How to Telnet into a Shell Account

Even though you can't telnet into an account inside some computer, often you can get some information back or get that computer to do something interesting for you. Yes, you can get a telnet connection to succeed -without doing anything illegal --against almost any computer, even if you don't have permission to log in. There are many legal things you can do to many randomly chosen computers with telnet. For example:
C:/telnet freeshell.org 22
SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.4p1
That tells us the target computer is running an SSH server, which enables encrypted connections between computers. If you want to SSH into an account there, you can get a shell account for free at
. You can get a free SSH client program from
.
One reason most hackers have shell accounts on Internet servers is because you can meet the real hackers there. When you've logged in, give the command w or who. That gives a list of user names. You can talk to other users with tht talk command. Another fun thing, if your shell account allows it, is to give the command
ps -auxww
It might tell you what commands and processes other users are running. Ask other users what they are doing and they might teach you something. Just be careful not to be a pest!