Telnet

Telnet is a command that you can use from a shell account, or from an exe file (telnet.exe) from Windows, OS/2, Windows 95 and other operating systems that will let you connect to another machine on the net. There are other programs you will learn about here like FTP, and rlogin that you can use as well but now we will use telnet.

You can use telnet if you know the IP address or the host name you want to connect or login to. To use the command you would just use the telnet program to connect to the IP or host like this:

Telnet netcom.com or telnet 206.146.43.56

Ok, now lets login:

telnet machine.com

trying .....

Connected to machine.com

Linux 2.0.28 (machine.com) (ttyp0)

machine login:username
password:#######

bash$

Your prompt might look different, but we will use this one.

Notice above that it will tell you the O/S when you get the login prompt. You can use this if you get a large collection of passwd files. Even before going on to crack them sort them by O/S types by just telnet-ing to them to see what they are running. There are other ways, but lets keep this telnet topic going for a sec... telnet domain.name.com, after you see what they are running make a note of this and ctrl ] to break out of the connection.

Put all of your linux passwd files into a pile to be cracked first. All we need is one account that works for the system, and we can be almost sure we will have root on that machine! There are way to many holes in linux to think we will not be able to own one of those machines, so lets get to work so we can start this wonderful world of hacking.