Tag: HACKING

Security pro Charlie Miller came in to Pwn2Own 2009 with a plan, and things unfolded exactly the way he wanted them to. Within seconds of the competition's start, he had already gained control over the fully-patched MacBook running Apple's Safari web browser. "It took a couple of seconds. They clicked on the link and I took control of the machine," said Miller. It's safe to say that when Apple ...

There are few job titles as misleading as that of the "Penetration Tester." Sure, saying professional computer hacker would be more direct, but have you ever noticed how hackers seem to have a dirty mind? Why else would they want to go phreaking through backdoors? Anyway, in order for hackers to umm...maximize their penetration; they need the right tools for the job. BackTrack is a bootable Linux ...

Muxtape, the popular online mixtape service we wrote about earlier this year, appears to have been hacked today. Every song on every Muxtape has been replaced by, "Aim (with Stephen Jones) - Good Disease [Babybird does a Prince thing]." Users can't delete the track from their mixes, and (in our professional opinions) the song isn't even very good. An update was just posted to the Muxtape blog. No ...

PSP developer extraordinaire Dark Alex is at it again, pushing the boundaries of firmware hacking to whole new places. His latest creation, Time Machine, is perhaps his greatest feat yet. This gem of a hack allows one to run previous firmwares on the PSP by use of the Pandora Battery. Why is this cool? The biggest reason we can see is this: the 1.50 firmware, which is generally the most popular ...

Ever want to see MySpace crash and burn? Or, are you at least a little tired of the horrific design/coding/everything nightmare that is MySpace? A couple of hackers plan to introduce security vulnerabilities in MySpace next month, revealing one a day as part of the "Month of Bugs" tradition. However, Mondo Armando and Müstaschio, in a kind of satirical, cynical, and humorous fashion, will ...

Within the past month, both HD DVD and Blu-Ray's AACS protection scheme has been bypassed, and now news has broken of a researcher cracking Vista's DRM scheme. Mind you, Vista just barely hit the shelves. Boing Boing sums it up very nicely: "As with previous multi-year DRM development efforts, this one disintegrated like wet kleenex on contact with the general public. Now that Vista, HDCP, Blu-Ray ...

Chinese hackers are apparently trying to access the US Dept. of Commerce's computers, targeting the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) network. The Dept of Commerce has responded to the hacking attempt to gain access to user accounts by replacing systems and moving any employee workstations that access the Internet to a non-BIS connected machine. The Department had traced several access ...

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post writes about how Banks and other financial institutions are stopping phishers by disallowing the use of their logo and website images via a white-listing technology for outgoing image links. This forces phishers to actually do some work if they want to duplicate the website, since the bank swaps the real images with a fraud warning image. The phishing site thinks ...

There are tons of threatening viruses, spyware, and other yucky things out there in the world wide web. They have the powers to potentially access your computer if it is not locked down with security software, ensuring there are no kinds of intrusions and any malicious hacking going on. Is your computer protected against the many potentially dangerous things floating around the internet? Do you ...

No, it's not Microsoft making us do the dirty work, it's iDefense labs, a subsidiary of Verisign. They've announced a quarterly hacking challenge, and each quarter they will offer a different security challenge. Going for the easy target right out of the gate, eh? Here are the details from their site: "For the current quarter, iDefense Labs will pay $10,000 for each vulnerability submission ...

In a rare, extremely cluetrain response from a corporation whose product has been hacked, Lego is actually welcoming the modification to its 3D design program that will enable users to avoid purchasing too many extra blocks when making custom kits. The backstory is that last month Lego launched a new program that lets users make custom Lego designs using the provided free 3D design software, then ...