The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit suffered a security breach this week. Hackers made off with thousands of email correspondences between some of the world's top climate scientists, and posted them to the Internet¹.

Tony Hake has posted an article at The Examiner, highlighting what he feels are the most egregious examples of scientists manipulating and hiding data to support the established theories about Climate Change. Some of the scientists involved counter that the quotes are taken out of context, and that "People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way".

¹ I'm not going to link to them, but the Examiner article mentions where to get them.
posted by Who_Am_I on Nov 20, 2009 - 145 comments

Sunday night 60 Minutes aired a segment on the state of cyber crime & cyber terror which included the extraordinary claim that unknown hackers were behind massive power outages in Brazil in 2005 & 2007. Now Wired Magazine's Threat Level blog says that's just not true. According to two studies (PDF, Portuguese) by the Brazilian government it was buildup of soot on insulators that caused the blackouts, not super-hackers demonstrating their abilities. Is the US Intelligence Community passing around false information to justify its relevance?
posted by scalefree on Nov 10, 2009 - 52 comments

The Doers Club
posted by ryoshu on Sep 30, 2009 - 14 comments

Neurosecurity: security and privacy for neural devices. "An increasing number of neural implantable devices will become available in the near future due to advances in neural engineering. This discipline holds the potential to improve many patients' lives dramatically by offering improved—and in some cases entirely new—forms of rehabilitation for conditions ranging from missing limbs to degenerative cognitive diseases. The use of standard engineering practices, medical trials, and neuroethical evaluations during the design process can create systems that are safe and that follow ethical guidelines; unfortunately, none of these disciplines currently ensure that neural devices are robust against adversarial entities trying to exploit these devices to alter, block, or eavesdrop on neural signals. The authors define 'neurosecurity'—a version of computer science security principles and methods applied to neural engineering—and discuss why neurosecurity should be a critical consideration in the design of future neural devices." [Via Mind Hacks]
posted by homunculus on Jul 8, 2009 - 22 comments

Ed Piskor became interested in alternative comics at the tender age of nine [according to Wikipedia] after watching Harvey Pekar reading one of his stories in a documentary [most likely this one]. Fast-forward a decade or so, and Ed's getting the call from Pekar himself, asking Ed to draw some comics for him. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Mar 20, 2009 - 4 comments

The best criminal hacker is the one that isn't caught — or even identified. These are 10 of the most infamous unsolved computer crimes as selected by PC Magazine. However, some do get caught. Here are nine of the most infamous criminal hackers to ever see the inside of a jail cell. PCMag also reached back into the early days of computing and dredged up the most inspiring examples of hacker brilliance they could find. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Sep 30, 2008 - 43 comments

Attention Geeks and Hackers: Uncle Sam's Cyber Force Wants You! [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Jun 5, 2008 - 29 comments

FBI Fears Chinese Hackers Have Back Door Into US Government & Military. [Via /.]
posted by homunculus on Apr 23, 2008 - 62 comments

Possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims:

"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts,"... "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."

posted by orthogonality on Mar 29, 2008 - 98 comments

Online communities to become more 'all-encompassing.' If you join the SHC community on Sears.com, all web traffic to and from your computer thereafter will be copied and sent to a third party marketing research firm - including, for example, your secure sessions with your bank! The Sears.com proxy will send your logins and passwords along with a cleartext copy of all the supposedly secure data. But wait, it gets better: you can only view the true TOS once the proxy has already been installed. [more inside]
posted by ikkyu2 on Jan 3, 2008 - 70 comments

Ever admired those hard-working hackers, toiling away to get you the programs you've always loathed to have? Have you ever dreamt of exploring the innards of someone else's computer but have held back due to those pesky legalities? If you said yes to either of the above questions or just want to play an online hacking simulation, then SlaveHack is the website for you. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Dec 23, 2007 - 9 comments

The organisers of New Zealand hacking convention Kiwicon have created some PR the only way they know how, l33t h4x0ring. Using a XSS bug in NZ's largest newspaper the NZ Herald they created a fake URL that injected javascript to rewrite an article there. The URL got passed around and soon ended up with genuine media coverage in NZ Herald's biggest competitor Stuff. An earlier effort on the NZ Computerworld site was quickly fixed and got no media coverage.
posted by sycophant on Aug 28, 2007 - 14 comments

Interesting "New Yorker" article about online extortion via DDoS attacks. Call me naive and underinformed, but I had little understanding of how this works. "In the most common scenario, the bots surreptitiously connect hundreds, or thousands, of zombies to a channel in a chat room. The process is called “herding,” and a herd of zombies is called a botnet."
posted by dersins on Oct 7, 2005 - 34 comments

Look at all the .gov sites infected by the "0wn3d by NoPh0BiA" hack. Sad.
posted by basilwhite on Feb 8, 2005 - 22 comments

Molleindustria + friends. As featured on the BBC: Hackers re-invent political protests.
Links ordered by quality, roughly. Some slightly NSFW with some NSFW connections. Various links include sound.
posted by andrew cooke on Oct 6, 2004 - 3 comments

The art of abstraction: 'the idea that anyone who creates anything is a hacker.'
posted by moonbird on Feb 28, 2004 - 6 comments

Republican Dirty Tricks "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics. The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November." They just can't get Nixon out of their system, huh?
posted by owillis on Jan 22, 2004 - 124 comments

A new twist on paying for Internet porn Although no mention of porn in the CNN story. Anyone ever been threatened like this?
posted by Samuel Farrow on Dec 29, 2003 - 18 comments

Don't be fooled by fake blogger.com. Crackers are after your Blogger password.
posted by hoder on Jul 30, 2003 - 15 comments

"Then we realized that somehow an insane god had taken control of our world and was out to kill us all." Subscribers of the multiplayer online game "Shadowbane" were in for a shock Tuesday evening when they realized the game system had been hacked, and the rules fundamentally altered, and not in a good way (unless you happen to like mayhem). While this ended up being a "no harm, no foul" scenario, as everything was eventually set right, it was breaking new ground in terms of the uses of hacking. In a world where characters in these games are sold via EBay, and nearly half a million people subscribe to Everquest, how long before legitimate (non "fun and games") version of what just happened occurs?
posted by jonson on Jun 1, 2003 - 17 comments

Some ten months ago, Tim Lutero's weblog was hacked and all the entries were erased. The person allegedly responsible for the hack is a weblogger who won 'Highly Commended' status in Guardian Unlimited's 'Best British Blog' competition six months ago. If the allegations can be proven, should this award stand?
posted by JettSuperior on Apr 3, 2003 - 47 comments

Hackers to the rescue! This is where the real war is being fought folks.... "Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia"
posted by protocool on Mar 28, 2003 - 29 comments

Mitnick Free! Kevin Mitnick, a hacker who went without trial in the US for years, has finally been freed from his computer-free probation today. Buy his stuff on ebay, or buy his book. Or don't, it's really up to you.
posted by shepd on Jan 21, 2003 - 5 comments

While trying to pull up a favorite website I find the USG (Unix Security Guards), a group of so called pro Islamic hackers, have shut the site down. It's all well and good to be protesting the Middle East conflict by interrupting a night of jolly surfing, but why a rock and roll website? Damn hacktivist groups.

Good job punks!
posted by oh posey on Oct 5, 2002 - 12 comments

The FBI on hacking vs. The Russians That is crazy! 100 hundred years for hacking computers when there are people that actually hurt other people - maliciously...rapists, murderers, US politicians... "If Russian hackers can be convicted on evidence obtained by the Americans through hacking, it means the U.S. secret services may use further illegal means of obtaining information in Russia and in other countries," an FSB spokesman told Interfax on Thursday. Not only that, but the seriously...can this sort of thing just slide by?
posted by Kodel on Aug 17, 2002 - 2 comments

You must hack. It's your duty as an American. Godspeed, dear patriots.
posted by conquistador on Jul 31, 2002 - 7 comments

Out of all the groups of people that annoy the heck out of me (telemarketers, ricers and scientologists to name a few) I still cannot help but crack up when I read something written in 1337 hacker talk. Thank God they don't rule the world.
posted by hidely on Jul 27, 2002 - 14 comments

Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading. "The measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place."
posted by mathowie on Jul 23, 2002 - 40 comments

Ancient OS may be the best weapon against hackers. I thought this was great, aging Operating Systems such as Solaris and older versions of Mac Os are becoming valuable tools against electronic attacks, simply because they *are* older. (Anyone got the full set of floppies for System 7?) Link from RobotWisdom
posted by jeremias on Jun 7, 2002 - 27 comments

Competition to "reverse engineer" mystery program.
Another cool thingy from the HoneyNet Project; they're inviting people to convert a binary file into its original source. So, who's participating?
posted by arnab on May 3, 2002 - 2 comments

Hacked Palestinian Sites Play Long Flash Movie of Pro-Israel Images
Alnakba.com, a political site, is here. It and alquds.com, a newspaper's site, are hosted by Intertech, a PA ISP. I've also found at least one other Intertech site that has been defaced (1, 2). The Flash file includes a list of names of Israeli citizens killed by Palestinians. At the end, the author has placed a link to his e-mail, "dannyzion@matavtv.net." In the source, the hacker identifies as "Hacked By shmaya / Israeli Operation Force. email- shmaya@shmaya.org.il."
    The movie is displayed though a single frame whose source is here. That site points to a message board. A mirror of Alquds is here.
posted by rschram on Apr 15, 2002 - 4 comments

Hackers target Cell Phones With the connectivity of cell phones to the internet, hackers have begun to target cell phones, programming prank calls, placing calls to wherever and erasing the software in the phone.
posted by Lanternjmk on Mar 11, 2002 - 7 comments

Pringles now with more crisp signals. Empty cans of Pringles could be helping malicious hackers spot wireless networks that are open to attack. Just goes to show that wafer thin security is a big problem.
posted by riffola on Mar 8, 2002 - 20 comments

Lord of the Hackers? Sherri Turkle writes in the NYT:

Adolescents are wise in the psychology of computer games and Middle Earth. They live in a world they can't control, in a body that seems increasingly alien. To them the computer world is soothing, offering reassurance through mastery. Just as each episode of "The Lord of the Rings" presents a danger and each has its resolution, so many adolescent boys move from one block of intransigent code to another, from one screen to the next, declaring victory as they go. But this distinction is about more than gender; it is about ways of looking at the world — real, imagined or computer-generated. Some pioneers of computing had a style of working that rewarded risk. They spoke of programming itself as though it were a dangerous quest. At M.I.T. computer hackers even had a name for it: "sport death." To pull back from the impending doom of a system crash required near magic, an almost empathetic knowledge of the intricacies of code. For this community, a certain bravado came to be seen as valuable, even necessary, beyond the world of programming.

Any programmer-hobbits care to comment on this? This doesn't exactly describe my feelings when unsnarling html.
posted by mecran01 on Mar 8, 2002 - 41 comments

Bravenet Hacked - Damned hackers I think I found why my page wasn't loading right. They even have a question about it making pages load wrong. Mine was loading like molasses. Sigh. I need to go find a new counter.
posted by Dome-O-Rama on Mar 5, 2002 - 8 comments

Hacking could now lead to life in prison. Someone that kills someone you love would get less time in prison than what they are proposing for this hacker legislation. Is this punishment just for this crime?
posted by bump on Feb 27, 2002 - 14 comments

How to hack grey matter A big security loophole with grey matter powered sites is out there. It lets anyone have the username and password to these sites. Luckly there is a fix for it which can be found here.
posted by thebwit on Feb 23, 2002 - 20 comments

Washtech.com hacked The Washington Post's tech site was hacked yesterday. Here's the text (via FuckedCompany) that appeared after the hack and before the WaPo crew shut the site down. As of tonight, it is still not back up at its own domain. Not sure why this gives me glee. I just wish one day someone could hack something and leave something profound in the way of a message.
posted by brookish on Jan 29, 2002 - 6 comments

Hackers: Computer Outlaws A TLC show(that I'm 3/4 through) that seems to actually use reliable sources to discuss not just cracker behavior, but also the creative side of hackers, pointing out the developments attributed to some hackers. Now Markoff and Mitnick. Not a bad little show....
posted by dglynn on Jan 9, 2002 - 7 comments

the grinch that hacked Blogger with all of its users and weekly issues, what would be the glory in hacking into a system that breaks on its own?
posted by tsarfan on Dec 26, 2001 - 25 comments

Bush Admin contemplating the quarantine of super computers made in the US.
posted by HoldenCaulfield on Dec 24, 2001 - 11 comments

FBI warns Microsoft XP users "The FBI is urging computer users to unplug and don't play when it comes to addressing serious security flaws found in Microsoft's new Windows XP program." "Microsoft admitted this week that there are several serious glitches in the new software. " Really?
posted by headlemur on Dec 22, 2001 - 24 comments

Microsoft's newest version of Windows.... billed as the most secure ever, contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software. The company released a free fix Thursday.

A Microsoft official acknowledged that the risk to consumers was unprecedented because the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet.
posted by bkdelong on Dec 20, 2001 - 60 comments

"MS releases mother of all IE security patches" Per the article: Microsoft has released a cumulative patch for Internet Explorer which the firm says is a "critical" security precaution against crackers which should be applied "immediately". Time to update/upgrade boys and girls. :)
posted by crankydoodle on Dec 14, 2001 - 11 comments

This has got to be a payback for one too many Jerry Lewis flicks. French school for hackers. Teaching such things as hacking internal files, setting up trojan horses, viral attack theory, and the like. Of course it's only to put to use by the students for purposes of cyber self defense. Riiiiight.
posted by MAYORBOB on Dec 3, 2001 - 2 comments

Hackers: a report on the Internet's vulnerabilities Anyone see the original broadcast of this PBS "Front Line" special? Any good? It airs again Nov. 29, 2001.
posted by fleener on Nov 29, 2001 - 11 comments

AirSnort. The dangerous app with the unlikely name allows users to snatch data being passed over wireless networks, eventually capturing passwords to the network.
posted by o2b on Nov 29, 2001 - 7 comments

Dark Address Space leaves some 100 million hosts completely unreachable from portions of the Internet.
posted by trioperative on Nov 15, 2001 - 2 comments

As usual, when it's the U.S. turn, they play by different rules How come Russian and Scandinavian hackers can be charged under U.S. law for activities done in their home countries, yet when an American company gets a very reasonable request (IP tracking that it is done for web banners anyway) from a judge overseas, the U.S. grabs the free speech / local law argument.
posted by magullo on Nov 8, 2001 - 23 comments

Hackers win round one! Feel free to post DeCSS to this thread; it is no longer illegal.
What, if anything, does this mean to the movie industry?
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger on Nov 2, 2001 - 15 comments