It’s incredibly noisy in the cockpit of a helicopter, and you’d assume the sounds you hear in any YouTube police chase video were just the deafening whine of the chopper’s engine. But as one hacker discovered, that monotonous drone can actually hide some useful data, like the helicopter’s GPS coordinates.
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SplashData, makers of the SplashID Safe password management software, has just published its list of 25 worst passwords of 2013. Climbing up the list from second to first is “123456”, … Continue reading
This article was written on January 08, 2008 by CyberNet.
Geeks.com is a very popular shopping site for computer buffs to pick up parts. They have begun to send out emails to users because it was revealed that their database was hacked on December 5th, 2007. Not only do the hackers have in their possession the names and addresses of the people, but also credit card numbers with their expiration date and card verification number. Everything a hacker needs to have a day of “fun” on your behalf.
At the very bottom of the site there is also the “Hacker Safe, Tested Daily” logo that is supposed to reassure customers that things like this won’t happen. Guess we can see how much confidence you should place in services like that.
Here is a bulk of the email that they are sending out:
The purpose of this letter is to notify you that Genica dba Geeks.com (“Genica”) recently discovered on December 5, 2007 that customer information, including Visa credit card information, may have been compromised. In particular, it is possible that an unauthorized person may be in possession of your name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card number, expiration date, and card verification number. We are still investigating the details of this incident, but it appears that an unauthorized individual may have accessed this information by hacking our eCommerce website.
We take this breach of our data seriously, and we deeply regret that this incident has occurred. We immediately reported this crime to local law enforcement authorities, as well as the Secret Service and other federal authorities. We also reported the incident to Visa. We have engaged an outside, nationally recognized security firm to determine how this incident occurred and to confirm that information we obtain is protected to the fullest extent reasonably possible.
To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to review your Visa credit card account statements and to monitor your credit reports as provided below. To assist you, Genica has taken the following steps:
We have set up a toll-free, call-in number to assist you with questions or concerns you may have related to this incident. All questions should be directed to 1-888-529-6261 or 1-212-560-5108 for non-US recipients.
PLEASE NOTE: These numbers will be active beginning on Tuesday, January 9, 2008.
Hop on over to Consumerist if you want to read the rest of the email.
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
North Korea is very famously closed off from the rest of the world, but one organization—Fighters for a Free North Korea—is working to breach the walls of the regime by airdrop. But they’re not using conventional means and fancy technology; they’re delivering info via balloon, The Atlantic reports.
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This article was written on August 26, 2007 by CyberNet.
I’m a huge fan of coming up with cheap hacks that replace otherwise expensive solutions. I thought I would use this article to discuss creating a low-cost laptop sleeve from various items, as well as picking up a nice laptop stand at the store for under $5. Hopefully these instructions will save you some time and money…
I originally saw this trick on Lifehacker, and I thought it was really clever. Someone had made a sleeve for their laptop using 3 or 4 FedEx envelopes! Directions on how to make your own are available on Instructables, and here is what the final result looks like:
Instructables also has two other alternatives for laptop sleeves: one made with a hoodie, and another made with a simple piece of fabric. Before you get going on any of these tricks you’ll want to have some sewing skills!
I, however, forked out about $25 to purchase a well-padded laptop sleeve that fits my computer very snuggly. If I’m going to be using this to transport my computer I want to have something that does a little more than just prevent scratches.
I had given a tutorial back in June regarding how to change your primary monitor. Since then I’ve had several people ask me what I used to get my laptop lifted off of the desk, and make it more at level with my standalone monitor:
In the photo the stand is the four white legs holding up the laptop, and it’s just a wire shelf often used in the kitchen. Here is someone selling a similar shelf on Amazon for $5, but I picked up a three-pack of these at our local Walmart for under $6 (they varied slightly in size). I recommend going to a department store and looking in the kitchen section for these if you want one yourself. It surely beats paying $32 for something that serves the same purpose.
And besides for just putting the laptop at an equal level to this monitor, it also serves a few other purposes. Since it is a wire rack it provides plenty of ventilation for the various vents on the computer, and therefore it runs cooler than normal. Not only that, but the way the rack is designed makes it possible for me to easily utilize the space underneath the computer for something else.
Tip: Some stores will have these stands in aluminum or stainless steel for a few dollars more, and that style looks a lot nicer. I decided to just go with the cheapest thing I could find though.
If you’ve got some sort of cheap hack that you’ve come up with for your laptop feel free to share them! I hate paying more than I have to for items that serve the similar purposes, and I’m sure plenty of you have come up with some clever setups. Hit us up in the comments below.
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
Even if the original Nintendo Entertainment System was well before your time, you’re probably still aware of a well-known issue that prevented games from working until you blew into the cartridges to clean off the contacts. Taking that idea one step further, YouTuber Basami Sentaku has turned a few old NES (or Famicom, to be exact) cartridges into electronic harmonicas that instead produce chiptune-like music when you blow into them.
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If you thought you dodged a bullet during Target and Neiman Marcus’ holiday data breaches
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It certainly seems like 2014 is off to a series of hacks. We had heard how Snapchat got hacked, and how Microsoft’s Skype social media accounts had been hacked, and now according to the latest reports, we are hearing word that Valve’s Steam platform has been attacked by hackers as well who have launched a series of DDoS attacks against the company’s servers, causing outages and rendering gamers unable to play their online games or connecting to the service entirely. Gamers attempting to connect to Valve have since been greeted with the error message pictured in the screenshot above.
According to one Twitter user, it seems that him/her along with another user by the name of @LARCENY_ have claimed responsibility for the attacks, with the message reading, “so we’re launching more ddos dildo attacks at steam, me n @LARCENY_” It is unclear if they are truly behind the attacks or if they are simply capitalizing on a coincidental Steam outage, but either way regardless of what it is, Steam’s Twitter account has been oddly quiet with no mention about the outage of hacks at the moment. This alleged attack on Steam is not the first as a few days ago, a group of hackers calling themselves DERP launched an attack on various online games, such as Dota 2 and LoL, taking them offline. We will update this article when we learn more about the matter at hand.
Steam Hit By DDoS Attacks, Hackers Claim Responsibility original content from Ubergizmo. 
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The hardware hacker Bunnie Huang gave a talk at the Chaos Compute Club Congress where he offered some good news and some bad news. The good news? SD cards contain powerful, handy micro controllers that are useful to hackers and hobbyists. The bad news? SD cards are woefully insecure.
In a detailed and readable post, Huang describes the exact problems with Flash memory. In order to reduce the price and increase the storage space, engineers have to fight a never-ending form of internal entropy that slowly but surely scrambles the data on every Flash drive.
Huang writes:
To take up arms against these errors, SD cards are essentially over-engineered to ensure an acceptable level of data retention. They also contain firmware that can, for example, change the visible available space on the card without changing the actual available space. This means you could sell a 2GB card as a 4GB card – your computer wouldn’t notice a difference until it started filling up that fake space. You can, incidentally, check your cards with this tool.
Here’s the worse news: because these cards contain firmware, this firmware can be updated. Huang reports that most manufacturers leave this update feature unsecured. In other words, don’t ever assume a Flash device is empty after you wipe its contents. For example, the card could make a copy of the contents in a hidden memory area or it could run malicious software while idle.
And the good news: Huang also notes that these cards could be reprogrammed to become Arduino-esque open source microcontroller and memory systems. “An Arduino, with its 8-bit 16 MHz microcontroller, will set you back around $20. A microSD card with several gigabytes of memory and a microcontroller with several times the performance could be purchased for a fraction of the price,” he writes.
So, in short, destroy your SD cards if you have any dirty info on them and keep your eyes peeled for ultra-small, ultra-fast Arduino hacks.
Oreo might be trying to push its snack-sized mini cookies with this utterly brilliant way to dunk, but there’s no reason this hack can’t work with full-sized Oreo cookies as well—or any reasonably-sized cookie, for that matter. You’ll of course need access to a clean french press, but the other components—milk and cookies—should be easy to come by.
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