A Short Sample Of Ethical Hacking: Auto-shutdown Your Computer!

Yo Yo Yo,

First off, ethical hacking is a touchy issue and most people would rather not learn about it lest they end up using it in the wrong way. But sometimes it helps to know a lot about how things are done in your operating system so that you may get out of a sticky situation someday. This here is a short sample of what you can do with a little knowledge of ethical hacking - this is just one small situation - there are thousands or maybe millions of others, but a start has to be made somewhere

Okay, so did anyone of you meet this situation where you switch on your computer and see a pop-up window which says "Windows is shutting down" and displays a timer? That's a smart little virus acting in the background, but did you know that you could prevent it with a simple command? Here's how you do it. This works only for Windows because such annoying viruses appear only in Windows

NOTE: 1) DO NOT USE THIS FOR ANY WRONG PURPOSES - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! (Jkz )

2) I'm using this in Windows 7, so there will be some visual changes for XP users. I will say more
below.

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1) On the Windows desktop, right-click and point to New-->Shortcut



2) Next you will get a window which asks for the location of the shortcut. In that, type this command:

Code:

shutdown -r -t 

replace the time with the number of seconds you would like before your computers shuts down. as an example, I have given 100 seconds.



3) Give the shortcut a name and click "Finish" - it will appear on the desktop.



It is important to have enough time to give the counter-command so keep a sensible time gap, like 30, 40 seconds. If you foolishly give less time, you might not have enough time left to give the counter command, resulting in the shutdown of the system!

4) Now to create the counter-command. Right-click on the desktop again, point to New-->Shortcut, and the command now is:

Code:

shutdown -a

The 'a' stands for 'abort' which cancels out the previous command, thus preventing shutdown of the system.



Give it another name and click "Finish"



5) So, want to test this out?! Simply doublt-click on the "virus" we created on your desktop, and you should see a popup window:

For XP users --> you will see a window which says something like "Windows is shutting down" and underneath it will be a countdown counter showing the number of seconds remaining to shutdown. I don't remember the exact thing since it's been a while I've used XP.

For Vista/7 users --> Based on the time you've set, you'll get a window like this:



6)Now, quickly, before the time runs out, double-click on the "anti-virus" we made and it will counter the shutdown, cancelling it.

For XP users--> The shutdown window will disappear, and maybe you won't get any other notification

For Vista/7 users--> You will simply get a notification like thus:




See how simple it is? Now imagine if somehow who got hold of your computer put the time gap as one second and put this in the startup folder, what would happen?! you wouldn't have any time to react at all! It is that scary......

Just a small clarification on the "virus" command:

"shutdown" is a function employed in the windows mechanism and has many options which you can access using the terminal(DOS prompt) in windows and typing "shutdown" at the prompt. some of the options are:

-r : restarts the system (we used this one in the example)

-s: shuts down the system

-a: abort shutdown

-l: logs off

-h: goes into hibernation

and there are more.......all this seems interesting to learn and can come handy in situations where you least expect it!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial please leave a comment about it and remember.