Hasta La Gadget!

On Thursday, a man named Hugo Tesco demonstrated at the Hack in a Box security conference a way to hijack an airplane using an Android device – and nothing else. Obviously, such a claim drew quite a bit of attention, including from the Federal Aviation Administration and European Aviation Safety Administration, both of which have come forward with statements that it simply isn’t possible.

According to Tesco, an airplane could be hijacked because two aviation systems, the Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, are unauthenticated and unencrypted. He acquired flight code software off eBay and a radio transmitter, and got to work with creating his plane hijacking method.

Tesco used the code to find vulnerabilities in virtual aircraft, and via these problems he used his Android app called PlaneSploit to take control of a Boeing jet in autopilot mode. Rockwell Collins, which is a company that make the systems that were hijacked, says the problem is that Tesco is using a virtual plane, and that such a method wouldn’t work with a real aircraft. The FAA agrees, publishing a statement that says:

“The FAA is aware that a German information technology consultant has alleged he has detected a security issue with the Honeywell NZ-2000 Flight Management System (FMS) using only a desktop computer … The described technique cannot engage or control the aircraft’s autopilot system using the FMS or prevent a pilot from overriding the autopilot. Therefore, a hacker cannot obtain ‘full control of an aircraft’ as the technology consultant has claimed.”

[via The Register]

Federal Aviation Administration says Android plane hijacking isn’t possible is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Raspberry Pi is all about low-cost computing, which makes this particular hack quite fitting, as it allows you to make a terminal for your lil’ Linux machine out of something you may already have at home: a Kindle Paperwhite. Displeased with the glare from his laptop’s screen on a sunny day, Max Ogden was inspired to find something better and ended up with this Paperwhite hack. It builds on the original “Kindleberry Pi” method for the Kindle Keyboard, although Ogden had to massage it for the newer model and added some extra hardware to make the setup as wireless as possible. You wouldn’t call the end result a monitor, as such — the Paperwhite logs into an SSH session running on the Pi, so it “pretty much only works for terminals.” That’s probably for the best, as Ogden guesses the lag between wireless keyboard and e-ink screen is around 200ms, but at least it has portability, battery life and sunlight readability in the ‘pros’ column. Details of the project can be found at the source below, meaning only time (and probably, a few peripherals) stands between you and the ultimate hipster coffee shop machine.

Filed under: Misc, Software, Amazon

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Via: Raspberry Pi

Source: Max Ogden

It turns out that Colin Powell’s Facebook hack wasn’t just an isolated incident performed by a 13-year old with good password-guessing skills. The hacker, who is known as Guccifer, is also the same hacker who breached e-mail accounts belonging to over a dozen of George W. Bush’s friends and family members. He obtained “interesting e-mails”, photos, list of home addresses, cell phone numbers, and more. The hacker even obtained the gate code to Bush’s home.

Guccifer took over Colin Powell’s Facebook and made posts that were vulgar, juvenile, and in all caps. Guccifer had also uploaded various private photos to Colin Powell’s Facebook as well. One of the photos showed George H. W. Bush lying in a hospital bed, another showed George W. Bush “wearing” a Ku Klux Klan hat, and there were a few self-portraits of Bush in a bath, taking a shower, and attending church.

There were many references made on Powell’s Facebook page that claimed George W. Bush was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, and that the entire Bush family were “puppets of the Illuminati.” Guccifer posted on Powell’s wall, “Kill the Illuminati! Tomorrow’s world will be a world free of Illuminati or will be no more.” The hacker has stated that he has no intentions of stopping his attacks on the Bush administration.

There has been a federal criminal investigation on Guccifer ever since he breached Bush’s e-mail accounts back in early February. Along with those e-mail accounts, Guccifer had also accessed the accounts of U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a senior UN official, security contractors in Iraq, and several former FBI agents. Colin Powell’s hack is the latest attack in this case, and judging from the timing of the attacks, there may be another hit within the next 2-3 weeks.

[via The Smoking Gun]

Colin Powell’s Facebook hacker also breached Bush Family e-mail accounts is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A security flaw discovered by Terence Eden on the Galaxy Note II with Android 4.1.2 may make that device less secure than you think when it’s locked by a code or other method. He discovered that the homescreen can be accessed, albeit it just for a split second, by pressing the “Emergency Call” icon, then the ICE button and finally pressing the physical home key for several seconds. While brief, it’s still enough time to click on any of your homescreen apps, which normally wouldn’t present a problem since access goes away when the home page disappears again. However, if one of your apps is a “direct dial” widget, for instance, a call can actually be placed by a hacker, and many other programs that perform an action at launch could also leave the device vulnerable. We’ve confirmed the flaw on our own handsets and the individual who discovered it says that after reporting it five days ago, Samsung has yet to respond. We’ve reached out to the Korean company ourselves and will let you know about any further developments.

Filed under: Cellphones, Samsung

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Via: @Whatleydude (Twitter)

Source: Terence Eden (blog)

This week the soon to be released book “The New Digital Age” authored by Google’s Eric Schmidt has been reviewed and spilled early by the Wall Street Journal, this note including words from the author regarding the future digital dominance of China across out planet. This is not the first time Schmidt has predicted political waves coming crashing in before they’ve gone ahead and happened – an essay by Schmidt and colleague Jared Cohen in 2010 called “The Digital Disruption” which correctly predicted Arab Spring. Could this be the next great digital high tide coming towards us?

Speaking back in the essay from 2010, Schmidt and Cohen let it be known that soon “governments will be caught off-guard when large numbers of their citizens, armed with virtually nothing but cell phones, take part in mini-rebellions that challenge their authority.” This prediction essentially became a hard and fast real-world situation when events such as the Free Iran movement spread and was maintained with Twitter as a large proponent. Everyone knew what the green flags meant because Twitter let them know it.

In the new book authored by Schmidt, “The New Digital Age” is a section in which the next generation will see the information age take hold fully of political uprisings and movements between countries. Schmidt also make clear that he believes China will be a “dangerous and menacing superpower”, as the WSJ says. This book is also go-authored by Cohen as the essay from 2010 was, they here saying that “the disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics” will be putting the USA at a real disadvantage when it comes to future business and politics.

Cohen and Schmidt ass that the United States will be at a disadvantage against China because the country is not willing to “take the same page of digital corporate espionage”, for two reasons: moral values and laws. The “American sense of fair play” will be the reason China gains an upper hand because in the USA “the laws are much stricter (and better enforced)”. Schmidt’s book will be released in full with details far more in-depth than what we’ve got available today – in April is when the public will be able to see it.

In addition to being able to dominate the USA in several digitally-influenced ways in the future, Schmidt and Cohen note that China will be seeing “some kind of revolution in the coming decades”. What that revolution will be is anyone’s guess.

Eric Schmidt predicts China’s hacker war is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.