security
Remember “cybersecurity”? Mysterious hooded computer guys doing mysterious hooded computer guy... things! Who knows what kind of naughty digital mischief they might be up to? Unfortunately, we now live in a world where this kind of digital mischief is literally rewriting the world’s history. For proof of that, you
security
I've already documented my brief, youthful dalliance with the illegal side of computing as it existed in the late 1980s. But was it crime? Was I truly a criminal? I don't think so. To be perfectly blunt, I wasn't talented enough to be any
security
Twenty-four years ago today, I had a very bad day. On August 8, 1988, I was a senior in high school. I was working my after school and weekend job at Safeway as a cashier, when the store manager suddenly walked over and said I better stop ringing up customers
security
It's only a matter of time until your email gets hacked. Don't believe me? Just read this harrowing cautionary tale. When [my wife] came back to her desk, half an hour later, she couldn’t log into Gmail at all. By that time, I was up
security
This weekend, the Gawker network was compromised. This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media's servers were compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. If you're a commenter on any of our sites, you probably have several
security
The Firefox add-in Firesheep caused quite an uproar a few weeks ago, and justifiably so. Here's how it works: * Connect to a public, unencrypted WiFi network. In other words, a WiFi network that doesn't require a password before you can connect to it. * Install Firefox and
security
Inside the Precision Hack is a great read. It's all about how the Time Magazine World's Most Influential People poll was gamed. But the actual hack itself is somewhat less impressive when you start digging into the details. Here's the voting UI for the
security
Several high profile Twitter accounts were recently hijacked: An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News. The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ,
security
One of the most impressive hacks I've ever read about has to be the Black Sunday kill. Since the original 2001 Slashdot article I read on this [http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/25/1343218.shtml] is 99.9% quote, I'm going to do the same.
phishing
Most of the hacking techniques described in the 1994 book Secrets of a Super-Hacker are now laughably out of date. But not all of them. A few are not only still effective, but far more effective in the current era of ubiquitous internet access. As the author notes early in
programming languages
In the spirit of iPod modem hacking, Michael Steil documents how hackers compromised the Xbox security system. Mostly thanks to 512 bytes of rather buggy security code embedded in the Xbox boot ROM: The Xbox is an IBM PC, i.e. it has an x86 CPU. When the machine is
software development concepts
It’s the coolest hack in years – The Sound of iPod: I got an iPod for Christmas. The ipodlinux project was one of the main reasons for my choice and so I started exploring the iPod as far as I was able to. I patched the bootloader and got some