Darren Kitchen, hacker and host of tech show Hak5, says why hacking isn’t the same thing as cyber crime. Jorge Ribas sits down with him to find out the difference.
Read on to watch the video.
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Hak5 will be LIVE at Virginia Tech this Saturday, November 7th. Join us at 7:00 PM for the best of networking, hacking and homebrew and Q&A. We’ll be in Torgersen 2150 on the Virginia Tech campus in Blackburg, VA. Then later at 9:00 we’ll be for the first time experiencing Bar Golf, a VT tradition that we would love to see you at. So lock down your firewalls and get ready for some Technolust as Hak5 begins the campus invasion. See you there!
Today I am pleased to announce Hak5 Labs, an effort to open source the show. Over the next few weeks we will be holding Hak5 Labs meetings with the goal of crowdsourcing content, open development of large projects and group discussions on every aspect of Hak5 the show and the community.
The first meeting will be held on Monday, September 28th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time (-5 GMT) in our Dimdim meeting room.
We’ll be broadcasting live via Dimdim, sharing segment ideas, answering questions and developing killer new projects.
We encourage you to join us for this first of many future Hak5 Lab events.
See you there!
See this post on the forums.
Has it really been 4 years? It seems like just yesterday I was pondering what it would take to put together a podcast. Would the built in mic on my mini-DV cam suffice, or should I spend some money on a camera with a mic-in jack and some lavs. I don’t want to spend a lot though, it is just a podcast ya know?
Little did I know… Four years, tens of thousands in equipment, two mortgages, 10 terabytes of footage and 10 or so million downloads later Hak5 is kickin’ stronger than ever — doing what we love when we’re not slaving 9-5.
This is a thank you to the fans and freaks who’ve supported us over the years. To everyone who has shook our hand at a hacker con, tipped a frosty one with us, bought a t-shirt, emailed, posted in the forums, retweeted and downloaded.
And lets not forget everyone who’s sailed the USS Technolust, past and present. You are all insane for sacrificing your weekends to research, write and perform into the wee hours of the night.
And Revision3, you’ve made us a better podcast. We’ve done more shows in the past year than the three before it combined. What a thrill teaming up with the 1st name in Internet television.
So to everyone, stay cool. Stay subscribed, and stay tuned for a nerdcore montage next week followed by the premiere of Season 6 on August 19th.
And if you’re in the area and want to meetup on August 15th at Busch Gardens Williamsburg we’d love to have ya. Check out the details.
Here’s to four more fantastic years of Hak5!
–Darren
After nearly a week of downtime the HakShop is back online. Hooray!
On a personal note, I’m done playing with e-commerce packages for a while. Everything I’ve played with from ZenCart to Prestacart to Megento and many many more are all fine pieces of software with just one shortcoming or another.
The current store is the result of good ol’ fashioned wordpress, html, css and a little bit of elbow grease. And until we get a dozen more items in, I’m fine with it.
Thanks for your patience, and your continued support!
Recent server config changes seem to have broken our already picky Wordpress based e-commerce plugin, Shopp. After spending quite some time trying to get it to work with the new configuration it was time to move on — which I was cool with since Shopp had failed me on a few issues before.
So yesterday I was up until 6am putting together the sweet new HakShop based on Prestashop. I love how modern this package is. The back-end is really sweet too. Not too complicated but powerful enough to do what’s really important. Read: Make sure we don’t sell more than we have and charge the proper shipping rate for your country.
You can see what I’m talking about here, but don’t check out — you won’t receive your goodies.
Anyway, lesson learned here is this Read more
Spec out your ultimate $2000 white box server for an opportunity to win awesome swag from the hakshop including the last Hak5 shot-glass. Detail the parts and why you picked ‘em here and we’ll pick a winner based on performance, value and creativity!
Make your entries in the 5×19 release thread.
This week we’re doing a photoshop contest. The most creative caption or creation with this image wins cool swag from the hakshop.
Your creation should be submitted to the forums contest gallery.

Think you’ve got a hardcore LAN? Show us! Our latest contest is all about mapping your *home* network.
Map your network using an online diagram application like Gliffy, Dia on Linux or jNetMap — a cross-platform network mapping app developed by Hak5 fan Rakudave!
Then submit your entries as an image and description over in the new Hak5 forums Contest Submission gallery.
Entries will be judges on network creativity. Feel free to be as detailed as you’d like. No business or university networks please. If you have a site to site VPN between home and office that’s cool but no need to map past the initial link.
Entries are due by Friday May 29th. The winning network will be featured on episode 516. The winner will receive some cozy Hak5 gear from the HakShop.

HakHouse Network as mapped by jNetMap
As you all know I’ve been struggling with a few e-commerce platforms. Eventually I settled on the Shopp plugin for Wordpress. I really like how simple the system is. It’s just what I need (inventory management, weight rate shipping) and not what I don’t. Once I got past the first bug or two I really warmed up to it.
A big thanks to everyone who has offered their help setting this up and making recommendations. I still have zen-cart and oscommerce in the back of my mind if this doesn’t work out — but for now I’m giving this a go.
I’ve spent a few days getting intimately familiar with the code and hacking together the templates. I really like how well it integrates with the site. It’s not finished by any stretch of the imagination but I believe the core functionality is there.
I’m looking for feedback on the store. If you can offer any comments on usability, features, or otherwise please sound off in the comments. I’ll be continuing to add new stuff (user gallery, specifications, more products) as time goes on.
If all goes well over the next few days I’ll be sure to make a much better announcement for our grand opening. In the mean time, consider the HakShop open for beta testing.
www.hak5.org/hakshop (Please report any bug to darren@hak5.org)
After a frustrating day fighting with e-commerce code I must forfeit. I really wanted to have this online today but it doesn’t look like it’ll happen. If you’re reading this post after watching episode 512, I’m sorry. Check back in a day or two. Maybe then this code and mysql will start to behave.
–Darren
The first Code Challenge for Hak5 Season 5 — the Gmail Procrastination Badge. What started as a tongue in cheek comment on twitter about needing to declare email bankruptcy lead to proof of concept Gmail Unread Badge code.
The code
<?php
$mbox = imap_open ("{imap.googlemail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX",
"gmailusername", "gmailpassword", OP_READONLY)
or die("can't connect: " . imap_last_error());
$check = imap_mailboxmsginfo($mbox);
?>




