Hackers
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Apple security chief turns in his badge as scapegoat of the missing Apple iPhone 4S affair
Apple security chief John Theriault has turned in his badge and is leaving the Cupertino based firm. That much is known. What is in dispute is the reason behind Theriault’s departure. Some attribute Theriault’s departure to his desire to take early retirement while others place the blame squarely on the bungled investigation of the allegedly missing Apple iPhone 4S during the summer.
Jon Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed on Friday that Theriault had left Apple and his sources told him that it was the screwed-up investigation of the missing Apple iPhone 4S prototype that led to Theriault’s decision to leave Apple. A former FBI agent (G-man to you old timers), Theriault worked at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer where he helped stopped the sale of counterfeit Viagra that had popped up in Asia. It was precisely this experience in handling investigations of knock-off items that led Theriault to Cupertino where he was expected to handle counterfeit Apple products.
One night this summer, an Apple employee had supposedly left the next-generation Apple iPhone prototype at the Cava22 bar in San Francisco. Apple security got in touch with the SFPD. Apple had tracked down the wayward handset to a home and plainclothes police offices accompanied Apple investigators to this home. The cops waited outside while Apple’s security members conducted a search of the house, looking for the prototype.
This behavior has led to an internal investigation by the SFPD in regard to the search of the house, which belonged to a Sergio Calderon. Calderon says he was coerced by the cops into allowing two Apple investigators to search his home. Calderon thought that the men who entered his home were police officers or, as said, he never would have allowed the search. Defense attorneys have said that by not identifying the men making the search, it was probably unlawful.
After the prototype went missing, Apple posted a job listing seeking product security managers who would be responsible for “overseeing the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property.”
No one has ever claimed to have the missing Apple iPhone 4S prototype and at this point, with the phone already on the market, we probably will never find out the true and complete story.
Jon Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed on Friday that Theriault had left Apple and his sources told him that it was the screwed-up investigation of the missing Apple iPhone 4S prototype that led to Theriault’s decision to leave Apple. A former FBI agent (G-man to you old timers), Theriault worked at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer where he helped stopped the sale of counterfeit Viagra that had popped up in Asia. It was precisely this experience in handling investigations of knock-off items that led Theriault to Cupertino where he was expected to handle counterfeit Apple products.
One night this summer, an Apple employee had supposedly left the next-generation Apple iPhone prototype at the Cava22 bar in San Francisco. Apple security got in touch with the SFPD. Apple had tracked down the wayward handset to a home and plainclothes police offices accompanied Apple investigators to this home. The cops waited outside while Apple’s security members conducted a search of the house, looking for the prototype.
This behavior has led to an internal investigation by the SFPD in regard to the search of the house, which belonged to a Sergio Calderon. Calderon says he was coerced by the cops into allowing two Apple investigators to search his home. Calderon thought that the men who entered his home were police officers or, as said, he never would have allowed the search. Defense attorneys have said that by not identifying the men making the search, it was probably unlawful.
After the prototype went missing, Apple posted a job listing seeking product security managers who would be responsible for “overseeing the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property.”
No one has ever claimed to have the missing Apple iPhone 4S prototype and at this point, with the phone already on the market, we probably will never find out the true and complete story.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
News Technology Hacking Cyber-hacking: prolonged series of attacks by one country uncovered
Computer user
Hackers from one country have systematically targeted 72 global companies and organisations over the past five years, McAfee have found. Photograph: AP
Dozens of countries, companies and organisations, ranging from the US government to the UN and the Olympic movement, have had their computers systematically hacked over the past five years by one country, according to a report by a leading US internet security company.
The report, by McAfee, did not openly blame any country but hinted strongly that China was the most likely culprit, a view endorsed by analysts.
China has previouslybeen implicated in a range of alleged incidents of cyberspying – a practice Beijing vehemently denies – including a concerted attack on Google and several attempts to prise secrets from computers at the Foreign Office. But the McAfee report is among the most thorough attempts yet to map the scale and range of such data-theft efforts.
The study traced the spread of one particular spying malware, usually spread by a "phishing" email which, if opened, downloaded a hidden programme on to the computer network. Through tracing this malware and also gaining access to a "command and control" computer server used by the intruders, McAfee identified 72 compromised companies and organisations. Many more had been hacked but could not be identified from the logs.
"After painstaking analysis of the logs, even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organisations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators," said Dmitri Alperovitch, the company's head of threat research and the author of the report.
Of the hacking victims 49 were US-based, among them various arms of federal, state and local government, as well as defence contractors and other industries. There were two targets in the UK, a defence company and a computer security firm, while other governments included those of Taiwan, South Korea, and India.
Also found on the logs were records from the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee and two national Olympic committees – one of which was accessed by the hackers for more than two years continuously.
McAfee was at pains not to identify the suspected culprit. However, it did little to disguise its suspicions, noting that the targeting of the Olympic groups, and the sport's anti-doping agency, immediately before and after the 2008 Beijing Games was "particularly intriguing" and pointed to a country being to blame.
China has been accused in the past. After Google came under a so-called "advanced persistent attack" in 2009 which it said originated in China, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, asked Beijing for an explanation. This year William Hague said a "hostile state intelligence agency" – identified by UK sources as China – had penetrated the Foreign Office's internal communications system.
While a high proportion of media attention on cybersecurity focuses on the loss of personal data, such as the recent security breaches at Sony, and the activities of hacking collectives such as LulzSec, analysts say this is often minor when compared with the methodical, industrial-scale attempts to seize commercial and state secrets, presumed to be carried out by many countries, chief among them China. Alperovitch said state-orchestrated hacking was so endemic and ambitious it could reshape the workings of the global economy.
"What we have witnessed over the past five to six years has been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth," he said. If only a fraction of the stolen data was used to gain commercial or technological advantage "the loss represents a massive economic threat not just to individual companies and industries but to entire countries that face the prospect of decreased economic growth in a suddenly more competitive landscape and the loss of jobs in industries that lose out to unscrupulous competitors in another part of the world".
Beyond even this, he added, were the national security implications of stolen intelligence or defence files. Such was the endemic scale of this problem, Alperovitch said, that he divided large corporations into two camps: "Those that know they've been compromised and those that don't yet know."
He said: "This is a problem of massive scale that affects nearly every industry and sector of the economies of numerous countries, and the only organisations that are exempt from this threat are those that don't have anything valuable or interesting worth stealing."
When Google accused China last year the ministry of industry and information technology told the state news agency Xinhua: "Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber-attacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China. We are firmly opposed to that."
No one was available for comment at the foreign ministry in Beijing. Chinese officials have previously said that China has strict laws against hacking and is itself one of the biggest victims.
Dave Clemente, a cybersecurity analyst from the Chatham House thinktank, said it was likely China was also targeted by hackers acting on behalf of other countries.
"It's going in both directions, but probably not to the same extent," he said. "China has a real motivation to gain these types of industrial secrets, to make that leapfrog. There's probably less motivation for the US to look to China for industrial secrets or high technology. But certainly there's things China has which they're interested in, maybe not for commercial advantage but in a geopolitical sense."
Clemente said McAfee's characterisation of such hacking efforts as a wholesale theft of intellectual property and secrets was "fairly reasonable": "It's confirmed not just by this report but by so many dozens of other incidents which build up to an overall picture."
The effects, however, were harder to quantify: "The blueprints are only part of the picture. The technology for, say, how to build a sophisticated jet engine is one thing, but there's a whole set of other processes – the logistics, how to manage the supply chain to build more than one, the long-term management of a really advanced manufacturing process."
While basic security or human errors often made hacking easier than it should be, Clemente said, even the biggest organisations struggle to stop sophisticated attacks: "There's not much even Google can do if China's really determined to get inside its networks. It's not a fair fight in that sense."
Hackers from one country have systematically targeted 72 global companies and organisations over the past five years, McAfee have found. Photograph: AP
Dozens of countries, companies and organisations, ranging from the US government to the UN and the Olympic movement, have had their computers systematically hacked over the past five years by one country, according to a report by a leading US internet security company.
The report, by McAfee, did not openly blame any country but hinted strongly that China was the most likely culprit, a view endorsed by analysts.
China has previouslybeen implicated in a range of alleged incidents of cyberspying – a practice Beijing vehemently denies – including a concerted attack on Google and several attempts to prise secrets from computers at the Foreign Office. But the McAfee report is among the most thorough attempts yet to map the scale and range of such data-theft efforts.
The study traced the spread of one particular spying malware, usually spread by a "phishing" email which, if opened, downloaded a hidden programme on to the computer network. Through tracing this malware and also gaining access to a "command and control" computer server used by the intruders, McAfee identified 72 compromised companies and organisations. Many more had been hacked but could not be identified from the logs.
"After painstaking analysis of the logs, even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organisations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators," said Dmitri Alperovitch, the company's head of threat research and the author of the report.
Of the hacking victims 49 were US-based, among them various arms of federal, state and local government, as well as defence contractors and other industries. There were two targets in the UK, a defence company and a computer security firm, while other governments included those of Taiwan, South Korea, and India.
Also found on the logs were records from the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee and two national Olympic committees – one of which was accessed by the hackers for more than two years continuously.
McAfee was at pains not to identify the suspected culprit. However, it did little to disguise its suspicions, noting that the targeting of the Olympic groups, and the sport's anti-doping agency, immediately before and after the 2008 Beijing Games was "particularly intriguing" and pointed to a country being to blame.
China has been accused in the past. After Google came under a so-called "advanced persistent attack" in 2009 which it said originated in China, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, asked Beijing for an explanation. This year William Hague said a "hostile state intelligence agency" – identified by UK sources as China – had penetrated the Foreign Office's internal communications system.
While a high proportion of media attention on cybersecurity focuses on the loss of personal data, such as the recent security breaches at Sony, and the activities of hacking collectives such as LulzSec, analysts say this is often minor when compared with the methodical, industrial-scale attempts to seize commercial and state secrets, presumed to be carried out by many countries, chief among them China. Alperovitch said state-orchestrated hacking was so endemic and ambitious it could reshape the workings of the global economy.
"What we have witnessed over the past five to six years has been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth," he said. If only a fraction of the stolen data was used to gain commercial or technological advantage "the loss represents a massive economic threat not just to individual companies and industries but to entire countries that face the prospect of decreased economic growth in a suddenly more competitive landscape and the loss of jobs in industries that lose out to unscrupulous competitors in another part of the world".
Beyond even this, he added, were the national security implications of stolen intelligence or defence files. Such was the endemic scale of this problem, Alperovitch said, that he divided large corporations into two camps: "Those that know they've been compromised and those that don't yet know."
He said: "This is a problem of massive scale that affects nearly every industry and sector of the economies of numerous countries, and the only organisations that are exempt from this threat are those that don't have anything valuable or interesting worth stealing."
When Google accused China last year the ministry of industry and information technology told the state news agency Xinhua: "Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber-attacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China. We are firmly opposed to that."
No one was available for comment at the foreign ministry in Beijing. Chinese officials have previously said that China has strict laws against hacking and is itself one of the biggest victims.
Dave Clemente, a cybersecurity analyst from the Chatham House thinktank, said it was likely China was also targeted by hackers acting on behalf of other countries.
"It's going in both directions, but probably not to the same extent," he said. "China has a real motivation to gain these types of industrial secrets, to make that leapfrog. There's probably less motivation for the US to look to China for industrial secrets or high technology. But certainly there's things China has which they're interested in, maybe not for commercial advantage but in a geopolitical sense."
Clemente said McAfee's characterisation of such hacking efforts as a wholesale theft of intellectual property and secrets was "fairly reasonable": "It's confirmed not just by this report but by so many dozens of other incidents which build up to an overall picture."
The effects, however, were harder to quantify: "The blueprints are only part of the picture. The technology for, say, how to build a sophisticated jet engine is one thing, but there's a whole set of other processes – the logistics, how to manage the supply chain to build more than one, the long-term management of a really advanced manufacturing process."
While basic security or human errors often made hacking easier than it should be, Clemente said, even the biggest organisations struggle to stop sophisticated attacks: "There's not much even Google can do if China's really determined to get inside its networks. It's not a fair fight in that sense."
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Apple Disputes Browser Speed Findings
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Apple Disputes Browser Speed Findings, Says Mobile Safari's the True Contender
| from the you-say-one's-better-I-say-one's-worse dept.
1
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An anonymous reader writes "[0]Apple has hit back over claims that the
browser shipped with its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices is
[1]significantly slower than Android's equivalent, calling the
independent testing 'flawed.' 'They didn't actually test the Safari
browser on the iPhone,' Apple's Kerris argues. 'Instead they only tested
their own proprietary app, which uses an embedded Web viewer that doesn't
actually take advantage of Safari's Web performance optimisations.' This,
claims testing firm Blaze.io, is news to the world. 'Embedded browsers
are expected to behave, for the most part, the same as the regular
browser,' the company stated, defending its methodology. 'However, Apple
is now stating that their embedded browser, called UIWebView, does not
share the same optimisations MobileSafari does.'"
| Apple Disputes Browser Speed Findings, Says Mobile Safari's the True Contender
| from the you-say-one's-better-I-say-one's-worse dept.
1
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An anonymous reader writes "[0]Apple has hit back over claims that the
browser shipped with its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices is
[1]significantly slower than Android's equivalent, calling the
independent testing 'flawed.' 'They didn't actually test the Safari
browser on the iPhone,' Apple's Kerris argues. 'Instead they only tested
their own proprietary app, which uses an embedded Web viewer that doesn't
actually take advantage of Safari's Web performance optimisations.' This,
claims testing firm Blaze.io, is news to the world. 'Embedded browsers
are expected to behave, for the most part, the same as the regular
browser,' the company stated, defending its methodology. 'However, Apple
is now stating that their embedded browser, called UIWebView, does not
share the same optimisations MobileSafari does.'"
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Student Charged With Hacking School’s Grade System
Student Charged With Hacking School’s Grade System
Max Read — Student Charged With Hacking School's Grade SystemThis is Tyler Coyner, a student at the University of Nevada in Reno and a technology entrepreneur. His business? Allegedly, hacking into his former high school's computer grading system and changing students' grades for money.
Coyner has been arrested and charged with "conspiracy, theft and computer intrusion," along with 13 other students who were apparently working with him. The details of the "hacking" are sketchy—PC World says he "somehow obtained a password," which could involve almost anything—but the best part of the story isn't about his tech exploits:
Coyner boosted the grades of a dozen students but saved the biggest improvements for himself, police said. He was selected as his school's salutatorian at the 2010 graduation, an honor he never legitimately earned, according to the Nye County Sheriff's Office. The salutatorian honor is usually given to the student with the second-highest marks at graduation.
Coyner, now a student at the University of Nevada in Reno, had a 4.54 grade point average, according to a profile of him in the Pahrump Valley Times, written around the time of his graduation last year.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Intel's New Core i7-990X Extreme Edition Tested
"Intel recently launched a speed bump of their flagship Extreme Edition Core i7 processor, known as the Core i7-990X. Its multiplier is unlocked and it's clocked at 3.45GHz stock speed with a Turbo Boost top-end speed of 3.73GHz. Intel claims its the fastest desktop chip on the planet; like geek tiger blood for your PC. The new Core i7-990X is also based on the 32nm Gulftown core and the performance metrics show it's easily the fastest 6-core chip for the desktop currently but of course it'll cost you as well."
Hackers Target French Government Computers For G20
"IT staff spent the weekend in a massive cleaning effort to remove traces of a 'spectacular' attack on computers at Bercy, the head office of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, a government minister said Monday."
Sunday, March 6, 2011
A federal magistrate is granting Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who has visited PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz’s website from January of 2009 to the present.
Thursday’s decision by Magistrate Joseph Spero to allow Sony to subpoena Hotz’s web provider (.pdf) raises a host of web-privacy concerns.
Respected for his iPhone hacks and now the PlayStation 3 jailbreak, Hotz is accused of breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws after he published an encryption key and software tools on his website that allow Playstation owners to gain complete control of their consoles from the firmware on up.
Sony also won subpoenas (.pdf) for data from YouTube and Google, as part of its lawsuit against the 21-year-old New Jersey hacker, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot.
Bluehost maintains Hotz’s geohot.com site. The approved subpoena requires the company to turn over “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms” tied to Hotz’s hosting. The Bluehost subpoena also demands “any other identifying information corresponding to persons or computers who have accessed or downloaded files hosted using your service and associated” with the www.geohot.com website, including but not limited to the “geohot.com/jailbreak.zip file.”
Thursday’s decision by Magistrate Joseph Spero to allow Sony to subpoena Hotz’s web provider (.pdf) raises a host of web-privacy concerns.
Respected for his iPhone hacks and now the PlayStation 3 jailbreak, Hotz is accused of breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws after he published an encryption key and software tools on his website that allow Playstation owners to gain complete control of their consoles from the firmware on up.
Sony also won subpoenas (.pdf) for data from YouTube and Google, as part of its lawsuit against the 21-year-old New Jersey hacker, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot.
Bluehost maintains Hotz’s geohot.com site. The approved subpoena requires the company to turn over “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms” tied to Hotz’s hosting. The Bluehost subpoena also demands “any other identifying information corresponding to persons or computers who have accessed or downloaded files hosted using your service and associated” with the www.geohot.com website, including but not limited to the “geohot.com/jailbreak.zip file.”
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Google Expands Street View's Reach
Google Expands Street View's Reach
Google said Monday that it is expanding the reach of its Street View mapping program beyond the road and into various tourist attractions, thanks to its off-road "trike."
Google said Monday that it is expanding the reach of its Street View mapping program beyond the road and into various tourist attractions, thanks to its off-road "trike."
Google: Software Bug Caused Gmail Deletions
Google: Software Bug Caused Gmail Deletions
Google on Monday blamed a software bug for a glitch that left some Gmail users without access to their e-mail.
Google on Monday blamed a software bug for a glitch that left some Gmail users without access to their e-mail.
GECRIT 1.8.2 [ Not Rated ] [ Stable ]
GECRIT 1.8.2 [ Not Rated ] [ Stable ]
GEcrit is a Python IDE. Its focus is on simplicity and ease of use. It
is fast and lightweight. It features Python indentation, line numbers,
code folding, syntax highlighting, shell access, code completion, a
program runner, a source browser, indentation guides, a white space
indicator, [...]
See: http://www.icewalkers.com/NFTW/537380/gEcrit.html
GEcrit is a Python IDE. Its focus is on simplicity and ease of use. It
is fast and lightweight. It features Python indentation, line numbers,
code folding, syntax highlighting, shell access, code completion, a
program runner, a source browser, indentation guides, a white space
indicator, [...]
See: http://www.icewalkers.com/NFTW/537380/gEcrit.html
SQUID 3.1.10 [ ***** ] [ Stable ]
SQUID 3.1.10 [ ***** ] [ Stable ]
Squid is a full-featured Web proxy cache designed to run on Unix
systems free, open-source software the result of many contributions by
unpaid volunteers funded by the National Science Foundation. Squid
supports: proxying and caching of HTTP, FTP, and other URL's, proxying
for SSL, cache [...]
See: http://www.icewalkers.com/NFTW/54580/Squid.html
Squid is a full-featured Web proxy cache designed to run on Unix
systems free, open-source software the result of many contributions by
unpaid volunteers funded by the National Science Foundation. Squid
supports: proxying and caching of HTTP, FTP, and other URL's, proxying
for SSL, cache [...]
See: http://www.icewalkers.com/NFTW/54580/Squid.html
Friday, February 18, 2011
Microsoft Patches Linux; Linus Responds
Microsoft Patches Linux; Linus Responds
Microsoft has released code for inclusion in the Linux kernel, but should it be accepted? Linus Torvalds gives his perspective.
You may have already heard, but the unthinkable has happened. That’s right, Microsoft, the self-proclaimed enemy of Linux and free software, has announced that they will be submitting some 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. Come again? Yes, Microsoft wants to get its code into the Linux kernel. You read that right! It is important to note that this code has not yet been included into the official Linux kernel. The code has also not yet been thoroughly scrutinized by the wider community to see what the code actually consists of. Is it all code, or does it rely on binary blobs? Will the quality of the code make the grade, or will the community be expected to clean it up and maintain it? When approached by Linux Magazine as to whether he has even looked at the code, Linus Torvalds (the father of Linux) replied:
“I haven’t. Mainly because I’m not personally all that interested in driver code (it doesn’t affect anything else), especially when I wouldn’t use it myself. So for things like that, I just trust the maintainers. I tend to look at code when bugs happen, or when it crosses multiple subsystems, or when it’s one of the core subsystems that I’m actively involved in (ie things like VM, core device resource handling, basic kernel code etc). I’ll likely look at it when the code is actually submitted to me by the maintainers (Greg [Kroah-Hartman], in this case), just out of morbid curiosity.”
Microsoft has released code for inclusion in the Linux kernel, but should it be accepted? Linus Torvalds gives his perspective.
You may have already heard, but the unthinkable has happened. That’s right, Microsoft, the self-proclaimed enemy of Linux and free software, has announced that they will be submitting some 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. Come again? Yes, Microsoft wants to get its code into the Linux kernel. You read that right! It is important to note that this code has not yet been included into the official Linux kernel. The code has also not yet been thoroughly scrutinized by the wider community to see what the code actually consists of. Is it all code, or does it rely on binary blobs? Will the quality of the code make the grade, or will the community be expected to clean it up and maintain it? When approached by Linux Magazine as to whether he has even looked at the code, Linus Torvalds (the father of Linux) replied:
“I haven’t. Mainly because I’m not personally all that interested in driver code (it doesn’t affect anything else), especially when I wouldn’t use it myself. So for things like that, I just trust the maintainers. I tend to look at code when bugs happen, or when it crosses multiple subsystems, or when it’s one of the core subsystems that I’m actively involved in (ie things like VM, core device resource handling, basic kernel code etc). I’ll likely look at it when the code is actually submitted to me by the maintainers (Greg [Kroah-Hartman], in this case), just out of morbid curiosity.”
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Android Tablets Were Born Too Soon
Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Sunday February 06, @01:54PM
adeelarshad82 writes
"When you look at the Apple iPad's sales figures, it's not hard to see why every technology company on the planet is jumping on the tablet bandwagon, alot of which are Android tablets. Unfortunatley though, some of these Android tablets were born way too early. They are haunted with a series of problems including flimsy hardware, low-quality resistive touch screens, serious display resolution issues, and old Android versions with limited or non-existent access to apps. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab came well before it's time. Even though it's fast, well-designed, and comes with a decent Android implementation, it's functionalities are limited to those of an Android smartphone. So here's to hoping that Honeycomb's functionalities make up for the lost ground."
adeelarshad82 writes
"When you look at the Apple iPad's sales figures, it's not hard to see why every technology company on the planet is jumping on the tablet bandwagon, alot of which are Android tablets. Unfortunatley though, some of these Android tablets were born way too early. They are haunted with a series of problems including flimsy hardware, low-quality resistive touch screens, serious display resolution issues, and old Android versions with limited or non-existent access to apps. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab came well before it's time. Even though it's fast, well-designed, and comes with a decent Android implementation, it's functionalities are limited to those of an Android smartphone. So here's to hoping that Honeycomb's functionalities make up for the lost ground."
NFL Teams Considering IPads To Replace Playbooks
Posted by samzenpus on Sunday February 06, @09:48AM
from the there's-a-bone-crushing-app-for-that dept.
bonch writes
"Pete Walsh, technology head for the Dallas Cowboys, says he and other teams are considering iPads and other tablets as a replacement for paper playbooks, saving about 5,000 pages of printouts per game. Not only is it a huge savings in paper, but a lost iPad might also be remotely wiped to prevent a team's plays falling into the wrong hands. One concern is security and whether or not a tablet could be wirelessly hacked."
from the there's-a-bone-crushing-app-for-that dept.
bonch writes
"Pete Walsh, technology head for the Dallas Cowboys, says he and other teams are considering iPads and other tablets as a replacement for paper playbooks, saving about 5,000 pages of printouts per game. Not only is it a huge savings in paper, but a lost iPad might also be remotely wiped to prevent a team's plays falling into the wrong hands. One concern is security and whether or not a tablet could be wirelessly hacked."
Three charged as Comcast hackers
Three alleged members of the hacker gang Kryogeniks were hit with a federal conspiracy charge Thursday for a 2008 stunt that replaced Comcast's homepage with a shout-out to other hackers.
Prosecutors identified Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black Jr., 20, as the hackers "EBK" and "Defiant" -- known for hijacking Comcast's domain name in May of last year.
The prank took down the cable giant's homepage and Web mail service for more than five hours and allegedly cost the company over $128,000.
Visitors to Comcast.net had been redirected to a simple page reading "KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."
A third man, Michael Paul Lebel, 28, was also charged with helping the duo, though his alleged handle "Slacker" was not credited in the defacement message.
As described in the indictment, the hackers got control of the domain with two phone calls, and an e-mail was sent to the company's domain registrar, Network Solutions, from a hacked Comcast e-mail account.
That gave them entry to the Network Solutions control panel for Comcast's 200 domains, according to the indictment.
In an interview the day after the attack, Defiant and EBK told Wired magazine's Threat Level that they didn't initially set out to redirect the site's traffic. Instead, they merely changed the contact information for the Comcast.net domain to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used a false address using crass language.
Then, the hackers said, they contacted Comcast's original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they'd done. It was only when the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them that EBK said it was decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site's traffic to servers under the hackers' control.
"I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," Defiant said last year.
"But once we were in," added EBK, "it was, like, [expletive] it."
The indictment also says that the hackers phoned the Comcast official at home.
In the interview last year, the hackers expressed some shock about the attention the attack garnered.
"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," said Defiant, who said he was 19 years old and his first name was James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad."
Prosecutors identified Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black Jr., 20, as the hackers "EBK" and "Defiant" -- known for hijacking Comcast's domain name in May of last year.
The prank took down the cable giant's homepage and Web mail service for more than five hours and allegedly cost the company over $128,000.
Visitors to Comcast.net had been redirected to a simple page reading "KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."
A third man, Michael Paul Lebel, 28, was also charged with helping the duo, though his alleged handle "Slacker" was not credited in the defacement message.
As described in the indictment, the hackers got control of the domain with two phone calls, and an e-mail was sent to the company's domain registrar, Network Solutions, from a hacked Comcast e-mail account.
That gave them entry to the Network Solutions control panel for Comcast's 200 domains, according to the indictment.
In an interview the day after the attack, Defiant and EBK told Wired magazine's Threat Level that they didn't initially set out to redirect the site's traffic. Instead, they merely changed the contact information for the Comcast.net domain to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used a false address using crass language.
Then, the hackers said, they contacted Comcast's original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they'd done. It was only when the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them that EBK said it was decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site's traffic to servers under the hackers' control.
"I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," Defiant said last year.
"But once we were in," added EBK, "it was, like, [expletive] it."
The indictment also says that the hackers phoned the Comcast official at home.
In the interview last year, the hackers expressed some shock about the attention the attack garnered.
"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," said Defiant, who said he was 19 years old and his first name was James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad."
Anonymous Isn't Anonymous Anymore
An anonymous reader writes
"Apparently some small security firm has been able to determine the real identity's of several key Anonymous hackers which is resulting in a ton of arrests. From the article: 'An international investigation into cyber-activists who attacked businesses hostile to WikiLeaks is likely to yield arrests of senior members of the group after they left clues to their real identities on Facebook and in other electronic communications, it is claimed.'"
"Apparently some small security firm has been able to determine the real identity's of several key Anonymous hackers which is resulting in a ton of arrests. From the article: 'An international investigation into cyber-activists who attacked businesses hostile to WikiLeaks is likely to yield arrests of senior members of the group after they left clues to their real identities on Facebook and in other electronic communications, it is claimed.'"
Internet is Easy Prey for Governments
Hugh Pickens writes writes
"Douglas Rushkoff writes on CNN that the revolution in Egypt starkly reveals the limits of our internet tools and the ease with which those holding power can take them away. "Old media, such as terrestrial radio and television, were as distributed as the thousands of stations and antennae from which broadcast signals emanated, but all internet traffic must pass through government and corporate-owned choke points," says Rushkoff adding that when push came to shove over WikiLeaks in the US the very same government authority was used to cut off "enemies of the state" from access and funding. Rushkoff suggests that we use the lessons of the internet to build a communications infrastructure that cannot be controlled from the top. Back before the internet, many early computer hobbyists networked on Fidonet, a simple peer-to-peer network and now digital activists propose reviving such ideas with mesh networking over Wi-Fi networks that could connect inhabitants of an entire city without anyone having an internet service provider. "Until we choose to develop such alternative networks, our insistence on seeing the likes of Facebook and Twitter as the path toward freedom for all people will only serve to increase our dependence on corporations and government for the right to assemble and communicate.""
"Douglas Rushkoff writes on CNN that the revolution in Egypt starkly reveals the limits of our internet tools and the ease with which those holding power can take them away. "Old media, such as terrestrial radio and television, were as distributed as the thousands of stations and antennae from which broadcast signals emanated, but all internet traffic must pass through government and corporate-owned choke points," says Rushkoff adding that when push came to shove over WikiLeaks in the US the very same government authority was used to cut off "enemies of the state" from access and funding. Rushkoff suggests that we use the lessons of the internet to build a communications infrastructure that cannot be controlled from the top. Back before the internet, many early computer hobbyists networked on Fidonet, a simple peer-to-peer network and now digital activists propose reviving such ideas with mesh networking over Wi-Fi networks that could connect inhabitants of an entire city without anyone having an internet service provider. "Until we choose to develop such alternative networks, our insistence on seeing the likes of Facebook and Twitter as the path toward freedom for all people will only serve to increase our dependence on corporations and government for the right to assemble and communicate.""
Thursday, January 27, 2011
100 (Geeky) things to do before you die
Well, I don't intend to write the full list, I'm going to list geeky things I've done (and am proud of), and as for the rest, I'm going to rely on community support.
1. Work for more than a week on a personal (unpaid) project, during all waking hours.
2. Gain a more than unhealthy addiction to coffee, and a vampiric aversion to daylight and human contact (ok, maybe I'm not so proud of that one)
3. Use Linux more than Windows
4. Use two computers at the same time
5. Expect everyone else to, naturally, know what you're talking about
6. Run a localhost webserver to save FTPing time
7. Write a programming language
8. And use it
9. Have more friends that are programming languages/concepts than people
10. Try to conform to W3C guidelines
11. If the wheel isn't rolling, reinvent it
12. Work as a programmer
13. Dream a computer program
14. Start a list of "Geeky things to do before you die"
And some 'geeky' things to do, until you die:
1. Learn something everyday.
2. Don't listen to anyone who thinks they know better than you
3. Listen to people who do know better than you
4. Don't expect everyone to be interested in everything you are
5. Help others; if you know what you're doing.
6. Don't spend too long thinking.
7. Always remember, there's a real world, and it isn't running on an Intel chipset
8. Add more to these lists.
1. Work for more than a week on a personal (unpaid) project, during all waking hours.
2. Gain a more than unhealthy addiction to coffee, and a vampiric aversion to daylight and human contact (ok, maybe I'm not so proud of that one)
3. Use Linux more than Windows
4. Use two computers at the same time
5. Expect everyone else to, naturally, know what you're talking about
6. Run a localhost webserver to save FTPing time
7. Write a programming language
8. And use it
9. Have more friends that are programming languages/concepts than people
10. Try to conform to W3C guidelines
11. If the wheel isn't rolling, reinvent it
12. Work as a programmer
13. Dream a computer program
14. Start a list of "Geeky things to do before you die"
And some 'geeky' things to do, until you die:
1. Learn something everyday.
2. Don't listen to anyone who thinks they know better than you
3. Listen to people who do know better than you
4. Don't expect everyone to be interested in everything you are
5. Help others; if you know what you're doing.
6. Don't spend too long thinking.
7. Always remember, there's a real world, and it isn't running on an Intel chipset
8. Add more to these lists.
Hackers Increasingly Using Twitter For Botnets
"Spammers aren't the only ones who have figured out that social networks like Twitter and Facebook are good for business. Sophisticated hackers conducting targeted attacks are also using the networks as a tool to manage malware installations on victims' networks. Mandiant's latest "M-Trends" report, released on Thursday, says that the company has observed an increasing number of so-called "Advanced Persistent Threats" that are hijacking legitimate social networks and Web based services, including Facebook, Google Chat and MSN as command and control networks for malware installations. The revelation is part of a larger trend that saw sophisticated attacks on commercial entities outstrip attacks on the networks of government agencies and defense industry players, Mandiant reported."
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