MetaFilter posts tagged with hackers

Bert the Chimney Sweep Takes the Red Pill

scalefree — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:02:37 -0800

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?

The Doers Club

ryoshu — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:05:20 -0800

The Doers Club

Neurosecurity

homunculus — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:29:23 -0800

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]

wysiwyg: Ed Piskor

not_on_display — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:59:08 -0800

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. He started by collaborating with Garbage Pail Kids creator Jay Lynch before being picked up by Pekar (for whom he's since drawn peices for Our Movie Year [linked to above], Macedonia, and a history of the SDS, among others). Ed's also published a few well-known minicomics. He's currently working on the Wizzywig series, a fictional comics biography whose main character is a composite of well-known phreaks and hackers. Portions of part one and two are available on his website. For more pages from Wizzywig, as well as a veritable shitton of his other work, visit his blog. (Really. You'll get lost in there.) I don't think he's on Myspace, though.

Great Cyber Crimes and Hacks

netbros — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:44:22 -0800

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. WANK Worm MoD Skynet satellite hacked CDUniverse credit card breach Military source code stolen Anti-DRM Kucinich on CBSNews.com ApplyYourself hack 26,000 site attack Hannaford and Sweetbay credit card breach Comcast.net redirected

Cyber Command Über Alles

homunculus — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:55:24 -0800

Attention Geeks and Hackers: Uncle Sam's Cyber Force Wants You! Welcome to Cyberwar Country, USA

FBI PowerPoint, Chinese Hackers, and Counterfeit Routers, Oh My!

homunculus — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:11:00 -0800

FBI Fears Chinese Hackers Have Back Door Into US Government & Military. [Via /.]

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures"

orthogonality — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:00:03 -0800

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."

Sears Wants To Hack Your Computer

ikkyu2 — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:52:19 -0800

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. Hey Matt, you're lagging behind - this is the future of online community-building! [Via.]

Make sure to clean your logfiles.

flatluigi — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:31:54 -0800

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. Protip: Some useful programs and extensions, including a logfile parser, can be found here.

Kiwicon Hacks Up Media Coverage

sycophant — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:55:09 -0800

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.

Herding Zombies

dersins — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 11:03:09 -0800

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."

Look at all the .gov sites infected by

basilwhite — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 08:53:35 -0800

Look at all the .gov sites infected by the "0wn3d by NoPh0BiA" hack. Sad.

Molleindustria

andrew cooke — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:48:51 -0800

Molleindustria + fr ie nds. 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.

Every Bit Is a Work of Art

moonbird — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 09:40:20 -0800

The art of abstraction: 'the idea that anyone who creates anything is a hacker.'

Tricky Dix

owillis — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:39:43 -0800

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?

A new twist on paying for Internet porn

Samuel Farrow — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 06:52:27 -0800

A new twist on paying for Internet porn Although no mention of porn in the CNN story. Anyone ever been threatened like this?

Caution: Fake Blogger.com

hoder — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 11:44:18 -0800

Don't be fooled by fake blogger.com. Crackers are after your Blogger password.

Neal Stephenson, Psychic

jonson — Sun, 01 Jun 2003 22:28:12 -0800

"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?

Should award stand?

JettSuperior — Thu, 03 Apr 2003 20:39:51 -0800

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?

Hackers to the rescue

protocool — Fri, 28 Mar 2003 09:33:38 -0800

Hackers to the rescue! This is where the real war is being fought folks.... "Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia"

It took long enough...

shepd — Tue, 21 Jan 2003 16:48:40 -0800

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.

oh posey — Sat, 05 Oct 2002 17:10:48 -0800

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!

Kodel — Sat, 17 Aug 2002 10:50:45 -0800

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?

conquistador — Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:39:44 -0800

You must hack. It's your duty as an American. Godspeed, dear patriots.