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July Commenter of the Month Competition Winner 2008!

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Competition time again!

As you know we started the Darknet Commenter of the Month Competition on June 1st 2007 and it’s been running since then! We have just finished the fourteenth month of the competition in July and are now in the fifthteenth, starting a few days ago on August 1st – Sponsored by GFI.

We’ve successfully been holding this contest for a year now!

We are offering some pretty cool prizes including a £50 Amazon Gift Voucher, along with cool GFI merchandise like shirts, keyrings and mugs.

And now the winner will also get a soft copy of the Ethical Hacker Kit.

GFI Goodies

Keep up the great comments and high quality interaction, we really enjoy reading your discussions and feedback.

Just to remind you of the added perks, by being one of the top 5 commenter’s you also have your name and chosen link displayed on the sidebar all month on every page of Darknet, with a high PR5 (close to 6) on most pages (5000+ spidered by Google).

So announcing the winner for July…it’s zupakomputer!

Comments for July were pretty active, more so than June and really picked up towards the end of the month. zupakomputer has been leaving some very interesting and lengthy comments so I feel he really does deserve this prize. Navin actually had the most comments for 2 months in a row (the first time so far) but can’t win the prize twice, so keep up the good comments Navin!

Commenter July

There were some really really really LONG discussions in July and I hope they continue into August (which it looks like they will)! I’d like to thank you all for your participation! I hope it keeps getting better as 2008 develops with more interesting news and tools. Keep up the excellent discussions, it’s very interesting reading especially on some of the more controversial topics.

Thanks to everyone else who commented and thanks for your links and mentions around the blogosphere!

Feel free to share Darknet with everyone you know :)

Keep commenting guys, and stand to win a prize for the month of August!

A mailing address + telephone number will be requested from the winner for the sole purpose of sending out the gifts. The details will not be used from promotional purposes, and will not be sold.

Winner for June 2007 was Daniel with 35 comments.
Winner for July 2007 was backbone with 46 comments.
Winner for August 2007 was TheRealDonQuixote with 53 comments.
Winner for September 2007 was Sandeep Nain with 32 comments.
Winner for October 2007 was dre with 19 comments.
Winner for November 2007 was dirty with 38 comments.
Winner for December 2007 was Sir Henry with 84 comments.
Winner for January 2008 was goodpeople with 66 comments.
Winner for February 2008 was eM3rC with 122 comments.
Winner for March 2008 was Pantagruel with 66 comments.
Winner for April 2008 was fever with 44 comments.
Winner for May 2008 was Bogwitch with 37 comments.
Winner for June 2008 was Navin with 45 comments.

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Comments

  1. Congrats zupa…..

    I’d definitely have to say tht zupa has contributed to quite a few of ma comments….esp the ones tht totally deviated off the moocher hunter post into a brainstorming session on neural networks and fuzzy logic!! ;) .

    I’d also mention Daemoch, whose few posts were no less than enlightening!!

    @ darknet is this the first time this is happening?? coz I do remember I’d asked in one of these “Commenter of the Month Competition Winner!” posts why was it tht noone had won the prize twice, not even Darknet stalwarts like eM3rc who had 122 comments in a single month!! Tht’s 3 comments on every single post (assuming tht a post is posted everyday…which it isn’t). And one more thing….wht abt august?? If me or Zupa both end up with max comments once again then will the 3rd guy get it??

    :( <—That’s wht I look like rite now…hehe ;)

  2. Navin: There is a post every day, every weekday at least – I sleep at the weekends :D I’d say one person can only win it once a year to be fair. So yeah it’d go to 3rd place guyl

  3. @ darknet
    Just noticed the new GFI ads on the right-side coloumn of your blog…are these added to the “best commentator” prize?? :?

  4. Well thanks…….I didn’t know it couldn’t be won more than once, so I only noticed this justnow.

    I mentioned this before, but in-the-flesh in meatspace I am a she not a he! I can’t work out if that’s just been missed or you thought I was kidding or am a tranny or something?!

  5. JAW DROPPED!!

    I swear to god i never had a clue tht zupa dude was infact zupa chick!!

    Sheesh…… :0 :o :O

    Anyways, U from Albania?? I’d searched the name trying to figure out what it meant and ended up browsing through albanian forums!!

  6. GFI LANGuard as a prize? Haha no, just to support them for sponsoring the contest.

    zupakomputer = super computer phonetically spelled? Dunno if it’s another language or not.

  7. zupa… sounds like how japaneses speak english ;)

    Anyway, congratulations zupakomputer !

  9. gul – it’s a play on/reference to RTL TV dubs of old Superman episodes we used to watch, back when the only digital TV was BSBs DMac system; Sky used to come along with loads of European channels, and it was one of those amusing things when the advert came on for ‘zupa man’.

  10. Darknet is more globetrotting than you think, I’m from UK and so is the domain (obviously) but I live in Malaysia and it’s hosted on a private server in the US – so work that out!

  12. I wish I was Japanese though, then I could get to play Cave games in a real arcade / at all. And I could be running Raiden Fighters Aces on the XBox360 right now, having purchased it in store! Imagine that, a good reason to pay for XBox Live.

    Didn’t notice the previous comments! – funny you say Albanian, cause I have a lot of Albanian family background.

    Ont ja – ‘zupakomputer’ as in ‘supercomputer’, by way of the TV dubs as mentioned. I must have been at the top500 site when I first posted a comment here.

  13. Hey, that ‘kit’ isn’t a kit – that picture on the site here of the box its supposed to come in doesn’t really exist!

  14. Hehe….I realized tht last month :)
    Nice box though!! ;)

    Here’s whty the site’s purchase page says:”A click away from the deal! . Please check your spam folder or allow *@hackerscenter.com email addresses. The Kit download links will be emailed to your Google checkout email address as soon as the payment is authorized. (it can take from 1 to 24 hours) Also added on the same page:”Shipping
    Postal mail purchase is currently Not available. We only support Online Download.”

    Neways who cares….I have the links now!! Never look a gift monkey down its butt –ancient Indonesian saying…ripped off by the english)

    Njoy ;)

  15. I can’t! I’m on dial-up! I even did a big long comment here about why it’s too expensive for me to get broadband.

  16. Me too @ dialup @ home (Me= mitnick fanboy remember??)
    have faster connections LAN, broadband etc etc @ office!!
    even i haven’t yet had the time to download the kit :( .maybe next sunday…

  17. That’s just typical, neither of us have even half decent internet speeds, and millions of people do and they’re sitting there bandwidth-flooding the net with things like “[quotes entire 8 page thread while posting in that same 8 page thread, about nothing at all] yomg! here is 10 of my photos of the night out we just had yesterday that you were at: (10 X 1050×6000 targa followed by embedded unswitchoffable video of 200MB); it was superfun!!!!!!!!1”

  18. @zupakomputer: hahah, people need to entitle such posts/emails with “Not safe for dial-up”.

    I’d be happy to download it for you guys burn it and ship it off, I have broadband, all-be-it download limited, but I have heaps to spare.

  19. Well done zupakomputer.

    Dial-up, hopefully more than 14k4 ;) (good old Hayes is collecting dust along with it’s 36k6 and 56k siblings )

  20. hey did the top commentators thing just reduce all comments?? I’m sure zupa was @ 25-26 and Morgan was @ 34-35 (I’m trying not to come first again and then blush @ not having won!! :) )

  21. @Navin: Yeah both my and Zupa’s tangents were removed. I meant no offence by posting them I am just an opinionated sob. Now they are removed we can keep the posts on track.
    So do you want me to download it, my email address is on my site linked in my name.

  22. “We are still waiting for pictures from backbone, Sandeep and TRDQ, dirty and dre, eM3rC, fever, Sir Henry, Navin and goodpeople of themselves with their prizes! Many of which have seem to have disappeared from the comments section after winning!”

    Wee.. I wonder where some of these guys are now commenting? Shows that they are only up for the grabs. tsk tsk :P

  24. @ Iyz

    Been overseas with restricted internet access :P

    And hence, I have a question. What would be the best way to avoid restricted internet access? I have been reading some articles about server tunneling and port forwarding (for applications) but all of this seems like it would throw up a lot of red flags. Any suggestions?

  26. @eM3rC: I am always a fan of TOR, as it means a bit of anonymising as well. Or you could just use an ssh tunnel to tunnel 80 and 443 back to your home server or to a shell you have.
    Nice thing about ssh is even if you are port blocked you can make ssh go via 443 or 80, bounce through the proxy with a modified http header to your home server then out through your home connection, all over encrypted ssh.

  27. What about if you can’t leave a server running at home – are there any free webspace sites that let you upload proxy scripts?
    Or if you don’t have a static IP, has anyone tried the dynamic DNS services?

    I was wondering also – what did anyone that won the commenter prize actually get? I remember you’d listed what you got Navin, but I can’t find what article it was on.

  28. +1 eM3rc
    Me too is active…..I guess and so is Pantagruel.
    For me atleast, the reason for commenting less (atleast tht’s wht it seems like compared to u and Morgan…who frankly seem to be holding an online chat show…no offence) has been listed in this very comment list (atleast now I have some breathing space to let my legs loose..U guys have a good 10 comments more than me)

    As for Zupa: even i don’t remember the article (maybe the comment got deleted coz it was offtopic :) )
    But the better things in the prize were a $150 GC from Amazon.com and the “KIT”. Ofcourse the best part was the recognition from international hackers who seemed to suddenly notice me (and my mails)

  29. @zupakomputer: If you can’t leave your server running look for a service that gives you a shell or allows you a shell, I have seen shell accounts from as little as $5 a month, some of these don’t even ask for anything except the cash. Or you could get a dedicated server somewhere and setup your own proxy server or ssh server.

    @Navin: I don’t mean it to sound like a chat show, I just respond to posts directed to me, or ones that are in desperate need of help, as above.

  30. @Navin

    The ‘active’ depends on mood, state of mind and the comment made. We all have our area’s of interest and the number of comments will be bigger if you have more to share about a specific topic.

    @Morgan Storey, you can even get a shell account for free (www.bylur.net/free/)

  31. @Pantagruel: That is awesome, and would definately be a work around for just ssh tunneling. Unfortunately a lot of companies have caught onto that and gone the lockdown all ports route. I usually suggest this to clients, and am currently working somewhere that does this… but as long as you can change the port you can set your ssh to 443, and tunnel through by modifing the headers to look like https packets. See here: http://polishlinux.org/apps/ssh-tunneling-to-bypass-corporate-firewalls/

  32. Navin, did you not get a PSP or an i-pod? I got a 50 quid Amazon cert through almost right away, but it doesn’t work on their in-stores or .com Amazon – only .uk, the one with no DVDs that I want. I’m just wondering, cause I remember other people posting they got loads of stuff so why did I only get one gift cert? Are they mailed out twice?

  33. No PSP, No iPod :(

    lyz said “I wonder where some of these guys are now commenting? Shows that they are only up for the grabs.” …..well maybe, just maybe people realised there’s no PSP’s and Pod’s to be won!!
    Jus kiddin!! :)

    @ zupa I’m kinda illiterate when it comes to cash but quid = pound sterling right??

    For me it was the opposite (I got a GC for $150 from Amazon.COM not .UK….. I can get DVD’s I guess, but my minds set on something better!!)

  34. Thanks for the comments guys.

    I am working in a DMZ zone so security is really tight but there is one method that might just work. Rather than tunneling or proxying where some red flags might go up what about connecting to a running machine outside the network and streaming my data through that?

    I read an article about that in one of the 2600 articles so might try and dig that up :)

  35. About the prizes, I think its amazing that Darknet actually gives out prizes and am honored to be one of the winners.

    As big or small as it may be, I think he (I assume, sorry if I’m wrong) is one of the few sites that actually gives away things for participating on a monthly basis.

    And another random tangent, could we have some kind of story submitting section or email?

  36. @eM3rC: But thats what tunneling is really. You could install an ssh server (Linux/BSD/Mac even windows) and change it’s listen port to one that is allowed through from the DMZ to lan, and redirect from there to the net.
    If 2600 mentions another way to do it, I would love to know.
    There is the contact page is here https://www.darknet.org.uk/contact-darknet/ admitedly I couldn’t find it linked anywere I got it from Navin…

  37. With eM3rC

    There are plenty of sites which rely heavily on user input but do no effort to sweeten the deal for those users or to reward them.

    For me the EHK and MP3 player where more like an incentive the real ‘price’ is the input and discussion here on the blog.

  38. @zupa

    I can tell you this isn’t a sham considering I got my package of goodies. All I can say is you have to give it a lot of time because of all the shipping complications the packages will go through. I would say it took around a month + to receive the stuff.

    @Morgan
    I realize it tunneling but rather than burrowing/tunneling through the server, its doing something less detectable in my opinion because its just streaming data between computers rather than redirecting information through unused ports. (A good IT could just check the number of packets being sent through the ports and realize one of the unused high ones have more than normal activity, right?)

    @Pantagruel
    So true. I think the packages sweeten the deal but overall the the dedicated members which make this blog great.

  40. @eM3rC

    Thanks for the support ;)

    Most likely you will set the new record yourself :D

    It can indeed take some time for the goodies to arrive. GFI was rather quick (unfortunately the cup handle was broken and the cardboard box looked as if it was sat on by an elephant), bol.com came in second with the creative zen 4Gb and the EHK download email came in last.

    Any good IT tech will get awoken if a normally unused port is suddenly sporting large volumes of data/activity and will swiftly resort to packet inspection (for the past week I have been playing cat’s and dog’s with our tech dept because of the Olympic games (they blocking streaming content). Yesterday they simply pulled the plug on my wall outlet based upon volume of data received. It was quite easy to prove them wrong since I was working on a large data set from an experiment on human immune cells.

  41. @eM3rC: If you keep asking questions or directing comments to me, I could pass it I guess. It is all tunelling, and depending on the IT department it can be detected. You don’t have to use allowed ports that guide I link to shows how to use software that changes the headers to look like http packets, this way you could route it through a proxy server and the proxy admins would more than likely be none the wiser.
    Of course if the 2600 article describes another way to do it, I would love to know as it would be incredibly useful.

  42. Hey Darknet, Are we missing the top commenters of the month August and September?

    Is this competition finished?

  44. Yah it’s off now, I don’t have time to deal with this kind of crap and I really don’t benefit at all from the contest.

    The prizes go direct from the sponsor to the winner.

  45. Ohh Im sorry to hear that… probably these ppl havennt heard that saying “Beggars are not choosers”

  46. Too bad it stopped.

    Even if you where to make an additional buck from the contest, I see no problem. It’s your time and energy maintaining this site (and us posting our ranting ;) )