whitehat Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 A really popular thing among skids (et al.) is the trade of eBooks and methods to make money "on auto-pilot". Like any get rich quick/easy scheme, most of these turn out to be trash. My impression is that this forum has disproportionately more working professionals than seedier hacking spots though, so I thought I'd ask you guys. Basically, I have a lot of servers that are often not really doing anything except sitting around, being awesome, waiting for me to play with them. I don't want to do spamming or bitcoin mining to avoid any legal issues, but is there anything else I could do with them to make money relatively easily? I am a small time VPS seller, but I don't mean stuff like that. I'm happy to do some set up and periodic maintence, but I'm hoping someone can think of some profitable task to let my servers do, while I remain busy with other things... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karit Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Mine bitcoins? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radau Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 He clearly said he didn't want to do bitcoin mining. Aside from renting them out in some way I can't really think of much, if you have the bandwidth a lot of people that use srcds servers need offsite download hosts, but that requires a decent dedicated upload speed (at least 500 kb/s per host if you're renting it out cheap). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitehat Posted November 26, 2012 Author Share Posted November 26, 2012 Thank you both for your responses. I'm not sure, but I think that Karit may have been asking me what it means to mine bitcoins. Basically bitcoins are a digital currency and you can use your computer to create some of them, but it's very resource intensive and also somewhat shady. The idea to be a download host is actually pretty good. I will give it serious consideration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 I think we'd all be rich if we already had an answer for this one... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitehat Posted November 26, 2012 Author Share Posted November 26, 2012 (edited) I think we'd all be rich if we already had an answer for this one... LOL! There is truth in what you say! From a microeconomic prespective, I would expect that servers WOULD be able to do something of value, because they are technology and thus a factor of production. It's what they're made for afterall -- doing useful things, especially for production. If they can do something useful for another person, then presumably someone would be willing to pay something for the service. I would, however, expect that the value of effortless (no input) application of the server to be less than the price of renting/buying the servers. That's fine by me though. I just want to offset the price and I wouldn't mind putting in a minimal amount of effort (also, education counts as an input, so maybe some CS major here can tell me a cutting edge application of servers?). I was thinking there might be something "like" spam, without being spam. I hate spam. But if there were a digital equivalent of handing out brochures, then that would be cool. Or maybe offering some sort of service online with ads that uses some free disposable e-mail service API or something like that. There are of course tons of academic things I can think of to do with the unused servers, like performing giant monte carlo simulations with econometric data. But it doesn't pay well lol : / Maybe some sort of video game server with pre-made games / API? Where could I find free API / website sources that actually do stuff instead of just like powering a blog. I want to provide people with services. Edited November 26, 2012 by whitehat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sud0x3 Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 You could set up password cracking nodes for distributed password cracking applications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 Web Hosting, IRC chat servers, Online Stores, Game Servers or the like, or hosted cloud services as suggested above(clustered password crackers for instance). All of which cost money to make money, and require people to sign up with you over other providers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pwnd2Pwnr Posted November 26, 2012 Share Posted November 26, 2012 Install TOR for people and charge em 20 a pop... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitehat Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 You could set up password cracking nodes for distributed password cracking applications. LOL! OK I have no clue how that would help me make money without going to prison and yet I still think it's a wonderful suggestion. I guess that's why we're hackers :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitehat Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 Install TOR for people and charge em 20 a pop... Web Hosting, IRC chat servers, Online Stores, Game Servers or the like, or hosted cloud services as suggested above(clustered password crackers for instance). All of which cost money to make money, and require people to sign up with you over other providers. So basically I should expand my services as a host? Right on! Good thinking. I was worried that I'm already kind of maxed out in how much tech support I can provide to peeps, but I suppose I could do all unmanaged. When you say they all cost money what do you mean tho? Given that I have the servers can't I just use all free warez? When Digip and I (I think) were talking about clouds the other day I found a wonderful cluster computing distro made by someone it turns out that I indirectly know. It's called Pelican HPC, check it out. I do kind of dislike some of the legal liability/issues that can go with hosting and unless it's 100% unmanaged it's hard to support. I do that some already and may expand, but I wonder if there's anything I can do with an automated payment program. Like ad related stuff or perhaps renting my resources to a BIGGER (and thus less headache-y) organization instead of to small little end users. I don't suppose there's a company out there which will pay you per GHz/GB/Gbps for loaning your resources to their cluster? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 Install TOR for people and charge em 20 a pop... lol..TOR is free dude. Its pretty much decentralized other than people who volunteer nodes, and people who setup hidden darknets, or .onion only websites, which in theory, I guess you could charge access to, if its setup and made to be paid for access to login to, but what, if anything would you charge them to access that you couldn't do more accessibly without tor? Not to mention, TOR is slow as shit and you're at the mercy of your exit node. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 I don't suppose there's a company out there which will pay you per GHz/GB/Gbps for loaning your resources to their cluster? You kind of have that backwards. You charge people, for the per Ghz/Gb/Gbps resources, ala, cloud services like Amazon. Rent a wreck resources so to speak. People do want rented servers for things, most often nefarious means, but also legit resource, science, or even Infosec related resources, such as crunching data, running virtual machines and shells that they can use to scan the entire internet, spider for info, etc. I know people like HD Moore for instance, rents servers for such things. He scanned the entire internet(IPv4 anyway), probably several times for different things related to his research, so you just have to have the resources to offer at a compensative price to the prospective buyer. How/what those services are, I suppose depends on what the end user needs, and you have to supply those services. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitehat Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 You kind of have that backwards. You charge people, for the per Ghz/Gb/Gbps resources, ala, cloud services like Amazon. Rent a wreck resources so to speak. People do want rented servers for things, most often nefarious means, but also legit resource, science, or even Infosec related resources, such as crunching data, running virtual machines and shells that they can use to scan the entire internet, spider for info, etc. I know people like HD Moore for instance, rents servers for such things. He scanned the entire internet(IPv4 anyway), probably several times for different things related to his research, so you just have to have the resources to offer at a compensative price to the prospective buyer. How/what those services are, I suppose depends on what the end user needs, and you have to supply those services. Oh, I know, I am already a seller/reseller, but I'm saying that I'd love to cut out end users and I thought maybe there was some company that was growing and buying up resources. I know of lots of non-profits that do it like the Cesidian root, but they don't pay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radau Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 lol..TOR is free dude. Its pretty much decentralized other than people who volunteer nodes, and people who setup hidden darknets, or .onion only websites, which in theory, I guess you could charge access to, if its setup and made to be paid for access to login to, but what, if anything would you charge them to access that you couldn't do more accessibly without tor? Not to mention, TOR is slow as shit and you're at the mercy of your exit node. I think he was referring to the upcoming six strikes policy which is getting everyone all riled up about privacy online, making it easy to charge for such a setup. Profitable? Yes. Ethical? Perhaps not. You should definitely look over at Facepunch about the Fast Download host thing, nearly every server requires a separate Fast Download host nowadays or it gets 0 traffic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pwnd2Pwnr Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 (edited) Now, to be fair; most people have never heard of TOR, namely the people in lower income districts (rampant in my neck of the woods), but I could see how unethical it may be. On the other hand; people whom value their privacy and do not know too much on the user side; it would be a fair trade off. They can browse, use the common places like google, facebook, or a few other social networks I really don't care for. I think if they value their security, they would like it and just use regular browsers for the rest... OPINION RANT Ethics don't apply to big Corp... I side with Moxie Marlinspike when it comes to gross commericalization; but that is a different story. I think the bottom line is that the ethical line is no longer this wide chasm. The other side is close enough to jump on and jump back (bad metaphor. but it is early). Our ethical standard is not used by big business; so what does that leave us... the little fish? But, yes, selling free stuff is how millionaires are made... and it is A LOT less Madoff... Edited November 27, 2012 by Pwnd2Pwnr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.