Password Cracking AES-256 DMGs and Epic Self-Pwnage
posted by unliteral on Feb 12, 2013 - 42 comments

Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger. Ars weighs in on the amazing advances the bad guys have made in password cracking over the last few years. Think you know how to choose something that's safe? The probability is quite high that you don't, even if you're technically ept. [more inside]
posted by Malor on Aug 21, 2012 - 184 comments

Lulzsec appear to have hacked the UK 2011 Census which, if true, could be quite a significant ramp up of the security wars. Grabbing a few million credit card numbers is one thing, 60 million identities is something else entirely. Not to mention the celebrity data. Here's the Hacker News comment thread, and a list of the actual census questions to show what could be on offer.
posted by Duug on Jun 21, 2011 - 135 comments

Using honeypots and logging tools, some server admins have logged actual server break-in attempts by nincompoop crackers. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis on Mar 11, 2011 - 50 comments

George Hotz started a blog chronicling his journey to a software-only PS3 crack. Despite tackling a platform that has held strong for three years, Hotz claimed to have gained read/write access to all system memory after five weeks. Although the PS3 actually ships with Linux support, these cracks circumvent the hypervisor that place strict restrictions on low-level hardware access. You may know Hotz as the geohot who released first hardware iPhone jailbreak, added a software-only jailbreak for all iPhones and iPod Touches, and won multiple awards (pdf) at ISEF 2007 for building a working holographic display system while a senior in high school.
posted by d. z. wang on Jan 25, 2010 - 45 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

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

You too can be a felon! Last year, the SDMI Foundation made a public challenge to see if anyone could crack 6 proposed protection mechanisms for digitally-encoded music. All six turned out to be feeble and all six fell. Since then, the SDMI Foundation has been relying on lawyers to cover up for the incompetence of their engineers. They're trying to suppress this article, so everyone reading this has a duty to make and store a copy of it. (Everyone should also own at least one copy of DeCSS. I have the 442-character C version printed on the back of my personal card.)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Apr 21, 2001 - 15 comments

The SDMI Hack challenge seems to have gone down in flames. And apparently it wasn't even very difficult to break into it. This article goes into it in some detail. [more]
posted by Steven Den Beste on Oct 17, 2000 - 5 comments

Last night Kevin Mitnick was on 60 minutes (the gist of the interview is quoted here), and I have to say he came off as an utterly harmless geek. He was an information junkie that enjoyed the challenge of cracking firewalls. He never profited from his activities and the affected companies made up their monetary losses. It's a shame he was forced to waste away in prison instead of offer his security expertise to the affected companies.
posted by mathowie on Jan 24, 2000 - 1 comment