number of complete months in the period.

    “d”            The number of days in the period.

    “md”           The difference between the days in start_date and end_date. The months and years
                   of the dates are ignored.

    “ym”           The difference between the months in start_date and end_date. The days and years
                   of the dates are ignored.

    “yd”           The difference between the days of start_date and end_date. The years of the dates
                   are ignored.

   The start_date argument must be earlier than the end_date argument, or the function returns an
   error.

Here’s a similar formula that returns the day of the year for the current date:

  =TODAY()-DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,0)
  =DATE(YEAR(A1),12,31)-A1

When you enter either of these formulas, Excel applies date formatting to the cell. You need to
apply a non-date number format to view the result as a number.

To convert a particular day of the year (for example, the 90th day of the year) to an actual date
in a specified year, use the formula that follows. This formula assumes that the year is stored in
cell A1 and that the day of the year is stored in cell B1.

  =DATE(A1,1,B1)