If you’re an IT security nerd specialist holed up in some corporation’s basement, you probably don’t find this real-time visualization of the world’s cyber attacks to be beautiful. But the rest of us can sit back and appreciate the eye candy. More »
Every currently supported version of Java is vulnerable to a new exploit, according to Adam Gowdiak, a security expert who is known for finding Java exploits. That could include up to a billion computers, according to Oracle’s instillation statistics. More »
Trying to count the bees buzzing about in a hive is like trying to count the grains of sand on a beach. But if you’re worried the deadly virus that has been decimating beehives across the country might be jeopardizing your source of fresh honey, check out this honey bee counter that tracks the comings and goings of your hive’s population. More »
Mobile security company Intrepidus Group presented evidence during the EUSecWest security conference potentially identifying a major flaw in at least two US transit systems. Creating an Android app named “UltraReset” and using it in tandem with an NFC-enabled Android phone (a Nexus S, in this case), security researchers Corey Benninger and Max Sobell were able to reset and reuse — free of charge — transit access cards in both San Francisco’s MUNI system and New Jersey’s PATH system. Before you go getting any bad ideas, know that Benninger and Sobell haven’t released the app for public use, and warned both transit systems in late 2011 (though neither region has fixed the exploit, the duo claim). PATH and MUNI share a common chip access card — the Mifare Ultralight — which can apparently be reset for 10 extra rides (as demonstrated on video below) via Android phones with NFC, an OS newer than 2.3.3 (Gingerbread). Starting to sound familiar?
Intrepidus is, however, releasing a modified version of the app, named “UltraCardTester.” The modified app functions just like its nefarious progenitor, except it can’t add time to cards (see it in action below). The app can tell you how many rides you have left, and if a system is open to exploit, but it won’t assist you in the act of exploiting. We reached out to both New Jersey’s PATH and San Francisco MUNI on the issue, but have yet to hear back as of publishing.
Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation, Wireless, Software, Mobile
Security researchers identify transit system exploit in San Fran and New Jersey, create app to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Sep 2012 19:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Public transit can be both a blessing and a curse. It gets you where you need to go, but only pulsating herd of other coughing, sneezing humans. But maybe that wouldn’t seem so bad if you didn’t have to pay for it. There’s an app for that. More »
You knew that the hackers of the world would be anxious to jailbreak their fresh new iPhone 5’s, and the feat’s been accomplished just a day after older hardware running iOS 6 was similarly set free. Grant Paul posted the picture you see above on Twitter, confirming his new, elongated iPhone is, indeed, running Cydia. Unfortunately, the jailbreak isn’t available to the rest of us just yet, but it shouldn’t be long before the masses gain access, too. Viva la liberté!
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
iPhone 5 jailbroken, but not yet ready for public consumption originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
As ever, a new version of iOS is just another challenge to the hacking community. Within 24 hours the iPhone Dev-Team has already managed to get its redsn0w tethered jailbreak working on iOS 6—but only with the A4-powered iPhone 4, 3GS and 4th-gen iPod touch. More »
Up until this point with Apple mobile products, only the iPad has been able to work as a USB host – in a limited way – with the 30-pin dock and an adapter that only works to push photos from your 3rd party camera to your tablet. An iPhone 5 report today comes from Macotakara in Japan where they’ve got some insight – but not quite final confirmation – that the new Lightning connector Apple has revealed this week has added to the iPhone the ability to work as USB host. With this ability it is possible that users would be able to use essentially any accessory with the device that you can connect with a USB cord – keyboards, cameras, and MIDI controllers, oh my!
This connection mystery will stick around until either Apple confirms/denies the Lightning USB host possibility or when the iPhone 5 hits the hands of millions of citizens across the earth – at which point the hacks can commence. If the Lightning connector does indeed allow USB hosting with the iPhone 5 – and the iPod touch and iPod nano refreshes also announced this week – we’ll see a litany of new kinds of accessories in the very near future. It also opens up many doors to people deep in the world of Apple product hacking – not something Apple loves, but they’re there.
NOTE: Check out our iPhone 5 hands-on experience now!
Here’s the deal for the visual learners amongst us – with the current Lightning connector we’ve got Lightning on one end and USB male on the other – this allows the device to connect with your PC and other devices that exist as USB hosts.
If Apple has indeed included USB host functionality with the Lightning connector, we’ll still need an accessory from Apple to make it work – it’d look like this:
What do you think? Will Apple open their arms to a wave of accessories that already work with a massive amount of mobile devices right now – will there be some new requirements for compatibility? What will this big change bring if, indeed, it does exist?
Lightning may bring USB host ability to iPhone 5 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Yesterday it became apparent late in the day that GoDaddy was having issues with keeping a collection of webpages up as they were reported as under attack by hackers – today it seems that this is entirely untrue. Though GoDaddy and collection of webpages they work with did indeed go down for a period yesterday, they’ve today sent out a statement that notes that no external forces had to do with the incident. Instead of it being Anonymous or some other nameless hacker dropping a DDoS attack or any number of other malicious actions, it was simply an internal network issue.
GoDaddy’s interim CEO Scott Wagner has sent a message out to a set of webpages affected by the drop, including TechCrunch, which noted that, “once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions for our customers and GoDaddy.com.” In addition, a site outage investigation report was released today with a bit more info:
“Yesterday, GoDaddy.com and many of our customers experienced intermittent service outages starting shortly after 10 a.m. PDT. Service was fully restored by 4 p.m. PDT.
The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a “hack” and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.
At no time was any customer data at risk or were any of our systems compromised.
Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it.
We take our business and our customers’ businesses very seriously. We apologize to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience.”
– Wagner
This type of attack – or issue – is enough to make some of the more gigantic hosted webpages think about their future with the business. Because of a downtime like this, massive amounts of otherwise earned cash will have been lost. A company whose main task is to keep webpages hosted successfully on the web at all hours of the day has this one key element that will act as bad PR for them – what GoDaddy must hope now is that this incident fades away quickly.
GoDaddy denies all external influence in Crash is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Here’s something ultra-nerdy but incredibly fun: you can hack your Kindle to work as a display for a tiny portable computer like the Raspberry Pi. More »
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