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Entries from Realtime Community | Messaging and Web Security tagged with 'hacking'


Hacking Air Traffic Control Systems

The Wall Street Journal is reporting air traffic control networks have been attacked on multiple occasions in the past several years. The FAA doesn't agree with all the findings of the Transportation Department's inspector general who issued the report but...

Browser Sniffing

We've just posted an article in the Digital Library on browser sniffing. Here is an excerpt:...

Hacking Obama's Campaign Computers

President-elect Obama's campaign computers were hacked by a "foreign entity" over the summer according to the FBI....

Microsoft: Weakest Link Isn't the Operating System

Microsoft's 150-page Security Intelligence Report for January to June 2008 demonstrates that even if one part of an application stack is secure, attackers will still go after the weakest link. In this case, that would be third party applications....

More Voting Machine Problems

Princeton University conducted security tests on a type of voting machine and found they could readily replace key ROM and the physical security measures we're easily bypassed....

Hackers Don't Always Leave Calling Cards

News of a series of attacks on the World Bank's servers came a few days ago but a bank spokesman disputed the reporting. There is more on this story today....

Compromised Web Sites Target Unpatched Windows

Hackers have collected admin login credentials for over 200,000 Web sites....

Alleged Hacking Mastermind Arrested in Canada

The Canadians have an Israeli national accused of hacking global financial institutions under arrest and the U.S. wants him extradited....

Data Breaches at Nuclear Labs

Lost in the political and economic news of last week is a story about improving but still insufficient security at U.S. nuclear labs....

How Much is Your Password Worth?

The trivial social engineering attack that allowed someone to access Sarah Palin's Yahoo email is not the end of the story with simple minded password protections. A survey out of the UK found that the person on the street is...

Think Need for Anti-Virus Over Blown? Think Again

If you believe a story out of Wired today you'd think there is little need for security software other than to feed the marketing beasts at AV companies. They couldn't be more wrong....

Palin Email Hack Shows Why Mixing Business & Personal Emails Such a Bad Idea

Checking your personal email from a corporate system is one thing, using a personal account to conduct business is another. The former is one of those balancing risk and functionality questions. We all have busy lives and many of us...

Big Bang Experiment Hacked

No good deed goes unpunished. Imagine if you wanted to conduct the largest experiment in the history of the human race to shed some light on our origins, what would you get for their troubles? Frantic calls from "the sky...

Unsecured WiFI is Asking for Trouble

If you think sharing your WiFi is some kind of public service or you're just not sure how to go about securing your access points, it's time for a change....

Why Hack? Voyeurism and Curiosity

So hacking isn't just about the money or the notoriety, at least for on man....

Scientific American on Privacy

The September issue of Scientific American is dedicated to the future of privacy. Topics include:...

Hackers Adapting Administrator Tools

Botnet herders are adopting system administration tools to push keyloggers and screen grabbers. What next, herders managing to ITIL standards?...

Yet Another Form of Injection Attack: Web Redirects

Brian Kreb's Security Fix discusses some research out of Indiana University on how phishers and others can use open redirects in legitimate Web sites. In addition to the clear examples of hacked redirects Krebs provides, I add that this is...

Study: Focus on Fundamentals to Prevent Data Loss

A study on data breaches across a range of industries conducted by Verizon Business paints an ugly picture of just how preventable a lot of data loss incidents are....

Different Passwords for Differrent Sites without the Hassle

Google engineer HongHai Shen advocates in a blog post to use strong passwords and to use different passwords for different sites. Easier said than done without the right tools, but there is a way to do this without having to...

Role of ISPs in Customers' Security

In a post last Friday on disrupting botnets I argued that ISPs should have a greater role. At the same time I noted this wasn't an ideal solution and when it comes to implementation, there will be elements many of...

Hacking for Hillary

It's no surprise political campaign sites get hacked like others. Someone managed to inject malicious Javascript into the community forum on Barack Obama's site which redirected visitors to Clinton's site. Needless to say, speculation about the Clinton campaign's involvement came...

Hacking Conviction and Cybercrime

The conviction of Owen Thor Walker, 18, in New Zealand yesterday shows how far cybercrime has evolved. Not even legally an adult at the time, Walker became a bot herder with 1.3 million bots at his disposal. What do you...

Apple and Cotton Growers Both Fighting a Losing Battle

How long did Apple expect to keep iPhone 2.0 locked up? A month, six months, a year? It's over now and hackers have unlocked iPhones faster than some of us could finish reading Techme stories about the upgrade. The same...

Illegal Hacking, Insider Trading and the Definition of Deceit

If someone breaks into a computer system and steals information, does it entail deceit? That seems to be the question before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York in the case of a Ukranian...

Getting Root Access on Asus EEE

So you sick of hearing about Windows vulnerabilities and you worried malware is migrating to Mac OS, what do you do? Go Linux? Sure, Linux is useful but it doesn't mean we can dump all concern about security. For example,...

Cybercrime Economy

Cybercrime is a business and this podcast shows just how business like it is . The talk starts with an overview of the characteristics of cybercrime networks that parallel features of the business world and then provides examples. The podcast...

Hackers Attacking Online Gamers

Online gaming is big business so it's not surprising to hears hackers are trying to get a piece of the business. Now that some online games, like World of Warcraft and Second Life, have matured to the point where they...

Cyberwarfare Threatens Operational Capability

In the TimesOnline's UK headed for cyber 'cold war' we get some sobering insight into the threats of cyberwarfare. For example: On Tuesday, Andrew Palowitch, a senior adviser to the Pentagon, said that military officials had conceded that attacks had...

Good Tips for the Security Novice

I was a little hesitant to click through on a BusinesssWeek article entitled "Looming Online Security Threats in 2008". It isn't even Thanksgiving yet and already Christmas decorations are in the stores and doom and gloom predictions for 2008 are...

Google Android Phones in the Workplace

Ben Worthen raises good points in his post at the Wall Street Journal on why the Google phone is "A Business-Tech Nightmare Waiting to Happen." The basic gist is: Here’s the first thing that will happen when a phone with...

Hacking: It's Nothing Personal, It's Just Business

Earlier I posted on the evolving software market for attackers, complete with the kinds of upgrades and service support you'd expect from a legitimate vendor. Today we get more evidence of the business models driving hacking and attacking. SecurityFocus is...

Password Cracking with a Graphics Card

It's easy to forget how computationally powerful some graphics cards are. They create near realistic renderings of objects and it turns out their good for password cracking, too. New Scientist is reporting that Elcomsoft, a Moscow based software company, has...

eBay Hacked Through Old Code

eBay was hacked last week, according to Ars Techncia, and the attacker took advantage of some old code that was left on a server: A hacker infiltrated an eBay server and disabled accounts of several members on Friday. Representatives of...

Botnets Meet Ocean's Eleven: Scamming Online Gambling

A little imagination can go a long way if you have a botnet at your disposal. A Fortnet report describes several ways botnet herders can cheat online gambling services as well as launder money taken from stolen credit cards or...

We Make Hacking Too Easy: The Scourge of Default Passwords

How was convicted hacker Micheal Moore able to so many corporate computers and networks? He told InformationWeek "It's so easy. It's so easy a caveman can do it". It's true you don't have to be the inventor of polymorphic viruses...

Storm Worm Responsible for Spam Spike

MessageLabs analyzed patterns in Strom work activity and discovered a spike in spam two days later according to The Register. The worm is propagating rapidly in part because it the developers use techniques to change the code every half-hour to...

Who Can You Trust? Hacker/Security Expert Busted for Credit Card Theft

This is the kind of story that could be from a Robert Ludlum novel or maybe an episode of Alias where you're not quite sure if the guy who acts good is really bad or not. ComputerWorld is running a...

Complexity is the Enemy of Secure, Stable Systems

The New York Times article, Who Needs Hackers? shows just how many ways our systems can be compromised and most of them have nothing to do with hackers. The big problem, the article argues, is the complexity of systems and...

Hackers Recruited for Cyberwarfare

The Times (UK) is is reporting that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions for its cyberwarefare efforts. Citing a former Pentagon professional, the paper says:

Jim Melnick, a recently retired Pentagon computer network analyst, told The Times that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions to identify and recruit talented members for its cyber army. He described a competition held two years ago in Sichuan province, southwest China. The winner now uses a cyber nom de guerre, Wicked Rose. He went on to set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defence contractor for US aerospace.

This Time British Govt. Hacked, China Accused

A couple of days ago the Pentagon disclosed a cyber-attack it believe originated with the Chinese miliary. Today the British government is making similar accusations. In the U.K. based Telegraph's Chinese hackers 'raid Whitehall computers' - Telegraph one analysts describes...

Ubuntu Server Attack Has Clear Lesson, and Not So Clear One As Well

On Monday night several Ubuntu servers, sponsored by Cononical and maintained by the community, were found to be compromised. The sys admins took the machines off line and began a cleanup operation. The problem stemmed from a combination of too...

Gmail Easily Hacked on Unencrypted Wireless but Fix is Simple

Hearing that unencrypted WiFi is unsecure is not news, what is interesting is how easily Web app sessions can be hijacked on these network. There is a nice description by Humphrey Cheung at TGDaily of a man in the middle...

Security As Add-On Feature Doesn't Work

It's hard enough to design and implement software that minimizes vulnerabilities when security is a key priority, it's practically impossible to do it as an afterthought. Take the example from a study from California on voting machine security. The San...

iPhone Gets Hacked; Mac Fans Still Say Windows Sucks More

In addition to death and taxes, we can now add to the list of inevitables the introduction of hyped Apple products and vulnerabilities in complex systems. The New York Times reported on a vulnerability in iPhone that allows attackers to...

Beating Phishers the Old Fashioned Way

Tracking down phishers is difficult because they often hide behind botnets and spoofing techniques but one bunch of phishers was nabbed because of old fashioned paperwork. ComputerWorld is reporting Italian authorities arrested 26 in a scam involving the Poste Italiane,...

Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Homeland Security Coming Up Short on Info Security

The Department of Homeland Security is getting hammered for poor security. While specific incidents make for headlines and stinging questions by investigators, it’s the more systemic problems we should focus on. Take for example a question from the chairman of...

Hacking on $30 a Day

I just spotted this one on the Realtime Windows Server blog and it's worth a read: $30 USB Dongle as Bluetooth Hacking Device-Realtime Windows Server. It seems Bluetooth capabilities can be hacked with a USB dongle - this is the...

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