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GamesPosts Tagged: ‘hackers’
On November 29, 2010, Microsoft announced it had sold 2.5 million units of its Kinect control system for the Xbox 360 within the first 25 days of the peripheral hitting the market. The device is selling well despite the reports that you need a large room with sufficient lighting to take advantage of the Kinect controller. Compared to the overall Xbox 360 video game library, there are only a few titles that take advantage of the Kinect’s capabilities. But that hasn’t stopped some enterprising hackers from tweaking the Kinect.
Secrets, Leaks and Denials of Service – The WikiLeaks Problem
by Jonathan Strickland | November 29, 2010
Writer Stewart Brand coined the phrase “information wants to be free.” Since he uttered those words more than 25 years ago, people have interpreted them in different ways. One way is to say that we’re living in a world in which it’s getting difficult to keep secrets. Whether it’s your personal information on Facebook or classified government information, data finds a way to creep out into the public.
Today, Google reversed its move of redirecting search from Google.cn to its Hong Kong Web site, according to CNET’s Tom Krazit. You may remember, a few months ago Jonathan wrote about the possibility that Google may leave the world’s largest Internet market as the result of a successful hacking attack against Google’s Chinese presence and those of several other prominent Western companies.
Google’s Password System Compromised in Last Year’s Attack
by Chris Pollette | April 20, 2010
Google’s been pretty tight-lipped about the attack on its servers last year that made news and may have changed the way the United States and China do business for the moment, but the details are coming out. John Markoff has written an article for The New York Times in which he said the source code…
This short (22 minute) documentary goes a long way toward explaining the rise of Chinese Honker (hacker) culture. One quote from around the 4:50 point: Honkers are a group of ambitious young people who use internet technology to show their love for country. It’s an expression of nationalism. From the Video’s description: Last month, Google, [...]
There are lots of different kinds of malware out there, most of which are interested in hiding behind the scenes. After all, the point is to avoid being discovered and removed. The longer they stay on your computer, the more information these programs can send back to their creators. Or the malware can continue sending out spam or creating denial-of-service attacks.
Bob Sullivan wrote a post in MSNBC’s The Red Tape Chronicles that discusses a particular type of malware that fully intends to get your attention.
Hey there, loyal listeners! Before I blog about the topics we covered in this week’s episodes of TechStuff, I want to thank all of you who continue to write in with questions and suggestions. We love to get feedback from our listeners. Just don’t send us your theory on how Microsoft came up with the name for Windows 7 — we answered that one last week.
On Monday, Chris and I talked about denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Malicious hackers use these kinds of attacks to target Web servers to slow them down or even take them offline. If the server’s administrators aren’t prepared to respond to the attack it can take days to recover. Practically every major Web site has been the target of a DoS at some point. Some system administrators are constantly countering attacks. Recently, Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal suffered service issues due to a DoS attack originating in Russia. The people behind the attack were targeting a specific user — all of the rest of us were collateral damage. Listen to the podcast for a further description.
Wednesday’s episode was all about airplane technology. We cover everything from transponders to the famous black box. I also reveal one of my previous jobs before my life at HowStuffWorks and how it ties in to airplane technology.
United States President Barack Obama is looking for someone to fill the post of cyber czar. Think you have what it takes? The job will require someone who can assess the state of digital security in the United States, identify vulnerable points and formulate policies and practices that will create a more robust computer security strategy for the country. It’ s a tall order.
South Korea Targeted by Script Kiddies, Not North Korea
by Jonathan Strickland | July 15, 2009
If you’re a TechStuff listener, you’ve heard Chris and me talk about how it can be difficult to track down the origin of a cyber attack. If the attackers have just a few basic skills, they can route an attack through a series of servers that can make it a challenge for investigators to backtrack. Even if you track the attack back to a geographic location, there’s no guarantee the person committing the attack was doing so on any kind of official basis. It may have just been a lone malicious hacker (commonly known as a cracker) stirring up trouble.
You may have heard the news that Web servers in the United States and South Korea were hit by distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) last week. To perform a DDoS, a cracker must first trick innocent victims into downloading malware designed to exploit security vulnerabilities in the victim’s computer. Once the cracker has access to an army of computers — otherwise known as a botnet or zombie computer army — he or she can command the computers to send thousands or millions of electronic requests to a target server. The goal is to overwhelm the target server so that it shuts down.
Wall Street Journal writer Siobhan Gorman reports that spies have managed to not only gain access to critical systems within the United States electrical grid but also plant applications that could damage the system. This is what folks in the security business refer to as a “bad thing.”
Gorman cites U.S. intelligence officers who say the malicious hackers who managed this feat are most likely Chinese or Russian. Representatives from both of those countries strenuously deny any involvement. Then again, if someone came up to me and asked me if I had infiltrated a critical element of a nation’s infrastructure I think I’d say “No sir, please put me down now.” I’m pretty sure espionage isn’t something you own up to just because someone asks you about it.
Still, it’s true that it’s very difficult to prove the hackers have any official affiliation with any nation.
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