Webcam is a short film which explores the concept (and apparent reality) of "webcam hacking." Straight link Vimeo.
Warning: Vimeo comments contain spoilers.
posted by kkrvgz
on Nov 28, 2011 -
37 comments
The Socialbot Network - A
UBC study suggests that many Facebook users will friend total strangers. Researchers said they collected 250 gigabytes of information from Facebook users by using socialbots — fake Facebook profiles created and controlled by computer code (sic).
The researchers said they got the approval of UBC’s behavioural research ethics board. The data they collected was encrypted and anonymized and deleted after they completed their data analysis. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Nov 6, 2011 -
65 comments
"
Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors - the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world" says LulzSec
(previously) in their latest release,
Chinga La Migra. "
We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 (previously) and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona."
#antisec is a new track from nerdcore rapper
ytcracker (previously)
posted by finite
on Jun 23, 2011 -
47 comments
People who use Sony
don't make very good passwords. "None of this is overly surprising, although it remains alarming. We know passwords are too short, too simple, too predictable and too much like the other ones the individual has created in other locations. The bit which did take me back a bit was the extent to which passwords conformed to very predictable patterns, namely only using alphanumeric character, being 10 characters or less and having a much better than average chance of being the same as other passwords the user has created on totally independent systems."
[more inside]
posted by -->NMN.80.418
on Jun 7, 2011 -
142 comments
'The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.'
posted by stbalbach
on May 31, 2011 -
88 comments
Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity have been down since April 20 2011 due to an illegal intrusion. Today
Sony announced that user data - birthdate, user name, password, e-mail address, possibly credit card information, and more - has been compromised for its
69 million users, exposing them to identify theft amongst other things.
[more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Apr 26, 2011 -
285 comments
Computer security vendor RSA, maker of two-factor authentication SecurID,
has been hacked by unknown parties. In an
open letter to it customers RSA Executive Chairman Arthur W. Coviello, Jr. calls the attack the work of an Advanced Persistent Threat, meaning a highly skilled, well-funded group acting deliberately & precisely to achieve a specific goal. RSA's clients include many Fortune 100 companies, US Government, Military & Intelligence Community organizations.
posted by scalefree
on Mar 17, 2011 -
118 comments
Adachi Tomomi,
Alex Baker,
Ian Baxter,
Ithai Benjamin,
Lesley Flanigan,
Lorin Edwin Parker,
Peter Blasser,
Phil Archer,
Todd Bailey,
Tommy Stephenson & Patrick McCarthy,
Tuomao Tammenpaa, and
Vasco Alvo are all featured in Nicolas Collins' extraordinarily good book
Handmade Electronic Music.
posted by mhjb
on Jan 21, 2011 -
14 comments
"I was daydreaming in class about who knows what, when I thought of my fire poofer project...I tried to think of ways I could apply a fireball shooter to things in ways that would be pretty awesome. I thought of using a microcontroller to sync the fire to the beat of music - now that would be pretty cool, and the patterns would always be different, so it wouldn't get as boring as fast. Then I thought of the game Guitar Hero."
High school student Chris Marion hacks a guitar controller and builds
FireHero. Facemelting ensues.
posted by therewolf
on Jan 19, 2011 -
28 comments
The Wikileaks Cablegate scandal is the most exciting and interesting hacker scandal ever. I rather commonly write about such things, and I’m surrounded by online acquaintances who take a burning interest in every little jot and tittle of this ongoing saga. So it’s going to take me a while to explain why this highly newsworthy event fills me with such a chilly, deadening sense of Edgar Allen Poe melancholia.
But it sure does.Bruce Sterling on the world of post-Wikileaks diplomacy.
posted by Artw
on Dec 22, 2010 -
396 comments
An anonymous hacking outfit called "Gnosis" has
infiltrated Gawker Media,
hijacking the front page and
leaking the company's internal chat logs, source code, and content databases along with the usernames, email addresses, and passwords of over 1.3 million users (including Gawker staff). The attack, which was motivated by
what the group describes as the "outright arrogance" with which the company's bloggers
taunted anonymous imageboard 4chan (semi-previously), affects every site in the Gawker network, including Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Jalopnik, and io9. While most of the leaked passwords are encrypted, more than 200,000 of the simpler ones in the torrent file have been cracked, and the links between account names and email addresses are in plaintext for all to see. Since
the integrity of Gawker's encryption methods remains in doubt, it is recommended that anyone who has ever registered an account on any Gawker property change their passwords immediately, especially if the same log-in information is used for other services.
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 12, 2010 -
312 comments
Music Hack Day heads back to Boston October 16 and 17. Music Hack Day is a free-to-attend 24-hour convergence over two calendar days designed to throw together programmers, musicians, artists, conceptualizers, and, of course, marketers and promoters. "Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it's music related."
Music Hack Day London just ended (September 4, 5). My favorite (and the MHD-London winner!) was
Speakatron, which is WebCam + Software = Goofy Fun! (
related, previously)
[more inside]
posted by beelzbubba
on Sep 21, 2010 -
4 comments
Last week, the New York Times magazine
published an explosive article about the phone-hacking exploits at the Rupert Murdoch-owned British tabloid
News Of The World under the then-editorship of Andy Coulson, now the
the Government's chief of communications. Following the NYT's investigation, questions about the "unhealthy" relationship between the Metropolitan Police and the
press (particularly Murdoch's
News International, which also includes The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times), and further claims that an independent inquiry was abandoned so as
not to upset the Metropolitan Police, assistant Met Commissioner John Yates was
questioned [video; 4 mins] on Tuesday by the Home Affairs select committee. Following an
emergency debate in Parliament today, which concerned the fact that MPs of all parties may have had their phones hacked (and therefore had their
Parliamentary Privilege breached), the
Standards and Privileges Committee, the most powerful committee in Parliament, is to
open an inquiry which will be able to compel witnesses to give evidence. Meanwhile, former News of the World reporters are coming out the woodwork, claiming that hacking at the paper was
"rife", and the pressure is on Coulson to resign his £140,000 job at No. 10, with a
poll [pdf] which says 52% of the public says he should go.
[more inside]
posted by Len
on Sep 9, 2010 -
46 comments
Andrew Shane Huang is a 35 year old hardware hacker, known to some as
bunnie, and others as that guy who
hacked the Xbox and went on to
write a book about it.
Finding the hidden key to the Xbox was
an enjoyable distraction while he worked on getting his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT as
part of
Project Aries. Since then, he has
written for (and
been written about) in
Make Magazine, has
giving talks on the strategy of hardware openness and
manufacturing practices in China, as experienced with the development of the opensource
ambient "
internet-based TV" called
Chumby. When he's not busy on such excursions, bunnie writes about
hacking (and more specifically,
Chumby hacking),
technology in China, and even
biology in exquisite detail on
the bunnie studios blog (
previously).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 17, 2010 -
36 comments
Citing security concerns, Sony has decided to release a firmware
update that will disable the "OtherOS" feature on its older (non-slim) PlayStation 3 systems. This is almost certainly a response to the system finally being
hacked two months ago by George "GeoHot" Hotz. To counter Sony's disabling of the feature, Hotz, who previously stated that he would not be releasing custom firmware for the PS3,
now plans to do so:
"The PlayStation 3 is the only product I know that loses features throughout its lifecycle. Software PS2 emulation, SACD playback, and OtherOS support are all just software switches you can flip. It's unbelievable you would go and flip one, not just on new boxes you are shipping, but on tens of millions already in the field."
posted by Who_Am_I
on Mar 30, 2010 -
126 comments
Ghost shift ghost chips. A tale about a Chumby hardware developer with a keen investigative eye noticing some oddities about microSD FLASH cards from supposedly reputable suppliers.
posted by loquacious
on Feb 16, 2010 -
65 comments
Hack This Site is a free, safe and legal training ground for hackers to test and expand their hacking skills. Realistic training missions included!
posted by Afroblanco
on Dec 23, 2009 -
18 comments
The public's
opinion of the field of climatology has been shaken by the
leaked CRU emails. While it's
arguable that the messages show any
wrongdoing,
many pundits have now reached the conclusion that global warming is a hoax, coverup and conspiracy, years in the making with millions of faked datapoints. Sarah Palin has written an
editorial saying Obama should boycott the Copenhagen
COP15 summit.
posted by mccarty.tim
on Dec 9, 2009 -
270 comments
Hacking is a Baltimore phenomenon that allows citizens to get cheap "illegal" rides across town. A hack indicates they want a ride by motioning their pointer finger towards the ground as they walk along the street. Inevitably a driver will stop, the two parties will negotiate a price and a ride will be given. It is both a
dangerous and
necessary part of the blighted Baltimore economy.
posted by cloeburner
on Nov 9, 2009 -
84 comments
