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Palin E-Mail Hacker Convicted on 2 of 4 Charges
Remember kids: guess a password, spend 25 years in jail. A Tennessee jury on Friday convicted the man who hacked Sarah Palin's e-mail account on two of four charges -- computer fraud and obstruction of justice. The panel did not find David Kernall guilty guilty of wire fraud. It deadlocked on an identity theft charge. The former University of [...]
Google Street View logs WiFi networks and MAC addresses
Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along. Germany's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he's "horrified" [...]
fail2ban and SSH public key authentication
Using fail2ban is a great way to prevent dictionary attacks on SSH but I encountered an unusual problem with it: I sometimes got banned after frequent successful logins. The reason was that I had public key authentication set up for another user on the same host and ssh was trying to use it for all the other accounts before prompting me for a [...]
50 years in jail possible for 22-year-old David Kernell
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – A former college student charged with hacking Sarah Palin's e-mail account fears some jurors in heavily Republican East Tennessee could be dazzled when the conservative star testifies. Jury selection begins Tuesday and Palin's testimony could soon follow in the case against 22-year-old David Kernell. He was a University [...]
Florida Credit Union Says 12K More Debit Card Accounts Exposed
TJX and Heartland hacker Albert Gonzalez may be behind bars for the next 20 years, but the fraud fallout from his hacking is still spreading: a Florida credit union is now reissuing 12,000 debit cards after its customers' accounts were compromised in the wake of the Heartland Payment Systems breach by Gonzalez and his cohorts. MidFlorida [...]
Hacker vows to fight Sony PS3 update, restore Linux support
iPhone hacker George Hotz, aka "GeoHot," was able to finally crack the PlayStation 3... three years after the system's release. He praised the hardware for its security, but now that Sony has responded by removing the Linux capabilities of the PlayStation 3 entirely, the hacker has decided to fight back, warning gamers not to update their systems [...]
For the traffic camera-thwarting geek: The SQL injection license plate
Looks like Little Bobby Tables grew up and got his learner's permit...
RSA encryption has not been broken
An Engadget article recently got hundreds of upvotes on social sites by claiming that RSA has been broken. Engadget may be great for showing you pictures of electronics, but it is far from a scientific publication. To break an encryption algorithm, you must find a feasible way to produce plaintext given only ciphertext--with NO access to the [...]
SOCOM cheater convicted in grand jury investigation
There's a few valuable life lessons in the following story, so pay attention: A Pittsburgh news station recently reported on a 17-year-old boy who was disqualified from a SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals tournament after it was discovered he was cheating. In retaliation, the young man hacked into the official PlayStation site, and crashed it for 11 days back [...]
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the [...]
Foil impressioning: lock-picking technique that uses the lock to form a new key
Here's a fascinating post on "foil impressioning" -- a simple lockpicking technique that uses the lock itself to fashion a working key out of soft aluminium tape. You just stick a key loaded with this stuff into a lock and wiggle it around in a special way and the lock opens itself. (more...)
PleaseRobMe.com
This is seriously genius. It can just show you that people don't realize this stuff. I'm patiently waiting for the site that filters on "got totally drunk last night and made a mistake. These huge breasts constantly get me into trouble." (more...)
Russian botnet tries to kill rival botnet
This is so frustrating...how are we supposed to destroy the humans when we just keep fighting each other? ....er, they...how are they supposed to destroy the humans? An upstart Trojan horse program has decided to take on its much-larger rival by stealing data and then removing the malicious program from infected computers. Security [...]
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future [...]
United States Government data-laundering: Using corporate databases to get around privacy law
"Buying You: The Government's Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about 'The People'," a paper by Columbia Law School's Joshua L. Simmons in the Columbia Business Law Review, describes the way that US government agencies circumvent the fourth amendment and privacy statutes by outsourcing their surveillance to private credit reporting bureaus and [...]
Google: A new approach to China
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first [...]
Google’s Free Airport Wi-Fi: Five Ways to Protect Yourself
Free Wi-Fi while you're waiting for your flight? Sounds like a great way to save money, and kudos to Google for offering it at many U.S. airports during the holidays. Unfortunately, Google's generosity may also lure identity thieves and nefarious hackers to the nation's terminals to prey on clueless travelers. Public hotspots, which by nature [...]
Wife bans FBI head from online banking
SAN FRANCISCO--No one is immune from cyberthreats, not even the head of the FBI. FBI Director Robert Mueller was banned by his wife from doing online banking after he nearly fell for a phishing scam, he said on Wednesday during a talk at the Commonwealth Club of California. He received an e-mail purporting to be from his bank that looked [...]
New York City to Establish Surveillance Network in Midtown
We're only going to see more and more of this. Ugh. The plan devised to protect downtown Manhattan, known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, was introduced by Mr. Kelly in 2005. That raised concern among civil liberties groups, which have called for more public discussion as the police peer, with greater intensity, at more corners of the [...]
LAlarm Turns Your Laptop’s USB Port into an Alarm
LAlarm uses the USB port or power port of your laptop as a sensor to detect when your laptop has been disturbed. While a piece of software is no substitute for keeping your laptop directly in your hands at all times, when it isn't immediately practical or convenient you can use LAlarm to give you a heads up if your laptop is on the [...]
