geekosystem

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have reportedly arrested a 24-year-old hacker they claim is a leader in the LulzSec organization. We're loath to be the ones to break it to them, but LulzSec isn't really a "leaders" sort of organization, as other parties associated with the group are making clear on Twitter today.

Good news for anyone who really likes thinking up passwords! Nearly ubiquitous note taking app Evernote got hacked. The Evernote team says the information the hackers got was limited to user information like usernames, email addresses, and passwords. Evernote is taking steps to keep this kind of thing from happening in the future, but they've also released a few standard tips on keeping your password safe, and making everyone reset their password.

We all had a good laugh yesterday when Burger King's official Twitter account got hacked, but while we give the hackers an "A" for effort, at best they get a "C+" for execution. Most of what was tweeted was nonsense, and the account was quickly suspended. The hack gave birth to something pretty special though, because someone was inspired to create the @PretendBK account, and they let you tweet on their behalf, giving you the keys to the pretend Burger Kingdom.

Continuing a string of threats and attacks following the death of Aaron Swartz, Anonymous claims to be responsible for taking down the United States Sentencing Commission website yesterday. They also claim that ussc.gov is not the only government website they currently control. Shortly after the attack the site was taken down, and now appears to be running normally. In the message they posted on the site, Anonymous also claims to have sensitive government information that it will leak to the media.

The hacker group Anonymous defaced pages of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) site just hours after the school announced it would launch a full investigation into their role in Aaron Swartz's death. Swartz committed suicide on Friday while facing millions of dollars in fines and up to 50 years in prison for stealing documents from MIT and academic database JSTOR. In response, Anonymous has publicly called for the reform of computer crime laws and prosecution, and they've been busy the last few days petitioning the White House to classify DDoS attacks as a form of protest while also engaging in this hack of MIT.

A new method of cracking passwords hashed with SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm) made the relatively unsecured algorithm even less secure by greatly decreasing the time and computing power necessary to crack it. The news came out of the Passwords^12 conference in Oslo, Norway, which focused on password and PIN code security. It might be a good time to change your password, or more importantly change the way your passwords are stored.

Security was a major issue for Sony when they designed the PS Vita. Anyone who's familiar with the PSP likely knows that the console is one of the easiest consumer gadgets to crack out there: It was (and is) very easy to pirate PSP games, and that's something Sony does not intend to allow on the PS Vita. Despite Sony's best efforts, no device is "unhackable": Self-proclaimed reverse engineer Yifan Lu says he's found an exploit in the system that will eventually allow custom software to run on the device. While many gaming pirates are hopeful that the breakthrough will lead to hackers eventually jailbreaking the PS Vita, Lu says that his work doesn't allow people to pirate games, and he has no intention of helping them figure out how to do so.

But you wouldn't know it from looking at it. At first glance, the Power Pwn from Pwnie Express would likely be overlooked as just another gadget to plug stuff into in the office. Its actual purpose is to thoroughly test the intrusion security of companies. And it's all thanks to funding from Cyber Fast Track, a program which falls under the umbrella of DARPA. The government sponsoring research that leads to things like this is basically the best thing.

A bunch of thieves managed to hack into a BMW 1M coupe and drive it away in under 3 minutes, clean and quiet as you please. BMW's keyless entry system is apparently to blame, and there appears to be a lot of blame, because no one prefers losing their car to losing their car keys.

As if there wasn't enough video game hacking out there, the U.S. Navy just arranged for a little more, and paid over $100,000 for it. No, they're not looking to boost their kill-death ratios in MW:3 by using wall-hacks or something. Instead, they're hoping these hired hackers will be able to help them intercept useful inteligence that is being communicated by console messaging services. That's right: They want to eavesdrop on terrorists who discuss their plans over a heated match of Halo: Reach.

Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it sure can buy a lot of other things. Google has recently been exploiting this fact by using it to buy hackers, essentially. After offering $1 million in prizes to potential hackers as a part of their Pwnium contest, Google is going to have to pay up, about which I'm sure they're happy. On the very first day, Russian University student Sergey Glazunov cracked Chrome wide open, snagging a $60,000 prize, marking the first time Chrome has been hacked in a public competition. He wasn't the only one to pull it off either.

Sure, widespread electronic voting would make the process of tallying and processing ballots exponentially easier, but can it ever really be secure? Maybe someday, but certainly not right now, as evidenced by a little experiment in Washington D.C. that ended with everyone's favorite robo-sociopath Bender Bending Rodriguez being elected as the head of the Washington D.C. school board. Needless to say, there was a little bit of hacking involved.

With Chrome gaining more and more of the world's browser share, it's important that it be secure; important enough that Google is going to be offering prizes totaling $1 million to hackers who can uncover exploits of varying intensity in their popular browser. The prizes are being offered alongside the sixth annual Pwn2Own contest where hackers will compete to use and abuse Internet browsers. Those taking on the Windows 7 version of Chrome stand to win individual prizes of $20,000, $40,000, or $60,000 depending on the l33tn335 of their 5k1llz.

People do a lot of important things on the Internet. Maybe you use it make purchases, and pay bills. Maybe you use it to plot the destruction and overthrow of the government. Either way, you probably aren't too keen on being spied on. Unfortunately for you, the F-BOMB (Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors) makes it easy. Also, it has the sort of pained-acronym name that I can really get behind.

At the recent Silver Bullet security conference, Nelson Novaes Neto, chief security officer of UOLDiveo showed off a little method he'd come up with that let him take advantage of both the Facebook structure and the prevalent Facebook culture. Using this method, he managed to convince a web security expert called "SecGirl" to accept a friend request from him. In fact, he says he can get anyone to accept a friend request from him. In 24 hours. How can he do that when it has to be accepted by the target? Well, a little deception goes a long, long way.