Results tagged “hacking” from 60 Second Science

Earlier this month, President Bush signed the classified National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 ordering the NSA to monitor the computers and networks of all federal agencies. While the directive makes it sound like the NSA is simply out to check up on its federal neighbors, the goal is significantly less creepy than the directive sounds--that's the way it usually works, though. Government computers have experienced a rise in attacks over the last year and a half with officials laying blame on Chinese websites for large attacks that targeted nuclear labs and defense contractors.

Of course, if your city's government employees are looking at porn 95-100 times per day, there's bound to be some security issues somewhere inside the Beltway.

Continue reading 'NSA to monitor the rest of the government; creepiness factor rises by 10' >

The RIAA's website was hacked on Sunday. Frankly, I'm just surprised it's been so long since the last rash of attacks--six times in as many months back in 2002. And while the RIAA hasn't issued any lawsuits or pressed charges (yet), it's unlikely an organization with that much lobbying power will stay silent.

So enjoy it while it lasts, hackers. The RIAA may not understand technology, but I'm willing to bet the big, lumbering Tyrannosaurus Rex didn't fully understand what the small creatures running around beneath it were either. It just grabbed them with its teensy, greedy arms and chowed down (not really).

Continue reading 'Hackers to RIAA: "Nyaa, Nyaa"; RIAA to hackers: "It's cool, we're lawyered up."' >

Criminal hackers have been taking over the utilities systems of various cities and then demanding money from them to turn the power back on.

"We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands," US Central Intelligence Agency senior analyst Tom Donahue told a group of international security experts from the utility industry last week.

No wonder my utility bills are all skyrocketing. It couldn't possibly be my freakishly cold Texas winter.

Continue reading 'Cold this winter? Maybe the hackers are stealing your power.' >

In a world where America has fallen deeply, physically in love with the Internet and the rest of the world has fallen even more deeply and sexily in love with robots, there are two ways to go about identity theft. You can set up a chat bot to trick lonely people into giving you your information, or, in a more straightforward move, you can hack Facebook.

The social networking giant is now alleging that a group of 17 people and one Canadian porn company made over 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook in June.

Continue reading 'Canadian pornographer wants to be your Facebook friend/identity thief' >

Security experts have shut down a botnet that sent out almost 200 million spam messages supporting the Republican presidential candidate from Texas. However, after careful analysis, researchers have determined that, while delightfully elfin, Ron Paul is not a 1337 hacker. "It probably wasn't even set up by a Ron Paul supporter," said Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher with SecureWorks. "This whole system has been around since 2004. This [spam] somehow just landed in this underground spam economy." Maybe Ron should look into one of these bad boys.

Continue reading 'This just in: Ron Paul is not a hacker' >

Graphics Card cc Johnny Anthony Evans

It would take most dual-core PCs about two months to crack an eight-letter, NTLM-hashed Windows Vista password using brute force techniques at 10,000,000 passwords per second. With a decent graphics card, now you can hack the system in just three to five days. Huzzah!

Continue reading 'Russian company files patent to turn 1337 gaming machines into haxors' >