Hasta La Gadget!

A hacker on Monday annoyed several Dutch iPhone owners by sending an unremovable warning message stating their phones had been hacked. He offered instructions to remove the hack in exchange for a meager ransom of €5 ($7).

Displayed in the screenshot to the right, the hacker’s security message contained a URL directing iPhone owners to send money to a PayPal account. The directions have since been removed, as the site appears to have been reported to the internet service provider.

The exploit only worked against jailbroken iPhones. Many iPhone owners who jailbreak their handsets perform a common procedure called enabling SSH in order to execute UNIX commands on the device. iPhones have a default root password that many forget to change, and the hacker was able to scan for iPhones on the T-Mobile Netherlands network running SSH and then gain access by entering the default password, Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman explained.

Clever trick, and it appears the hacker pulled this stunt mostly to show off. He’s since apologized for asking for money and posted instructions for undoing the hack.

See Also:

• Hacker Says iPhone 3GS Encryption Is ‘Useless’ for Businesses …
• iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers, Apple Claims …
• Apple Patches iPhone SMS Security Hole With Software Update …
• Text-Message Exploit Can Hijack Every iPhone, Researchers Say …

Dutch hacker holds jailbroken iPhones “hostage” for €5 (Updated) [ArsTechnica]

With a name like “Little Buddy Child Tracker,” you know this thing has to be awful, right? Insignia, Best Buy’s house brand, has just listed an incredibly invasive and humiliating new GPS tracker on its site, and rather than promoting it as just that, the marketing brains have decided it best to aim this at paranoid mums and dads who’ve done such a poor job raising their offspring that they can’t even trust ’em to trek out on their own. All sensationalism aside, there’s little Insignia can say or do to remedy the product labeling job, but if you’re okay with shoving this extra-small stick into your youngster’s lunch box, you can keep tabs on his / her exact location and have alerts sent to you via SMS if they leave a designated area. Just make sure they don’t ever know that you were responsible for planting this thing on their person, else you can forget about junior footing those nursing home bills when the time comes.

[Via Navigadget]

Continue reading Insignia’s Little Buddy Child Tracker encourages kids to run away, disown parents

Filed under: GPS

Insignia’s Little Buddy Child Tracker encourages kids to run away, disown parents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Questionably christened the world’s first 1TB portable hardware-encrypted hard drive, Origin Storage’s extra-capacious Data Locker Secure Drive is certainly the one to get if you’re paranoid about whatever it is you’d keep on such a large platter. Also available in 750GB, 500GB and 320GB models, the drives are secured by AES hardware encryption and a 6 to 18 digit PIN number which must be entered directly onto the device itself before the contents become accessible. Think James Bond, but for real. The USB-powered unit also packs rubber shoulders in case things get a little crazy between you and Mr. Data Thief, though we wouldn’t try running this thing through the rain forest if at all possible. The 1TB edition will be available soon for £399 ($652), while the others are priced at £299 ($488), £239 ($390) and £180 ($294) from largest to smallest.

[Via Slashgear]

Filed under: Storage

Origin unveils 750GB and 1TB Data Locker encrypted external HDDs originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

In response to widespread media coverage Monday, Apple has acknowledged a bug in its latest operating system, Snow Leopard, that involved some users losing a large amount of their data when logging into guest accounts.

“We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix,” an Apple representative said in a statement.

As far back as September, a number of Snow Leopard users documented the problem on several forum threads. They said the bug involves the home directory — the Mac’s primary user folder — being replaced with an empty folder after users log in with a Guest account. That resulted in loss of documents, downloads, pictures, music and other types of files, the affected users claimed.

“My home folder had been replaced with a ’straight out of the box’ home folder,” wrote user “dubaidan” in a Sept. 3 forum post. “Standard desktop, standard dock, nothing in my documents folder, standard library. My entire home folder is gone.”

Lost data can easily be restored with a backup of a hard drive. But if Snow Leopard users did not back up data prior to experiencing the bug, it would be difficult, and sometimes not possible, to recover lost files.

Though fewer than 100 Snow Leopard users have reported experiencing data loss, information security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski said this bug is considered a serious “screwup” in IT. He theorized the problem could be that the Mac OS confused the home folder for a guest account and accidentally flushed out the data.

Whatever the case may be, Zdziarski called this bug an “embarrassment” for Apple.

“Apple seems to be downplaying [the bug] to an asinine degree,” Zdziarski said. “It’s actually pretty serious to the end-user, and Apple is likely working hard to get their legal department ready to respond to massive lawsuits.”

Apple has yet to publish a fix, but for the time being, Zdziarski recommended for Snow Leopard users to back up their data regularly.

See Also:

• Apple’s Snow Leopard Is Less Secure Than Windows, But Safer …
• Apple’s Snow Leopard Ships With Older, Vulnerable Version of Flash …
• Review: Snow Leopard Combines Minor Improvements, Major Future …

Photo: Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr

You know that sweeping feeling of guilt that comes over you every time you’re pulled over as part of a “standard traffic stop?” Yeah, those natural emotions are about to make you look incredibly suspicious on the way to your next flight — or it will if the FAST project is ever turned into reality. The Homeland Security-funded Future Attribute Screening Technology effort, which has already ate away at $20 million in taxpayer dollars, essentially hopes to let flyers keep all of their clothes on while forcing them to stand on a Wii balance board (or similar) and have an array of sensors watch their every reaction to a battery of questions. The problem? Every innocent person on the planet’s going to start sweating and shaking just being in that kind of scenario, and only the trained terrorists of the world are apt to be able to put truth aside and fake the machine into thinking everything is cool. Oh sure, we’re being a little dramatic here, but seriously — maybe the TSA should just require a complete life history as a prerequisite to boarding.

[Via Popular Science]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Wii balance board could be used in fruitless airport security effort originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments