All about DOS shells...
I read "techsupport" on a regular basis. Today, a user had an issue (http://www.livejournal.com/community/techsupport/442733.html) that was promptly resolved by the techsupport staff who are always willing to help out a few netizen in need. The user had an additional question, however, and since I'm always willing to help out someone in need, I'm giving the answer a go:
Wow that sounds like fun. Sorry to ask but what's a dos shell? I'd actually like to learn stuff about computers in order to stop bothering everyone else about it. One must bother to learn, though. :)
When someone fires a shotgun to murder someone and ejects the "shell", it's leftover residual material that can be used by criminal forensics experts to find out the make of the gun and match it up to the criminal who fired it. Or, they can find out more about what damage was done based on this method.
DOS stands for Denial of Service. You can look it up on Google. It's an attack used by hackers to knock a system offline. Occasionally, the attack leaves leftover "shells" that network forensics experts can use to extrapolate more data about the attack. If you get access to someone's "shell" you usually have more data about them than they would normally have. Fortunately, the only known way (arguably) to access someone's shell is to have physical access to the computer, which is why a lot of experts will sometimes request you go "Start->Run->cmd.exe" which will return a Command Prompt. They will often refer to this as the denial-of-service shell. Most people don't use this, because it's complicated and works on electrons and physical routing (and switching). It's like reprogramming the guts of your computer.
Therefore you'll often find technical support people ask you to access your "DOS shell" in order to run command-line arguments. They call them arguments since it's often complicated and the "DOS shell" doesn't always respond appropriately. You have to "argue" with it in order to get it to give the data that you need. Fortunately, there are more and more computer forensics experts out there. Not just the guys on CSI, although I suppose you could say they were technically the first real ones, which is why it's great they got jobs on the show.
Usually when something goes wrong, it's the result of a DOS attack, even if the problem isn't necessarily a network issue. Popup ads have since been relabeled "spyware" and "adware" because in reality, there's often more to the problem than just the windows popping up on your screen. You can thank Steve Jobs from Apple for helping come up with the new name.
Although, to be fair, Carly Fiorina from HP technically came up with the cool buzzword "spybot", which she named for the most egregious of the spyware. Although, you may occasionally see hacker/techs using Spybot, because, by nature, it eliminates competition, and thus if you know how to remove spybot, you can install it to delete *other* competing spyware first. Carly did a good job of enlightening the rest of us to this kind of use.
I could go on and on about hardware and software issues, but I'll save the rest of my knowledge for a future question.
Wow that sounds like fun. Sorry to ask but what's a dos shell? I'd actually like to learn stuff about computers in order to stop bothering everyone else about it. One must bother to learn, though. :)
When someone fires a shotgun to murder someone and ejects the "shell", it's leftover residual material that can be used by criminal forensics experts to find out the make of the gun and match it up to the criminal who fired it. Or, they can find out more about what damage was done based on this method.
DOS stands for Denial of Service. You can look it up on Google. It's an attack used by hackers to knock a system offline. Occasionally, the attack leaves leftover "shells" that network forensics experts can use to extrapolate more data about the attack. If you get access to someone's "shell" you usually have more data about them than they would normally have. Fortunately, the only known way (arguably) to access someone's shell is to have physical access to the computer, which is why a lot of experts will sometimes request you go "Start->Run->cmd.exe" which will return a Command Prompt. They will often refer to this as the denial-of-service shell. Most people don't use this, because it's complicated and works on electrons and physical routing (and switching). It's like reprogramming the guts of your computer.
Therefore you'll often find technical support people ask you to access your "DOS shell" in order to run command-line arguments. They call them arguments since it's often complicated and the "DOS shell" doesn't always respond appropriately. You have to "argue" with it in order to get it to give the data that you need. Fortunately, there are more and more computer forensics experts out there. Not just the guys on CSI, although I suppose you could say they were technically the first real ones, which is why it's great they got jobs on the show.
Usually when something goes wrong, it's the result of a DOS attack, even if the problem isn't necessarily a network issue. Popup ads have since been relabeled "spyware" and "adware" because in reality, there's often more to the problem than just the windows popping up on your screen. You can thank Steve Jobs from Apple for helping come up with the new name.
Although, to be fair, Carly Fiorina from HP technically came up with the cool buzzword "spybot", which she named for the most egregious of the spyware. Although, you may occasionally see hacker/techs using Spybot, because, by nature, it eliminates competition, and thus if you know how to remove spybot, you can install it to delete *other* competing spyware first. Carly did a good job of enlightening the rest of us to this kind of use.
I could go on and on about hardware and software issues, but I'll save the rest of my knowledge for a future question.