Last night, several of the servers belonging to Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor were hacked, $250,000 in Bitcoins (24,000 coins) stolen. An open letter from the Bitfloor’s founder (reproduced below) explains what happened—and what action will be taken to compensate those whose accounts were compromised. For now, Bitfloor has been shut completely. More »
Do you have hardware project that’s been simmering on the back burner because you can’t get access to a 3D printer? Come on down to the Disrupt Hackathon and use one of the MakerBots and Raspberry Pis we’ll have on site for anyone to use. Build toys, robots, Arduino cases, or whatever you want and enter the Disrupt Hackathon as an inaugural hardware hacker. We dare you.
The best hardware hack as chosen by the judges wins a brand new Replicator courtesy of MakerBot – a $2,000 value.
What can you do to prepare? For starters, I’ll have four Raspberry Pi boards available for hackers to futz with during the evening courtesy of our friends at Adafruit Industries. If you’d like to get access to one (and to keep one) you must contact me at john@techcrunch.com before this Friday and I’ll choose four hackers at random. You’ll want to bring an SD card with Adafruit’s own Raspberry Pi Linux Disro already ready to go so you can get down to hacking instead of spending precious minutes flashing images. Also check out the tutorials available online for hacking the Raspberry Pi.
If you’re already an advanced hacker, pack up your Ardunio board and bring a selection of sensors and motors. Once we get better at the hardware portion of the festivities we’ll be sure to bring a supply for you all to use, but this year in SF we need your help to shape our hardware hacker best practices. Come ready to build something in 24 hours with a team of strangers and please don’t roll in with a fully-formed multi-armed robot you designed over the past decade (although that would be badass).
I’m looking forward to seeing some hardware hackers at our Hackathon on September 8 and please drop me a line if you have any questions. Again, the Makerbots will be available all night and four individuals will get a Pi to play with so plan accordingly.
May the hacks be ever in your favor.
Modder Andy Rawson thinks he’s found the secret to turning smartphones into super-cheap thermal imaging hardware. Inspired by his quest to find leaks in his old home and the high cost of professional gear, he set about building his own. A 64-zone temperature sensor connects to his iPhone via the dock, overlaying the data onto his camera display. He’s planning to open-source the $150 hardware, and an Android variant of the hardware is currently in the works — although details for both are currently thin on the ground, you can see his announcement video after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Peripherals
Modder builds $150 open-source thermal imaging camera to help insulate his house (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Sep 2012 17:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
See those silver stripes around the circumference of this Parrot AR drone? They’re not there for decoration or style. They’re actually strips of aluminum tape that’s wired into a capacitor from a disposable camera’s flash. Which means that when—not if—this drone bumps into someone, they’re going to get a particularly unpleasant shock as you can see what happened to its creator’s arm. More »
The video out feature in Windows Phone 7 is reserved for select Microsoft employees, and now one enterprising member of the XDA Developers forum. With certain files ripped from an LG Panther 7003 ROM, the help of someone on the inside and many months of work, forum member marsrogers succeeded in pushing video from his Samsung Focus to a companion PC app. Don’t get too excited though — this particular trick will not be released to the masses so the MS confidant involved is not exposed. However, it’s not all bad news, as marsrogers’ source reports that Windows Phone 8 will have remote desktop capability straight out of the box. Sadly, for those of you carrying around current-gen WP devices, there’s still no hope.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
Video out enabled on Windows Phone 7, just not for you originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The folks in Mountain View are starting to make a habit of getting hacked — intentionally, that is. Earlier this year, Google hosted an event at the CanSecWest security conference called Pwnium, a competition that challenged aspiring hackers to poke holes in its Chrome browser. El Goog apparently learned so much from the event that it’s doing it again — hosting Pwnium 2 at the Hack in the Box 10th anniversary conference in Malaysia and offering up to $2 million in rewards. Bugging out the browser by exploiting its own code wins the largest award, a cool $60,000. Enlisting the help of a WebKit or Windows kernel bug makes you eligible for a $50,000 reward, and non-Chrome exploits that rely on a bug in Flash or a driver are worth $40,000. Not confident you can break Chrome? Don’t let that stop you — Google plans to reward incomplete exploits as well, noting that it has plenty to learn from unreliable or incomplete attacks. Check out the Chromium Blog at the source link below for the full details.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Google teases hackers with $2 million in prizes, announces Pwnium 2 exploit competition originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The hack performed against Wired writer Mat Honan serves as a cautionary tale for others to ensure they back up their data, but what about the security issues found with the companies that helped facilitate the crime? Amazon fixed its own security hole yesterday, and now Apple has blocked customer service representatives from issuing password changes over the phone for Apple IDs.
According to an Apple employee that spoke to Wired, the company has placed a 24 hour freeze on any new over-the-phone password changes in order to give the team more time to think about and implement new security measures. When Wired once again tried to duplicate the social engineering used against Apple customer service representatives, they were told that the systems were prevented from resetting passwords, and that users had to do so via Apple’s website instead.
There’s still no official comment from Apple regarding the freeze, however, and it’s not yet clear what the company intends to do to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future. Amazon quietly fixed its own security issue yesterday, with a new policy in place that prevents callers from simply providing a name, email address, and home address to gain access to an account.
The hacker who reset Honan’s various Apple devices first went after his Amazon account, providing the easily gathered information to customer service representatives over the phone in order to gain access. Once the hacker managed that, the last four digits of Honan’s credit card were displayed in his account, information that Apple representatives happily accepted as proof as identity, allowing the individual to perform a password reset and gain access to the iCloud account.
Apple freezes over-the-phone password resets is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
By now, you may have heard the story of the identity ‘hack’ perpetrated against Wired journalist Mat Honan. Using easily obtained data, an anonymous duo bluffed its way into changing his Amazon account, then his Apple iCloud account, then his Google account and ultimately the real target, Twitter. Both Amazon and Apple were docked for how easy it was to modify an account over the phone — and, in close succession, have both put at least a momentary lockdown on the changes that led to Honan losing much of his digital presence and some irreplaceable photos. His own publication has reportedly confirmed a policy change at Amazon that prevents over-the-phone account changes. Apple hasn’t been as direct about what’s going on, but Wired believes there’s been a 24-hour hold on phone-based Apple ID password resets while the company marshals its resources and decides how much extra strictness is required.
Neither company has said much about the issue. Amazon has been silent, while Apple claims that some of its existing procedures weren’t followed properly, regardless of any rules it might need to mend. However the companies address the problem, this is one of those moments where the lesson learned is more important than the outcome. Folks: if your accounts and your personal data matter to you, use truly secure passwords and back up your content. While Honan hints that he may have put at least some of the pieces back together, not everyone gets that second chance.
Filed under: Internet
Amazon, Apple stop taking key account changes over the phone after identity breach originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 23:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Raspberry Pi is already considered a hacker’s paradise. However, that assumes that owners have all the software they need to start in the first place. Adafruit wants to give the process a little nudge through its Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro. The software includes a customized distribution of Raspbian, Occidentalis, that either turns on or optimizes SSHD access, Bonjour networking, WiFi adapter support and other hack-friendly tools. The build further rolls in Hexxeh’s firmware and a big, pre-built 4GB SD card image. Before you start frantically clicking the download link, be aware that the “educational” title doesn’t refer to a neophyte’s playground — Adafruit still assumes you know enough about Linux and Raspberry Pi units to be productive (or dangerous). Anyone who was already intrigued by the Raspberry Pi by itself, though, might appreciate what happens when it’s tossed into a fruit salad.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Software
Adafruit launches Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro, hastens our hacking originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Motorola’s initial promise to allow unlocked bootloaders came across to many enthusiasts as somewhat hollow: as long as there was an escape clause, carriers like AT&T and Verizon could clamp down and maintain the tough-to-modify status quo. RAZR-philes will be happy to know that there’s a plan to cut their own chains loose, after all. Starting with the Photon Q 4G LTE’s August launch, owners will have the option to unlock the bootloader of at least some devices in an official way that reportedly keeps carriers satisfied. Details of how the process works will come later; we don’t know if Motorola will take a cue from HTC’s identifier tokens or try something more exotic, even if it’s likely in either case to offer a big, fat disclaimer regarding the warranty. The option won’t be the same as buying a phone that’s unlocked from the start, but we don’t think too many custom ROM lovers will mind after knowing that one more Android manufacturer is on their side.
[Thanks, RTbar]
Filed under: Cellphones
Motorola to allow bootloader unlocking from Photon Q 4G LTE onwards originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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