Be sure to "middle click" on the post links to open them in a new tab. Kids get your mom or dad to approve all the news feeds, some may be PG-13 or higher.
Here’s some troubling news for my fellow World of Warcraft players. It seems that hackers, account thieves, and other miscreants have now embraced man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks to further their evil ways. Blizzard says it’s not a widespread issue, and it’s rather difficult to pull off, but it’s something y’all should be aware of.
The deal is that WoW hackers are able to infect your PC—this is a PC-only problem, mind you, so Mac players can more or less ignore all of this—with a bit of malware that’s then able to initiate the MITM attack. The purpose of this is to intercept your login name, password, and authenticator number so that they can log into your account. Once online, they can do whatever it is you’d be able to do inside the game world: sell items, mail gold to other players, etc. They cannot, it should be noted, delete your actual account or anything like that. Still, it’s potentially devastating, selling all your epics for fast gold, then turning around and selling that gold for real money to someone else.
MITM attacks aren’t new or anything. There’s plenty of programs out there can initiate them rather easily, letting people intercept passwords, instant messages, you name it. They work in that they sit in between your PC and the server you’re trying to connect to. So, if you’re playing WoW, instead of your username and password and authenticator number going directly to Blizzard’s servers, they first go to the hacker’s rogue server, which then passes the info onto your intended server, capturing the information in the process. It’s essentially invisible to you, the end-user, which is why the attacks are so dangerous.
Blizzard has already identified the piece of malware that initiates the MITM attack, so be on the lookout for emcor.dll. Be sure to keep your anti-virus software up to date.
One final bit: the odds of you being a victim of such an attack are quite low, if only because it requires so much work for the hacker to pull off; you’d have to be hacked a the very moment he wants to break into your account, and that’s something that simply doesn’t happen. Rather, your account will be compromised on, say, Monday, but it won’t be until the following Saturday that the hacker actually access your account. And again, the worst thing that could happen with this kind of attack would be for someone to sell off your character’s items and gold, then, for good measure, delete your character—your actual account cannot be tampered with. That may be a distinction without meaning, yes.
So yeah, just be sure to keep your anti-virus software up to date, and keep your wits about you. Stay away from the shady parts of the Internet!
Pity the morons at iPhoneUnlockUK. They sold an iPhone unlock based on the Dev Team’s work and now are paying the price . Hackers broke into iPhoneUnlockUK’s servers, stole their customer lists, and sent the lists to the Dev Team who have decided to enact a little frontier justice. They just sent emails to the service’s 21,000 customers encouraging them to wise up and ask for their money back.
iPhoneUnlockUK claims that they’re offering a value-add by selling the Dev Team’s software, which is BS. The free software is so simple it’s criminal to try to sell it. Luckily the company keeps their credit card rolls on a different server or they’d be singing a different tune right now.
Google's operating system, announced in July and released as open-source in November, will likely attract attention from hackers due to its status as "new kid on the block," predicts one security researcher.
Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader is coming under assault by hackers, who say they've figure out ways to export protected content for use on other devices.
A hacker, Labba, and his buddies have cracked the Kindle’s ebook DRM, essentially allowing folks to extract the text of Amazon’s AZW files into a PDF for viewing on any reader. The hackers have reverse engineered the ebook code and very close to a formal, software-based solution.
It took the hackers only nine days to strip the DRM although there is no formal piece of software for the hack. But before you hack, think about it: these are ebooks. Do we really need to steal every living thing under the sun?
The FBI is probing the theft of an estimated tens of millions of dollars from Citibank by hackers linked to a Russian gang, The Wall Street Journal said.
It’s one of those mods just for modding’s sake, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome. Can you imagine rocking this thing in Math class? I mean, I got by with Drug War, Cave, and racing game that was pretty much Cave: Vertical Edition. If I’d had Link’s Awakening or Pokemon up in there… well, I would have played a lot less cards.
As a side note, I love that hackers like this guy are capable of complicated hardware transplants, but can’t seem to build a tripod.
Microblogging site Twitter went offline Friday after hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army apparently managed to change the site's DNS records.
Secret talks have been taking place between the United States, Russia and the United Nations in an attempt to reach agreement on strengthening Internet security and limiting use of cyber-warfare. Reported by the New York Times, the talks aim to reduce the number of attacks that occur online. Several large-scale cyber-attacks have taken place in recent years, including last years conflict between Russia and Georgia. In 2007 the Estonian government was brought to it's knees by a cyber-attack and earlier this year, plans for a new £2bn fighter aircraft were stolen when hackers managed to gain access to American computers.
Adobe confirmed late on Monday that hackers are exploiting a vulnerability in the most up-to-date version of its PDF viewing and editing applications...
First, they have better things to do. I know the “children are starving in Africa” argument is a tired one, so let’s be a little more specific. If you’re willing to spend so much time and money on such a silly issue, why not spend some time and money on securing consumer goods against hackers and botnets? Or organizing a task force to take down spammers?
Second, if consumers are turning up the volume so high that it damages their ears, that’s their problem. Yes, it really is.
Third, even if they do succeed in legislating a maximum output level from the players, the market will circumvent it instantaneously. I guarantee that if this legislation goes through, within a month or two of the first compliant players coming out, there will be tiny amps available to put on your headphone cords that simply increase the volume of the sound. And new headphones would have them integrated.
This legislation will probably go through, though I’d guess 100dB will be the number they choose, just because it’s big and round. Once that’s done, a very slight adjustment to gain in headphones will make things exactly as they were today.
Luckily there’s someone sane who will hopefully intervene in the proceedings: Martin Callanan, who is on the Committee considering the legislation. He says:
Kids have always listened to their music loud and this is not going to stop them.
…You have to educate them to the risks but ultimately you have to allow personal responsibility and personal choice.
Apple has a history of spoiling hackers’ fun. In fact, they’ve almost made a business model out of it. But hackers won’t be kept down, and a little netbook running OS X is too tempting a gadget to give up on. So when Apple nixed Atom support in an recent update (strictly out of spite), the coders set to work. And in typical fashion, a short time later a solution is released. It’s pretty rough, but in another week there should be a more user-friendly tool.
Hackers have figured out how to sidestep Windows 7's activation process, continuing a long-running battle with Microsoft, which has blocked such tactics in the past.
Free Wi-Fi while waiting for your flight sounds like a nice holiday gift, but public hotspots can be insecure. Follow these security tips to keep away hackers and humbugs.
According to the BBC Technology website, visitors to the technology blog Gizmodo have been warned that they may have picked up malware. According to the BBC, the security firm Sophos analyzed the incident and said that the website was delivering advertisements "laced with malware" last week. Following further investigation into the matter, Gizmodo published a statement where they confessed that the website was tricked into running Suzuki adverts which were in fact from hackers. Scareware works as an indirect form of computer infection.
TI-83+ calculators are going for less then $50 on eBay. They’ve been out for over a decade. If they’re not doing what their owners want them to do, maybe TI should look at how to provide continued value to their customers.
Panasonic’s Let’s Note (aka Toughbook) series is the favorite choice among many Japanese hackers. And today the company announced [JP] two new notebooks from the series with Windows 7 on board. Panasonic says their 16 hours of battery life is unmatched in the industry.
The so-called N8 and S8 are the models Panasonic will market in Japan as “winter season computers”. The S8 has an internal super-multi drive, but otherwise the main specs are identical for both Toughbooks: Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor (2.53GHz), 250GB HDD, 12.1-inch WXGA LCD, 2GB RAM (max: 4GB RAM), Wi-Fi, WiMax, one SD slot, one HDMI interface and three USB 2.0 ports.
The S8 and N8 will go on sale in Japan on October 22 (prices: $2,400 for the S8 and $2,300 for the N8). No word yet on international sales plans from Panasonic.
A hacker, 
