When you think of prison, the words “secure” and “locked down” should be the first that come to mind, but never would I want to hear “system vulnerability” and “hackers can remotely access doors” associated with prison. Unfortunately that seems to be exactly the case here. At this year’s Hacker Halted conference, researchers discovered that for a mere $2500 and a long night’s worth of … Continue reading Maximum security not so secure
Here you are, thinking you’re so smart with your Android phone. You’ve rooted it, and now you side-load apps like it’s cool. Maybe you should be aware of what you’re installing, because there are threats to that shiny little device. Since Android is gaining popularity at an amazing rate, it’s also gaining metaphorical size as a target for malware teams. One of the benefits of … Continue reading Smartphone Woes: Android Botnet
Just announced, Sony Corp. has named former Homeland Security Chief Phillip Reitinger as their new Senior VP directly under Sony’s general counsel Nicole Seligman. Sony’s move comes in direct response to the hacks earlier this year that exposed some 100 million PSN accounts and caused general mayhem for Sony. Reuters reports that since the April 27th hack that left a sour taste in many PSN … Continue reading Former Homeland Security chief named Sony’s Senior VP
In the very early hours of the morning my twitter feed blew up with rumors that the Syrian Ministry of Defense’s site was experiencing hangups and that it may have been the work of Anonymous. Well wonder no more, this rumor is golden! The Hacker News confirms that early this morning, Anonymous hacked the website and put up the message seen above.
The Syrian people have been battling government heavies since peaceful protests for regime changes were met with the full on brutality of the Syrian armed forces. Sadly since the news cycle has long since forgotten the many, on-going rebellions of the Middle East, Anonymous has been one of the few groups that have cared enough to bring the events back into the spotlight.
The full note to the people of Syria found after the jump. Continue reading “Anonymous has hacked the Syrian Ministry of Defense”
DefCon, the underground hacking convention, begins on the 4th. Aside from require no names, and a measly $150 entry fee, it’s known for attracting over 10,000 attendees last year. That’s 10,000 people who have a fairly large interest in security measures, and how to defeat them. So what’s a national government to do? Why, offer them the biggest challenge they can think of, of course. … Continue reading NSA Challenges Hackers
Just when I think I’m going to get some sleep tonight I get word that Anonymous is telling people to close their PayPal accounts – seems like an attack against PayPal is imminent. As of now, there aren’t too many details as to what may be in store for PayPal but what does seem to be clear is that the latest Anonymous op is in … Continue reading [Updated] Check those PayPal accounts, Anonymous is taking aim
Bitcoin was attacked, compromised, and its database exposed today, costing users money as the virtual currency plummeted in value. It was valued as high as $30 USD per 1 Bitcoin earlier this month. The large sell off occurred at June 20th near 3:00am (JST). According to Mark Karpeles of MTGox, the trading market for BitCoin:
One account with a lot of coins was compromised and whoever stole it (using a HK based IP to login) first sold all the coins in there, to buy those again just after, and then tried to withdraw the coins. The $1000/day withdraw limit was active for this account and the hacker could only get out with $1000 worth of coins. Apart from this no account was compromised, and nothing was lost. Due to the large impact this had on the Bitcoin market, we will rollback every trade which happened since the big sale, and ensure this account is secure before opening access again.
This tweet from AnonymousIRC tells a different story: Continue reading “MtGox Bitcoin Exchange Compromised”
If you don’t own an HTC Android device, or never root/flash your phone, this news may not be of much interest to you. If you do, however, score one major victory for consumers: HTC has just announced via Facebook that it is now company policy to leave bootloaders unlocked. Prior to this point, HTC devices were not terribly difficult to root, however recent models, such … Continue reading HTC Does The Right Thing, Unlocks Bootloaders For Android Devices
Sony just released a bit of info regarding the PlayStation Network and Qriocity breach that I’ve been dreading to read since March. Simply put, everyone’s personal information such as usernames, passwords, addresses, and possibly credit card and purchase information has been compromised due to an unauthorized intrusion in their network. I’ve said time and time again that a breach like this is peanuts compared to what happened at Gawker back in late 2010 and nowhere near the magnitude of the Epsilon breach a short while back. With over 70 million accounts affected and the depth of the sensitive information accessed, this is easily one of the largest security disasters in Internet history. To put it into perspective, this is the equivalent of almost a quarter of the population of the United States becoming vulnerable to identity theft overnight. So who is to blame for this? Does the blame game make an all-out assault on Sony? Are Anonymous and the hacker splinter cell that piggybacked their tactics be the ones we tar and feather? Or are we the ones responsible for this attack via our growing hive mindish and egotistical outlook on the world? Continue reading “Who should we blame for the PlayStation Network breach?”
We’re now on Day 3 of the PlayStation Network outage and there’s no word on when the service will be up and running again. Today Sony confirmed that the PSN and Qriocity outage was indeed caused by an “external intrusion” and that upon realizing the intrusion, Sony voluntarily shut down those services on Wednesday. Initial speculation pointed to the hacktivist group Anonymous as being the … Continue reading The PSN outage could’ve been worse: all your personal info could’ve been leaked
Looks like Sanjay Jha’s legal minions will have to temporarily shift their focus from the secret move to California to the cracking down on William Pitock. Pitock, or better known by his pseudonym nenolod, posted the Motorola Sholes bootloader key and its initialization vector on his Twitter account for all the world to see. Of course, most of the world (myself included) won’t know what … Continue reading [UPDATED] Motorola bootloader keys released
Drivers in Houston received strange advice from some construction signs the other day. Expecting to see “Detour” or “Road Closed” notices from the signs on Louisiana and Prairie, the public was greeted with “POOP” and “:) LOL” instead. Of course this trick isn’t anything new. It’s been around for quite a few years but amazingly the department of transportation has yet to update the system … Continue reading [UPDATED] Caution: poop ahead
I’ve already ranted about cars and technology making it unsafe for all of you to drive around me, but I fear I must take it further. Car hacking isn’t totally new, but with the advances in wireless communications, we all knew this was coming.
Car Shark software has been used in the past to disrupt communications on the CAN (Controller Area Network) via the OBD-II diagnostic port and the brief wireless communications between air pressure sensors in the tires. The OBD-II connections are fairly safe for hacking, because it requires direct access to the interior of the car. You might notice that. The wireless pressure sensors just proved that injected signals can mess with the car. Now we have the mix of both.
Continue reading “Car Tech – Part Deux: The Hacking”
Did you think the Gawker security breach was a disaster because it affected almost 1.5 million people? You might want to re-think the use of the word disaster when applying it to security breaches, because Sony’s PlayStation Network is claiming to have over 69 million accounts as of January 25th. Now before you go off panicking you should know that there hasn’t been a security breach of the PSN…yet. A couple of weeks ago an anonymous but apparently well known hacker released a report under the moniker “The Anonymous Data Protection Officers” revealing that not only does Sony use the PSN as a form of spyware that gathers information about everything your PlayStation 3 is connected to, but all information transferred over the PSN is only protected by basic security measures. So how much info was this hacker able to decrypt? Ten percent? Fifty percent? Try one hundred percent of all PSN functions transferred over the PSN were decrypted. Continue reading “Major privacy and security concerns raised about PSN”
A few days ago a “Cease and Desist” letter from the shadowy hacktivist group known as Anonymous towards Westboro Baptist Church was published, warning the terrorist extremist church group to stop picketing funerals of fallen soldiers, to stop making vulgar and slanderous claims against certain groups of people, and to go back to their hometown and to leave people alone. In an interesting plot twist, … Continue reading Westboro Baptist Church tries to troll Anonymous
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