Jan 13
The Internet is dealing with the suicide of gifted programmer and activist Aaron Swartz in a variety of ways—but Anonymous is responding with what it does best. Two of MIT’s sites have been hacked into memorials. More »
Jan 09
A petition was posted on the White House’s website by Anonymous, which is seeking to have DDoS attacks become a legal form of protest. Distributed denial-of-service attacks are not hacking, the group says, but are instead the equivalent of “hitting the refresh button on a webpage.” In doing so, the protesters are occupying a digital space much like a protester outside of a physical business.
The petition can be found over at the White House’s We the People page, where it currently has 775 signatures. Per the website’s FAQ, the petition has to reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days in order to be reviewed by the White House. To meet this requirement, it currently needs a little over 24,000 signatures by February 6.
Says the petition: “With the advance in internet techonology [sic], comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any “occupy” protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.”
The petition then goes on to state that those who have been jailed for performing DDoS attacks should be released, and that any criminal record resulting from such legal situations should be cleared. Anonymous has performed its fair share of denial of service attacks over the years, often as a form of protest. Recently, McAfee Lab published a report in which it states that we’ll see a decline in Anonymous attacks in 2013.
[via White House]
Anonymous wants DDoS attacks to be a legal form of protest is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jan 09
Late last year, multiple US banks were attacked online by what was believed to be a hacker group. Now government officials are saying it was actually the work of Iran, possibly in response to cyberattacks it has suffered from the US. This was determined when an investigation revealed that the method used to attack the banks was too sophisticated to be the work a fringe group.
Recently, several banks across the nation have been hit with attacks that harmed them to various degrees for ten or so minutes before they recovered. This is due to extremely high amounts of that are being directed to the banks in the DDoS attacks, affecting the likes of Wells Fargo, HSBC, Bank of America, and Citigroup, among others.
According to a former state official, the United States government is 100-percent certain that Iran is the cause of the attacks. Likewise, security firm Radware’s Vice President Carl Herberger is quoted as saying, “The scale, the scope and the effectiveness of these attacks have been unprecedented. There have never been this many financial institutions under this much duress.”
Fortunately, none of the bank accounts have been violated, and no money has been taken. The attacks are being directed from data centers, which are said to have taken control of some small-time cloud services and used them as the powerhouse behind initiating the attacks. Two issues are making it difficult to resolve the problem, however: 1, the DDoS attacks are encrypted, and 2, how the data centers are being hijacked is unknown.
[via New York Times]
Iran cyberattacked US banks according to government officials is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Dec 22
Hacker Leaks 300,000 Verizon Customer Records and Claims to Have Millions More (Updated)
Posted in: Today's Chili
Sometimes it seems like no one’s keeping your data safe; this is one of those times. A hacker just leaked 300,000 Verizon customer records, and that’s only a sample of the 3 million he claims to have gotten in his little raid. More »
Dec 18
While I don’t often hold stock in random pronouncements by magazines, I’m shocked and thrilled that Entrepreneur Magazine named Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, as their 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. Limor runs a $4.5 million company with 25 employees and she produces some of the coolest electronic gadgets around.
It’s amazing that Adafruit Industries exists at all – after all, the average code jockey doesn’t want to handle solder or jumpers. However, the company has made it easy for electronics hobbyists to learn almost everything there is to know about some amazing microcontrollers, Arduino boards, and even skill badges for geeky Boy Scouts. They’ve taken off, selling $10 million in gear this year.
Limor started her company in her MIT dorm room by selling electronics kits to her friends, making about $10 on each kit. Soon she moved to New York and in October moved from a 2,000 square foot office to a sprawling 12,000 square foot loft in Soho.
Just a week after the move, Fried was bubbling with excitement, obvious even over the din of 500 packages being prepped for the daily UPS shipment. “It’s a new chapter in the business,” she exclaims. “I think we can quadruple our current size.” No mean feat, considering Adafruit has shipped more than half a million kits in the last seven years, and revenue has doubled every year for the past three. The warehouse-grade power supply at the new facility allows for simultaneous operation of large equipment like laser engravers and mills, which means much faster production; the additional space means more inventory can be stocked. Fried is also throwing her creative weight behind education initiatives, designing school curricula in electronic circuitry and robotics and creating stickers and badges, à la Girl Scouts, to get kids to brag about their skills in areas like welding and programming.
You can read the article here but you’re actually better off heading over to the Adafruit website and picking up a few kits. Nothing beats the feeling of firing up a homebrew electronics project and I’m thrilled to see the maker community band together to elevate one of their own amazing hackers.
Dec 04
Hacked pictures. FBI inbox sweeps. Cameras pointed at mirrors. This year was full of horny, naked Internet. More »
Dec 03
If you maintain a blog on Tumblr, it might be a good idea to stay away from the site for the time being. Apparently, hacker group GNAA has taken advantage of a major security hole to publish racist and offensive posts to Tumblr blogs, and visiting infected blogs while logged into Tumblr helps these posts spread. Buzzfeed originally reported on the attack, posting images of the inflammatory posts being published (just a warning: they’re pretty offensive to anyone other than an Internet troll).
Buzzfeed suggests that if you go to Tumblr, only go to your dashboard. By avoiding other Tumblr blogs, you can prevent this exploit from spreading and posting things you probably don’t want to your blog. It seems that this exploit first targeted, of all things, Tumblr’s Brony tag, with the company making a statement on the exploit. Here it is in full:
There is a viral post circulating on Tumblr which begins “Dearest ‘Tumblr’ users”. If you have viewed this post, please log out of all browsers that may be using Tumblr immediately. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as swiftly as possible. Thank you.
No word on when a fix is scheduled to arrive, but hopefully it’s delivered at some point today. The post themselves are shooting for shock value in a big way, so make no mistake, this definitely isn’t anything you want your visitors to see. It’s possible that this exploit is spread by running a script in the video embed field, so this is a big security problem indeed.
Of course, breaches like this are nothing new, with hackers doing their best to constantly keep us on our toes. Even though there isn’t any evidence that GNAA is accessing accounts to put these posts up, it’s probably still a good idea to change your password. Better safe than sorry, after all. Keep it tuned here at SlashGear and we’ll keep you posted any new developments with this breach.
Tumblr blogs hacked to display racist, offensive posts is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nov 30
Exclusive: The Final Words of a 15-Year-Old Hacker Banned from the Internet
Posted in: Today's Chili
Cosmo is a 15-year-old boy who just received the hacker equivalent of a death sentence. All of his electronics: gone. The Internet: off-limits until he’s 21. He’s completely vanished from the world he called home. More »
Nov 29
HTC HD2 gains Windows Phone 8 port
Posted in: Today's ChiliIt’s time again to call forth the beast from the pits of hacker heaven, that being the legendary HTC HD2, originally running Windows Mobile 6.5 back in 2009, here now with Windows Phone 8. This device has been a bit of a golden egg for hackers over the past few years, with the challenge being to get the newest and most fabulous mobile operating system running on it. Now it seems that even Windows Phone 8, a mobile operating system that has hardware requirements built-in, is no longer safe!
What you’re seeing here above and below are a set of photos from WPCentral showing how the device is indeed running Windows Phone 8, a software that would certainly have to be twisted and tweaked to heck to have it allowed on such a relatively ancient smartphone. With Windows Phone 8.0.97 running on a Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon processor with a single 1GHz Scorpion CPU and Adreno 200 graphics, we’ve got to wonder if the software is able to creep by at a respectable pace.
With its 480 x 800 pixel display across 4.3 inches, users working with this build will still be seeing 217 ppi, a respectable density for a display even by today’s standards. Of course the HTC DROID DNA’s 440 is in a brand new league, but that’s beside the point. Today it’s all about the glory of getting a software working on a device for which it was never intended.
The HTC HD2 has been hacked to work with Windows Phone 7 as well as 7.5 and 7.8 as well – not to mention the most epic port of all: Android. Don’t forget that it ran MeeGo 1.1 as well! Modders from team DFT presents this hack and reminds us that even with Microsoft’s next-level software-hardware security they call “handshaking” in the form of Bitlocker, there’s always a way to get past.
HTC HD2 gains Windows Phone 8 port is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nov 26
After the US and Israel cooked up Stuxnet—a potent cyber weapon aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities—whenever a virus targets Iran, it could be something major. This time around, the web threat wants to erase Iranian banks. More »
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