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Archive for July, 2008
California judge rules early cell phone termination fees illegal
crazy California... In one of the most significant legal rulings in the tech industry this year, a Superior Court judge in California has ruled that the practice of charging consumers a fee for ending their cell phone contract early is illegal and violates state law. The preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers [...]
Batman’s 38 Piracy Free Hours Deemed Success
Pirate versions of the movie began appearing on The Pirate Bay a few days after the film was publicly released. However, this short piracy free period is apparently very important for the film’s distributor, Warner Bros. 38 Hours = Victory? It was approximately 38 hours after the film went on general release that The Dark Knight torrent [...]
Linux to Confuse the Masses
Sometimes it’s fun to just make people think “WTF‽†when they see your computer. That’s “WTF‽†in a good way. It’s not hard on Linux to make people say “woahâ€, but it’s even easier, if you know the command line, to make people look at you typing away on your laptop and [...]
TSA Proud of Confiscating Non-Dangerous Items
This is just sad. The TSA confiscated a battery pack not because it's dangerous, but because other passengers might think its dangerous. And they're proud of the fact. "We must treat every suspicious item the same and utilize the tools we have available to make a final determination," said Federal Security Director David Wynn. "Procedures are [...]
Asus eeePC Mod Workshop at DefCon 16
DEFCON 16: August 8-10, 2008 at the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas Deviant and I were kicking this idea around a little bit after I'd taken apart my Asus to see its guts. The eeePC is seeming to be the new ricecar of the laptop world. Actually getting to see mods and stuff might be an inspiration to some of the defcon attendees [...]
HOWTO: Secure A Linux Web Server
If you self-manage or Co-Lo a Linux server, you absolutely need to know how to secure your box. If you don't know, you need managed hosting. End of story. No questions. Here's a (very) basic outline for you. You'll need to do some research on each step. This post is specific to a Linux server running Apache and PHP, a very common combination. [...]
Phoenix BIOS Locks out all OS’s except Vista!
Below is a cute read from the LinuxForums... This seems like a BIOS targeted to be used only with Windows Vista, because no other OS has the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) functionality. This means that this BIOS will protect your hard disk data, even if your laptop is stolen. I'm not a fan of TPM (a.k.a. DRM) but it's like "encrypting" your hard [...]
How Skype and company get around firewalls
Increasingly, computers are positioned behind firewalls to protect systems from internet threats. Ideally, the firewall function will be performed by a router, which also translates the PC's local network address to the public IP address (Network Address Translation, or NAT). This means an attacker cannot directly adress the PC from the outside - [...]
Former Google employees prepare rival search engine: Cuil
SAN FRANCISCO: In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company's search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results. Now, along with her husband, Tom Costello, and a few other Google alumni, she is trying to upstage her former [...]
Patches for iPhone QRcode scanning
John Young has written some cool projects for Make, such as this helmet-mounted water gun. He just alerted me to another nifty thing he made: Commando Nerd patches, which can be scanned with an iPhone. Here's how he describes them: You have an iPhone. And that means you're just HOURS away from being able to put a QRcode reader on it (there's [...]
Details, Exploits of Web-Wide DNS Vulnerability Revealed
The much-discussed vulnerability in the Internet's Domain Name System is out -- and so are exploits that take advantage of it. The flaw's founder, Dan Kaminsky of IoActive, held a Webcast today in which he gave details on his findings, and revealed that attacks have been developed to exploit it. "Guys, we're in a lot of trouble," Kaminsky [...]
Happy Sysadmin Day!
Happy Sysadmin Day! Today is the ninth annual sysadmin appreciation day and I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the other systems administrators around the world, and all the other tireless toilers in the bowels of the Internet. You truly rule the Earth, thou latter-day morlocks. Source
Linux should rival Apple, urges Ubuntu founder
Linux should be able to rival Apple as a desktop operating system said Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth, speaking at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon, also urged development of a new revenue model to fund free software and set his sights on a services-based mechanism for this. He also stressed [...]
FREE Hannah Montana “Wake-up” Phone Call
FREE Back-to-School Phone Calls from Hannah Montana As back to school season approaches, moms and dads across the country are planning to deal with sleepy students struggling with the tough transition from a carefree summer schedule to a back-to-school wake up routine. Now parents will have access to a unique solution featuring one of the year's [...]
MPAA wants to randomly break your home theater depending on which channel you’re watching
The MPAA is petitioning the FCC to lard cable television with "selectable output control," a DRM system that allows broadcasters to specify which of your TV devices can decode which shows. With selectable output control, parts of your home theater would go dark as you flipped up and down the dial: this show won't play through your Dolby, that one [...]
The Government Keeps Losing Laptops With Sensitive Info
During wartime, one of America's most solemn duties is to take care of its veterans. So why do careless government workers keep putting our vets at risk? That happened last January at a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Birmingham, Alabama, when an employee's portable hard drive containing Social Security numbers of more than [...]
Facebook – the CIA conspiracy?
The fact that Facebook is well designed, well run, and reliable is sufficient evidence that it isn't run by the government... but enjoy this article from "Down Under" anyway... "Facebook has 20 million users worldwide, is worth billions of dollars and, if internet sources are to be believed, was started by the CIA. The social networking [...]
SF Net Hijacker Gives Up Passwords
Terry Childs, the former IT administrator accused of kidnapping the city of San Francisco's data network, is ready to give up the administrative passwords to the system, his attorney said yesterday. Childs is accused of changing all of the city's network passwords so that only he could access the network, which contains email, payroll, law [...]
Cold Boot Encryption Attack Code Released
Jacob Appelbaum, one of the security researchers who worked on the paper cold boot attack on encryption keys (featured in a previous BBtv episode, above) tells us the code has just been released today at the HOPE hacker con in NYC. It's up, it's signed, and here it is. Memory Research Project Source Code
HOWTO: Install Apple iPhone Themes like Stereo’s Leopard Theme using SummerBoard
SummerBoard is an extension to the iPhone's SpringBoard user experience. SummerBoard adds a variety of useful and fun features to your iPhone, including scrolling icons, wallpaper and themes! iPhone/iPod Touch 1.1.1 alpha release available! If you've upgraded to firmware 1.1.1, for now you will need to [...]
