Here is the most interesting part of our game. As a part of human nature, we are always interested in the secrets of others’ lives. There are some remote administration tools that can be use to control other’s computers. These programs will enable you to get their passwords just by listening to their key strokes, enable you to listen to what is going on at the remote computer by recording sound from its microphone if any. You can see the view of their screen as a .jpg file. You can download or delete their files, or upload files that you want. You can run any programs at the remote side, even play the CD in their CD Drive. You can swap their mouse, and control. You can open a web browser and make it to go to the URL you specified. This is fun if you are just fooling around, but it is also very dangerous tool if you are a criminal.

A hacker association, the Cult of the Dead Cow, started distributing free copies of its Back Orifice shareware via its Web site on Aug 3, 1998. Back Orifice, designed to wreck the operation of Microsoft’s Windows 98 and Windows 95 operating systems, makes it impossible for users to install or delete programs, as well as making both keystrokes and screen unreadable. The Cult say they created Back Orifice to make the public aware of Microsoft software security gaps. Back Orifice, very small, can be hidden within an attachment to an e-mail message; it installs itself when clicked on. As a stop-gap measure, computer security experts warn users to open e-mail from unknown parties.

Business Week. "Now any hack can be a hacker." Sager, Ira. Aug 24,1998

Back Orifice:

Back Orifice is a remote administration tool that entitles a user to control a Windows 95 machine over a network using an ordinary console or GUI application. BO provides its user more control of the remote Windows system than the person at the keyboard of that machine of the remote machine has across the Internet.

BO is a small and completely self-installing. Basically executing the server on any windows machine installs the server, copying the executable into the system where it will not make any conflicts with other running applications. BO can also be attached to any other windows executable that will run normally after installing the server. Once running, BO does not show up in the task list or close-program list, and is rerun every time the computer is started. The filename that it runs as is configurable before it is installed, and it's possible to upgrade by uploading the new version and running it.

Back Orifice can be downloaded from http://www.cultdeadcow.com/tools/bo.html

Netbus:

NetBus contains a server and a client-part. The server-part is the program that must be running on the computer you wish to control. The client-part is the program you use to connect to another computer. To install the NetBus server, you just run Patch.exe, on the target computer. It installs itself in the system by default, so it starts automatically every time Windows starts. In the NetBus-client you address the target with IP-numbers or host-names. You don’t see Patch when it’s running and it’s hiding itself automatically at start-up. Patch.exe can be called anything like smile.exe and can be attached to any file.

Netbus can be downloaded from http://come.to/netbus (version 1.7 is the file you should download, Netbus 2.0 cannot be used for hacking purposes because it requires the remote computer’s permission at start-up).

If the attacker is a real hacker, it is nearly impossible to find out its entity by changing its size, and name. So, the most important thing to protect yourself is not opening any e-mail message that you do not now, and not downloading anything from the sources you don’t trust.