Isn't it interesting?

[not_essence2]

How intriguing is it that the realistic missions, possibly what most mission posts are about, are from people who directly ask you to participate in an illegal activity, even if it was "justified"?
Because remember, HTS "does not condone illegal activities".
Although it is true that these are private requests...

[xsvMix]

Most of the time it is just people looking for a shortcut to became a 1337 h4x0r. They don't care for other missions because in their mind they won't get knowledge of hacking real targets.
These are simply not hackers, they don't understand the enjoyment of learning about technology, no matter how small or trivial it may seem. There are exceptions but very few, my feeling is that while people like this are really irritating, it's best to try not waste time on them. I know I do and I should work on that.

[Shade_of_Gray]

I think the missions are to help you understand a hacker's mindset as much as to understand a hacker's tools and methods.

[not_essence2]

xsvMix- I meant the missions themselves. The "requests" from people for you to hack into something, the one put up by the mission, like change a band review, restore a site, etc.

[mShred]

I'm just a little confused as to what OP was getting at. Are you saying that it's ironic that HTS would have realistic missions for hacking while at the same time we say that we don't condone illegal activities? If so.. then you sir, read into things way too much. HTS is a training ground for hackers, hence the purpose of this site. So that is obviously why there are realistic missions. HTS does not condone illegal activities for the sole reason of we don't want our asses getting buzzed because one of our users went and did some illegal hacky hacky and brought it back here.

[weekend hacker]

Besides covering our asses by not allowing illegal activity, HTS has a rich hacktivism history(especially around the time a lot of those missions ware written). While we feel that everyone should get knowledge we're aware that a lot of you will keep it as a hobby and won't be getting into the infosec business.
That said, we hope that the users who aren't doing things 100% legally will at the very least act according to their conscience and hack for "legit" reasons, as opposed to trying to profit from it(don't steal, not even from giant corporations).
Most hackers don't care for laws, we're all to aware that they're made by either idiots or those who can profit from them.
But we don't need laws to know that blackmail, fraud or destruction are all bad things, it doesn't matter if you used a computer to get there or not.

As some old cartoon character once said(or comic book character): With great power comes great responsibility.

So I hope that everyone not doing things 100% legal, use your skills to inform people of their vulnerabilities without wrecking their systems, use it to challenge/fight/expose oppression and invasion of privacy from governments and unethical corporations, use it to protect innocent people from those that wish to abuse them.
In short, use it for good. And avoid giving hackers a bad reputation, we already have to deal with a lot of misconceptions.

Or you know.. just keep it totally legal, since we don't condone these other things.

[limdis]

+1

[not_essence2]

Whoops. My post is really confusing, isn't it? I was saying, that in the realistic missions, the requests from "people" are just like the requests you see on the forums nowadays about "H4xor this facebook account plz" and others (albeit with horrible grammar).

[xsvMix]

@non_essence2 Oh wow then I totally miss read your post I see what you saying now though. In fact a friend of mine had a voting contest similar to the band review mission except it was a modeling competition. I'll just tell you she won

[not_essence2]

Was the site that insecure as to be Real 1 level?