March 28th, 2011

McAfee: Change In Corporate Culture Leaves Businesses Vulnerable To Hackers

McAfee, the computer security company, has issued a fresh warning to the world’s corporations and other large organizations. The firm has warned that hackers now have these bodies fully in their sights, and that a combination of the de-centralization of the workplace (thanks to to proliferation of mobile devices and the like) and the move to the cloud means in-house security technicians have… → Read More

February 25th, 2011

Hacked: Motorola Xoom Already Rooted

That didn’t take long. Yesterday, we reported that hacker @koush had successfully made the Xoom moddable by installing his ClockworkMod Recovery ROM manager. At that point root access was not achieved, but, no less than a day later he made it happen. → Read More

January 23rd, 2011

Microsoft meets with WP7 Jailbreak team. Hugs ensue.

In a move that will surely only help move more Windows Phone 7 handsets, Microsoft have met with the team behind the WP7 Jailbreak, Chevron, and the results appear to be positive.

Writing on their blog yesterday, Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, and Long Zheng have revealed what they can (outside of the NDA they voluntarily signed) about the 2 days of meetings, and are “genuinely excited” about what… → Read More

December 30th, 2010

Chaos Communication Congress: PS3 Security An ‘Epic Fail,’ Dongle-less Hacking Solution Now Possible

Darn shame that none of us thought to attend the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. Why cover fun stuff, right? Thankfully PSGroove made it out there, and came away with video of a video game console security discussion. The Wii has been “broken” (hackable, in other words) pretty much since Day One; the Xbox 360 has been hackable for a few years now (JTAGing is the way to go these days)… → Read More

December 13th, 2010

What ATM Skimmers Look Like

KrebsOnSecurity has a fascinating look at ATM skimmers. After approaching a Russian skimmer “salesperson,” Brian Krebs asked about the latest and greatest in skimmer technology. His recommendation? A GSM-based SMS transfer system that blows out the contents of your card’s magnetic stripe whenever you swipe it. Because it’s inexpensive to build and install, you can even… → Read More

November 18th, 2010

China Telecom Denies Internet Hacking Allegations

China Telecom, alleged to have hijacked all that Internet traffic back in April, has denied any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has not commented on the matter. Hmm… → Read More

June 10th, 2010

Hollywood's guide to hacking a computer

Reminds me of that Penny-Arcade strip… → Read More

May 9th, 2010

Good idea? Internet voting coming to U.S. elections for military, overseas citizens

This is probably a case of where the idea is sound but humans will no doubt muck everything up. Thirty-three states here in the good ol’ U.S. will allow military and overseas citizens to vote via the Internet beginning with the mid-term election in November. This is being done in part to ensure that overseas voters’ votes, you know, count. I don’t know how many of y’all have ever lived overseas… → Read More

April 18th, 2010

The User's Manifesto: in defense of hacking, modding, and jailbreaking

There’s a trend that’s been disturbing me lately. When the topic of modding or jailbreaking comes up — say, in the wake of the iPad announcement, or Sony’s restrictive PS3 update — there is an outcry. Who am I to tell Apple what’s best for their devices? How can I in good conscience urge others to void their warranties or break license agreements? And why should… → Read More

March 24th, 2010

It's all well and good to demand secure electronic medical records, but when has your data ever been secure in the first place?

Pretty much spot-on, this. There’s an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that argues that Americans should badger Congress and the president, asking them to hold off on doling out stimulus dollars to electronic medical record systems that don’t have appropriate privacy safeguards in place. As it stands, electronic medial records aren’t exactly sealed—insurance companies can peek at them, as… → Read More

March 5th, 2010

Should we even bother going after cyber-criminals?

At what point do you stop trying to track and prosecute cyber-criminals? Obviously, you can’t let criminals run around willy-nilly, but when you look at the resources involved in bringing those guys to justice—and are you really nabbing the right guys in the first place?—it’s worth at least talking about. Is fighting cyber-crime about as futile as fighting the war on drugs? → Read More

February 25th, 2010

Intel admits it was target of "sophisticated" attack

Google was attacked by hackers in China. Microsoft reports that they’re the target of hackers all day, every day. Now Intel is stepping forward, and admitting in their annual 10-K filing that they were the target of a sophisticated attack. Intel observes that it might be industrial espionage, or it might be “hackers seeking to harm the company.” It makes you wonder how many attacks on smaller… → Read More

February 22nd, 2010

U.S. authorities identify Chinese hacker partly responsible for Google attacks

The Chinese hacker saga continues, with some pretty huge news having emerged in the past few hours. U.S. authorities have identified, so they think, the sole person responsible for the underlying code used on attacks on Google and others. He’s a “freelance security consultant” in his 30s, and he was able to take down almighty Google by exploiting a previously unknown hole in Internet Explorer. → Read More

February 15th, 2010

The Importance of Fear, Risk and Hacking

Last week I met Gever Tulley, author of the provocatively-titled “Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” The book grew out of a 2007 TED talk about why embracing and exploring danger ultimately lessens it. (See! Good things do come out of TED. Let the TED-TechCrunch healing begin!) The book doesn’t advocate playing in traffic, but it does extol the virtues of things like… → Read More

February 10th, 2010

Flying high on Club Mate

I’ve been led to believe that Club Mate (pronounced: ma-tay) is the drink in the international hacker community. Being a fan of the international hacker community—and by “hacker” I don’t mean stupid idiots who DDOS Web sites for lulz, but rather people who enjoy tinkering with the world around them—I decided to buy a case. → Read More

August 25th, 2009

Do all your phreaking before you turn 18, kids

Please turn your attention to Rolling Stone, where an article about a blind, lonely phreaker is currently tearing up the charts. That is to say, it’s an article worth your time, certainly better than refreshing drudgereport.com for the thousandth time in a day. → Read More

June 9th, 2009

T-Mobile USA finds no evidence of being hacked

Here’s an updated statement that T-Mobile just released regarding the possible breach of servers that may or may not have occurred over the weekend. “Following a recent online posting that an alleged hacker apparently accessed T-Mobile servers, the company is conducting a thorough investigation and at this time has found no evidence that customer information, or other company… → Read More

May 5th, 2009

Researchers take over botnet, grab 56,000 passwords an hour

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have published a report after taking over a massive botnet called Torpig aka Sinowal. The malware network was able to collect 56,000 passwords and hour as well as 70GB of financial and personal data.

The researchers found that most users reused passwords for multiple sites and that the malware was able to steal credit card numbers and… → Read More

February 26th, 2009

Hack an iPhone, win 10 grand at Pwn2Own

Pwn2Own, a sort of Gray Hat extravaganza, is going to be cracking browsers and phones for the third year in a row this March. It’ll go from the 18th to the 20th and thousands of dollars in prizes. Many will enter, few will pwn. → Read More

January 14th, 2009

Apple suing Wired over netbook hackintosh video [Update]

Wired’s Brian X. Chen twittered to the world that Apple was suing his publication over his video tutorial teaching us Luddites how to hack netbooks to run Mac OS X. As Giz points out, Apple isn’t likely to sue them, but, rather, send over a cease and desist order. It’s all pretty trivial if you ask me. → Read More

January 14th, 2009

Sony sues Datel over its Max Power Digital tool: Could be used to hack PSP

Datel and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe clearly don’t like each other very much. How do we know this? SCEE has taken Datel to court over its as yet unreleased “Lite Blue Tool,” which has been renamed the Max Power Digital. The device would let users hack, in a sense, the PSP. Sony didn’t care for this very much, and is now in lawsuit mode. → Read More

November 3rd, 2008

Be on the lookout for crooked electronic voting machines tomorrow

My fellow Americans: tomorrow’s the big day, Election Day, wherein we are able to exercise our right to wait in line all day at a fire house or elementary school, rubbing shoulders with “neighbors” and trading pleasantries about what we think about that Obama fellow. It should be fun. Yet, our voting system stinks. Not only that, but our voting system could be vulnerable to fraud, and… → Read More

October 28th, 2008

Student trying to alert school to computer vulnerability instead charged with three felonies

Dear school administrators, What’s the best way to ensure that your computer network remains riddled with security vulnerabilities that leave you, your personnel and [someone think of the] schoolchildren in danger? Why, to demonize the student who discovered the vulnerability and alerted you to it, of course. Have him charged with a felony while you’re at it. A student in a Saratoga… → Read More

October 26th, 2008

iPhone 3G baseband almost cracked, carrier independence imminent

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2069634&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=13G Baseband Tool from iphonedev on Vimeo. The wizards at the iPhone-Dev Team have just about cracked the iPhone baseband which means carrier unlock is almost upon us. What does this mean? Sadly, not much. The iPhone is still physically –… → Read More

October 21st, 2008

Researchers devise methods to sniff keystrokes by detecting shifts in magnetic field

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2007855&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Keyboards Experiment 1/2 from Martin Vuagnoux on Vimeo. Two doctoral students have produced what is probably the most fascinating hack (or whatever you want to call it) of the year. Using custom… → Read More

October 10th, 2008

Servers compromised at World Bank, senior technology manager calls it an ‘unprecedented crisis’

Whoops. Fox News is reporting that the World Bank is smack-dab in the middle of what “may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution.” It’s not really clear what exactly has happened but it is clear that this isn’t the first time that the bank has had problems with its cyber security and that some of the more serious past intrusions have come from IP addresses… → Read More

October 9th, 2008

Kevin Mitnick on the Palin e-mail hacker: Punishment should fit the crime

http://www.g4tv.com/lv3/29183 Yes, that evil “hacker” who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account was indicted yesterday. Politics aside, it was a pretty dumb thing to do, especially posting the e-mails online after the fact. To that end, here’s renowned computer security consultant (and former HACKEROMG) Kevin Mitnick giving his opinion on the whole matter on G4′s Attack of… → Read More

October 8th, 2008

Palin e-mail hacker indicted, faces up to 5 years in prison

Hey script kiddies, next time you steal some unsuspecting person’s password, you’d better be prepared to do five years in prison. That’s what the kid who “hacked” Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account faces, now that he’s been indicted by a federal grand jury. The kid, now identified as David Kernell, a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee, has been… → Read More

October 2nd, 2008

5-second Linux boot challenge

The dream of a short — and I mean really short — boot cycle is getting closer to reality. As it stands, though, even these experienced IT guys had to chop quite a lot off from already lean systems in order to hit their goal of CPU and drives idle after only 5 seconds. And on an Eee PC, no less. I’m not the most informed guy on Linux boot processes, but it sounds like they really… → Read More

September 22nd, 2008

Be better than Sarah Palin: How to minimize the chances of e-mail hacking

The following is the first entry in my BAFTA-winning series, “Privacy, piracy and the dark side of the Internet.” It’ll be slightly above average. Beauty queen turned vice-presidenial nominee Sarah Palin had her Yahoo! e-mail account broken into last week. (Who uses Yahoo! e-mail?) It was a heinous crime, right up there with the Lindburg baby, and one that exposed her horribly boring… → Read More