HackThisSite: Платформа для обучения и практики в области безопасности

Organization

HackThisSite. org, commonly referred to as HTS, is an online hacking and security website founded by Jeremy Hammond. The site is maintained by members of the community after he left the organization. It aims to provide users with a way to learn and practice basic and advanced "hacking" skills through a series of challenges in a safe and legal environment. The organization has a user base of over a million, though the number of active members is believed to be much lower. The most users online at the same time was 19,950 on February5, 2018 at
Likewise, the "extended basic" missions are of recent creation. These are designed to be code review missions where partakers learn how to read code and search for flaws. A set of 10 easter eggs hidden around HTS were known as the "HTS missions." For example, one of these "missions" was the fake Admin Panel. Developers later decided to remove HTS easter eggs, as some allowed XSS and SQL exploits and many members submitted false bug reports as a result.

Steganography missions are also available on the website. The goal in these missions is to extract the hidden message from the media file provided. There are 17 steganography missions available.

There has been criticism that HackThisSite's self description as a "hacker training ground" encourages people to break the law. Many people related to the site state that although some of the skills taught can be used for illegal activities, HackThisSite does not participate in or support such activities. Despite this, several individual members have been arrested and convicted for illegal activity (most notably Jeremy Hammond, founder of HackThisSite).

In November 2004 the (now defunct) HackThisSite based HowDark Security Group notified the phpBB Group, makers of the phpBB bulletin software, of a serious vulnerability in the product. The vulnerability was kept under wraps while it was brought to the attention of the phpBB admins, who after reviewing, proceeded to downplay its risks. Unhappy with the Groups' failure to take action, HowDark then published the bug on the bugtraq mailing list. Malicious users found and exploited the vulnerability which led to the takedown of several phpBB based bulletin boards and websites. Only then did the admins take notice and release a fix. Slowness to patch the vulnerability by end users led to an implementation of the exploit in the Perl/Santy worm (read full article) which defaced upwards of 40,000 websites and bulletin boards within a few hours of its release.

On March 17, 2005, Jeremy Hammond, the founder of HackThisSite, was arrested following an FBI investigation into an alleged hacking of conservative political activist group Protest Warrior. His apartment was raided by the Chicago FBI, and all electronic equipment was seized. The federal government claimed that a select group of HackThisSite hackers gained access to the Protest Warrior user database, procured user credit card information and conspired to run scripts that would automatically wire money to a slew of non profit organizations. The plot was uncovered when a hacker said to have been disgruntled with the progress of the activities turned informant.

Administrators, developers, and moderators on HackThisSite are arranged in a democratic but highly anarchical fashion. This structure appears to work at most times. When disputes arise, however, loyalties tend to become very confusing. Therefore, HackThisSite has had a long history of administrators, developers, and moderators turning darkside or severely impairing or completely taking down the site. In the last major attack to occur, several blackhat dissidents gained root level access to the website and proceeded to "rm rf" the entire site. Subsequently, HTS was down for months as a result.