As most of you probably already know, Hotline is this great program that works like the bulletin board systems in the old days. Except this program lets you connect to any Hotline Server anywhere on the net. So you never have to pay the long distance phone fees that you used to pay when connecting to out-of-state BBS's. And this is completely legal, unlike the other methods of getting around those pesky phone bills.
Everything is great. We are all having a wonderful time chatting and trading philes and warez, etc. After you get a little bored with that, you might start thinking "HHmmmmm, I wonder if I could HACK into a Hotline Server?!" The answer is yes and it's been done. It's been done a lot. It's so prevalent that your ten-year-old brother has probably already done it. And there are lots of philes that explain how to do it. One way people do it is to trick an admin into opening a Trojan Horse that will allow you to download the admin's UserData file. This file is what contains the admin's password. But it's not all that simple. The password is encrypted. You can relax because the encryption system is VERY simple. I figured it out in under an hour just by guessing. Many other people have figured it out as well and some of them have written programs that will decrypt the password for you. I wrote one called HotDecrypt a few months ago. You can find a URL for it in the references section of this document. I thought you might like to know how it's done. If you do then take a look at the following source code written in ANSI C. If not, then go away and don't bother me.
//If the result of the previous operation is less then zero,
//this line will get the absolute value of the result by
//multiplying it by -1.
}
printf("\n\nThe password is: ");
//This prints the text that is in quotes to the screen. '\n'
//means new line.
puts( Pass );
//This prints the decrypted password to the screen.
}
Conclusion
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If there is anything you don't understand try buying a book about c programming or renting one from your local library. I recommend "The C Programming Language" by Brian W. Kerrighan & Dennis M. Ritchie. It's written by the creator of C, Dennis Ritchie, so he must know what he's talking about. There are also a lot of philes on hotline and on the net that can teach you the basics of C.
I have compiled the program and included it as - "Hotline Password Decrypt"