Hasta La Gadget!

One thing that’s great about IKEA furniture is that it’s so cheap that you can feel comfortable hacking it into other forms without fear of damaging your grandma’s prized antique Chippendale. Take, for example, this epic IKEA hack, which transformed a couple of ordinary stools into a functional kid’s bicycle.

With the help of FabShop, Samuel Bernier and Andreas Bhend took parts from a couple of $15 FROSTA birch plywood stools, along with a handful of 3D printed parts, and fabricated a bicycle out of them. While using some 3D printed parts might be looked at as “cheating” by some, I think it just gave their design a minor boost, and the bike still captures the spirit of the original furniture upon which it’s based.

Bernier and Bhend get bonus points for creating a fake IKEA instruction manual to go with their design too. They called the bike the “Draisienne“, named after an antique bicycle, but I would have gone with more of an IKEA friendly name like “BIKKLO” or “KICKLA.”

If you’re interested in building your own IKEA bike, head on over to Instructables for the build details.

[via FastCo Design via Cheezburger]

Those of you who play Hammerpoint’s The War Z may want to change your passwords. Hackers have breached databases in The War Z that held personal player info. Players’ email addresses, passwords, in-game names, IP addresses, and game log-in credentials have all been compromised. Hammerpoint has temporarily shut down its servers for The War Z and for its forums to address the issue and find out the scope of the damage.

Hammerpoint assures The War Z players, however, that their payment credentials have not been compromised since it uses a 3rd party to handle all of its transactions. It also says that its players’ real names and addresses should not be compromised, unless the players themselves posted the information on the forums. Hammerpoint also says that player passwords and the email addresses that they use to log into the game are encrypted, so hackers should not be view them without using a “brute force” attack. Nonetheless, change your passwords.

Hammerpoint is currently working with external investigators and security experts in order to determine just how wide-spread the breach was. It has enhanced its security systems to better protect its players’ personal information. It has notified all of its players of the security breach, and is taking the steps necessary to ensure that an incident like this will not happen again in the future.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The War Z, it’s a zombie survival MMO that many gamers say is a rip off of Arma II’s DayZ mod. It has also received bad press for falsely advertising its game. It launched the game on Steam with misinformation. It lied about how the game has a skill tree system and private servers, and it also over-exaggerated its offerings. This outraged many players who purchased the game but realized that they had no access to many of the promised features. The game was removed from Steam, and was reinstated 2 months later after it amended its description.

Hammerpoint didn’t release an ETA on when the investigation and security updates will be finished, so we’ll update you when we find out. Security breaches seem to be going around a lot recently. Earlier last month, Evernote suffered from a similar breach where user emails and passwords were compromised. It had to initiate a mandatory password reset for all users in order to protect their data.

[via The War Z]

The War Z player data compromised after security breach is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hacking is still a loaded concept for many, often conjuring negative images of corporate espionage, fraudsters and prank-minded script kiddies. PBS’ Off Book wants to remind us that hacking wasn’t always seen this way — and, thanks to modern developments, is mending its reputation. Its latest episode shows that hacking began simply as a desire to advance devices and software beyond their original roles, but was co-opted by a sometimes misunderstanding press that associated the word only with malicious intrusions. Today, hacking has regained more of its original meaning: hackathons, a resurgence of DIY culture and digital protests prove that hacks can improve our gadgets, our security and even our political landscape. We still have a long way to go before we completely escape movie stereotypes, but the mini-documentary may offer food for thought the next time you’re installing a custom ROM or building your own VR helmet.

Filed under: Misc, Networking, Internet, Alt

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Faculty members at one of the top universities in China have been linked to the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, the same group that has been accused of hacking several U.S. based companies as well as several media outlets. The university in question, Shanghai Jiaotong University, is a prestigious school known for its successful graduates, most who end up doing well in politics and in business.

While Shanghai Jiaotong University is linked with PLA Unit 61398, there’s no evidence that shows that they were involved in the cyber-espionage attacks against the United States. However, faculty at the university’s School of Information Security Engineering (SISE) have collaborated with the PLA Unit on several research papers centered around cyber-security.

Xue Zhi, the Vice President of SISE and who is also well known for developing China’s leading cyber-attack platform, collaborated with Chen Yi-qun, a researcher for the PLA, on a paper about improving security by designing a collaborative network monitoring system. Fan Lei, an associate professor at the university, also worked on a research paper with Chen. Fan said, however, that he had no idea Chen was part of PLA Unit 61398 and that he only worked with him because he was a SISE graduate. His statement was proven false by the research paper, which clearly stated that Chen was part of the PLA unit.

While most of these papers are centered mainly around cyber-security, the information can also be used to develop efficient cyber attacks. Adam Meyers, the Director of Intelligence at a security tech company named CrowdStrike, stated, “The research seems to be defensive, but cyber-security research can be dual purpose.” He goes on to say that in order to develop the best cyber security, one must think “about the most effective means of attack.”

[via Reuters]

Top Chinese university linked to Chinese hacking group is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Since lockscreen bypass methods are apparently what’s hot in the streets, it’s no surprise that yet another one has surfaced, this time targeting Samsung’s Android phones. A variant of another, earlier uncovered method, this one does not fully unlock the phone by itself, but does provide access to apps and settings for a brief period. Given that, as demonstrated in the video by Terence Eden, it’s possible to use Google Play to download an app to disable the locked screen and fully access the phone.

According to Terence, this problem is confirmed on the Galaxy Note II, possibly the Galaxy S III and potentially on other TouchWiz UI Samsung Android phones. Disabling screen animations under developer options should reduce the vulnerability, but doesn’t eliminate it without switching to another ROM. He also mentions Samsung is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, but that leaves phones accessible right now. We’ve certainly seen enough of these recently (Apple’s latest version of iOS has also been victimized again in the last day) to know leaving our phones out, locked or unlocked, is foolish. At the same time, if a manufacturer insists on adding customized software to the existing platform, it could at least have the courtesy to do so without causing security leaks — check after the break for a “bonus” vid sent in by another tipster that shows a way to activate voice commands on a locked Galaxy S II.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Samsung

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Via: Rootzwiki

Source: Terence Eden Has A Blog