Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:14:35 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/ Hack In The Box Backend en-us http://hackinthebox.org/images/hitb.gif http://hackinthebox.org/ dhillon.kannabhiran@hackinthebox.org http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29405 Chinese computer manufacturer, Lenovo is planning to cut 200 jobs at the company's headquarters in Beijing, Reuters reports. Lenovo is only one of the growing number of companies slashing their work force due to the poor economic state. Lenovo plans to announce restructuring changes on January 8, 2009, which it hopes will get it out of debt, since acquiring IBM's PC unit back in 2005 for $1.25 Billion. Recently, IBM has been moving back from the Lenovo series after it had a number of sell-offs over the past year, where customers are not adopting the brand as expected in North America. IBM, which currently still has shares in Lenovo, has a sales agreement to continue selling desktops and laptops until 2010, where both companies could see a departure if sales continue to decline. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:14:35 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29404 The economy is in trouble -- everywhere. Even outsourced providers are nervous. Already under stress, IT staffers see their jobs getting more and more difficult as they must do more with less, all while wondering if they'll keep their jobs at all. That's why you need a plan for your tech career. The worst thing you can do is give up or panic. Although tech jobs are under increasing pressure, the reality is that the technology jobs market overall is still doing better than the market for other types of jobs. That doesn't mean you're immune from layoffs, stagnant salaries, or increasing workloads, but it does mean you have more options than many other workers -- if you're willing to be flexible. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:13:30 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29403 The statutory auditor for Satyam Computer Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), may review its “continuance” with the troubled software firm. The company’s image has been tarnished after its scuppered bid to buy two firms linked to its promoter B Ramalinga Raju. “We do re-visit the process acceptance and continuance, whenever there are any major developments. We have been statutory auditors for the company for at least six years now. But we need to assess whether our judgement (on the company) continues to hold good. A re-evaluation is in sync with international norms on auditing,” said a source privy to the developments at PwC, who wished not to be named. However, when contacted PwC’s spokesperson said: “As auditors, we are not allowed to comment on audit clients due to client confidentiality.” The source quoted earlier did not categorically say that the relationship would be reviewed, but said such a review was a possibility given what had happened. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:12:53 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29402 ONLINE encyclopedia Wikipedia said last week that it had attained its fundraising goal of $US6 million, enough to cover operating expenses for the current fiscal year. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said more than 125,000 people had donated a total of $US4 million since he made an appeal for funds on July 1. "In addition, we've received major gifts and foundation support totalling $US2 million," Mr Wales said in a thank you letter on the website of his non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. "This combined revenue will cover our operating expenses for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2009." Mr Wales said the money would pay for "day-to-day operations: servers, hosting, bandwidth, our staff of just 23 people" and "continued development and improvements of open source software that powers all Wikimedia projects." Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:12:13 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29401 Eleven counterfeiters have been given jail sentences of between one and a half and six and a half years by a Chinese court after being found guilty of producing fake Microsoft software. The "ringleaders of the world's largest software-counterfeiting syndicate", as Microsoft described them in a statement last week, were sentenced on New Year's Eve. According to Microsoft, theirs were the longest sentences given for this type of crime in China's history. The syndicate was charged with making and distributing more than US$2 billion worth of fake Microsoft software, which had ended up all over the world. Nineteen Microsoft products were counterfeited, in 11 languages. A Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet UK on Friday that the products had included Windows Vista and XP, as well as Office 2007 and 2003, and Windows Server. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:10:09 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29400 One of the least researched, but most important subject areas for the future of business is the field of computer forensics. It's a huge area and a massive challenge for all organisations that rely on digital transactions. In the past, long standing business partners would either trust each other, accept the facts of a printed audit trail, or simply succumb to the whims of a more important customer. Unfortunately, none of these options will work in the new business world of volatile business relationships with numerous, anonymous partners operating across complex supply chains. Modern business practice demands accurate, independent and assured verification of transactions. That means that executives at all levels in an organisation need to be streetwise about the validity, vulnerability and availability of audit trails and digital evidence. Given the current capability of hackers and fraudsters to deploy anti-forensic techniques, that's a very tough call. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:58:12 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29399 Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., the world's biggest defense companies, are deploying forces and resources to a new battlefield: cyberspace. As the U.S. government increases spending for protection against computer attacks, new units of these military contractors are aiming to capture a share of a market that may reach almost $11 billion by 2013. President George W. Bush announced a national cybersecurity plan in January to be supervised by the Department of Homeland Security, after an increasing number of attacks on U.S. government and private-sector networks by groups linked to foreign governments, organized crime gangs and hackers. In a Dec. 8 report, a panel of experts said President-elect Barack Obama should create a White House office to oversee the effort. "The whole area of cyber is probably one of the faster-growing areas" of the U.S. budget, said Linda Gooden, executive vice president of Lockheed's Information Systems & Global Services unit, which includes a cyber-defense operation launched in October. "It's something that we're very focused on. I expect there will be a significant focus" under Obama. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:48:02 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29398 Gamestop employees were probably feeling perplexed all around the country this weekend as would-be hackers descended on their stores looking for copies of an old PSP game called GripShift. The auto-racing puzzle-platformer developed exclusively for the PSP won acclaim for its creative mash-up of different genres, but never sold in large quantities. Now, a hacker by the name of MaTiAz has discovered that the game can be exploited to potentially hack the PSP 3000. Some readers will remember that software exploits such as the one contained in Liberty City Stories helped hackers crack the original PSP 1000 before the creation of the Pandora Battery. Copies of GTA sold for ridiculously high amounts on ebay until alternative methods of hacking the console were discovered. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:47:12 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29397 A group of Israeli students has decided to fight back against Hamas and to begin taking down websites that support it. The students explain that as part of Hamas's war against Israel, supporters of the terror group have been busy over the past week hacking pro-Israeli websites. Sites that have been hacked include banks and news websites. The students opened a website called Help Israel Win with the purpose of fighting Hamas with the same weapon. The most recent victim of the jihadi hacking campaign was the Debkafile website which was broken into Saturday night, at about the same time that IDF ground troops entered Gaza. "The attackers tried and failed to block and replace our content," Debka reported when the site came back up on the following day. "We did our utmost to restore service as quickly as possible and return to full operation." Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:46:39 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29396 Our folks in Asia are at it again with some pretty startling news. The 17-inch MacBook Pro is going Unibody, like the 13-inch and 15-inch models. That, in itself isn't really that big of a deal; it was widely expected. The big news is that Apple is making a super slim battery pack for the 17-inch MacBook Pros that will last much longer than current models. However, you won't be able to remove the battery pack. It will be inside the machine, just like iPods and iPhones. How? I've outlined a hypothesis on Apple pioneering Silver-Zinc battery usage here. Those of us with three year old MacBook Pros can attest that these batteries lose a significant amount of performance over time and need to be replaced. It isn't quite clear how Apple will deal with this issue. They may have new technology that can take more charges, or they may offer a service replacement similar to the replacement of a motherboard or hard drive. Maybe swapping out the battery will be as easy as swapping out RAM. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:43:30 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29395 THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws. The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room. Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:37:32 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29394 Storage company Verbatim will unveil two new pro-grade quad-interface external hard drives at this year’s Macworld Expo. The drives will come with support for USB 2.0, Firewire 400 (up to 50Mbps), Firewire 800 (up to 100Mbps) and eSata II (up to 3Gbps). The 500GB and 1TB drives will spin at 7,200RPM and come loaded with 32MB of cache. The drives will support Windows 2000 and above and Mac OS X 10.1 and above. Externally the hard drives will be housed in an aluminum case weighing in at 3.3 pounds and measuring 9 inches by 6 inches by 1.5 inches. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:36:06 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29393 The Recording Industry Association has dropped MediaSentry, an outfit that scans the Internet for folks allegedly uploading copyrighted music. According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA quietly dropped MediaSentry, a company that provided the RIAA most of its lawsuit firepower. The Journal makes the leap that the RIAA’s MediaSentry move is an indicator of how the organization will be less lawsuit happy going forward. Last month, the RIAA said it would ease off mass lawsuits. However, the RIAA’s breakup with MediaSentry may not be an indicator of a kinder-in-the-courtroom organization. Why? The Journal notes in the last paragraph of its story that the RIAA (all resources) has hired DtecNet Software ApS to replace MediaSentry. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:34:52 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29392 First real war, now a cyber war? The Jerusalem-based Debkafile said it was temporarily put out of action Saturday evening by a cyber attack. It's not clear whether this was a denial of service attack. Debka, which specializes in military and political analysis, sent out a note to subscribers that both its English and Hebrew sites had been under attack "since 19:00 local time." It did not get more specific and the site's publishers were not immediately available for comment. The announcement took place in the shadow of the week-long conflict between Israel and Hamas. Earlier today, the Israel Defense Force sent its troops into Gaza in a move to smother missile fire. Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:34:02 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29391 After releasing their yellowsn0w software unlock on New Years Day, the iPhone Dev Team are now on the hunt for a certain individual named Jody Sanders of iphoneunlockuk.com for ripping off their work and profiting from it. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I'm quite sure there isn't much legal recourse available to the Dev Team to get 'Jody' shut down considering they themselves are kind of in a grey area with regards to the work their doing. Sure the Dev Team isn't selling their software or otherwise profiting from all their iPhone unlocking work, however they are BREAKING Apple's agreements which has to be illegal on some level. From the Dev Team site: Seems like “Jody Sanders” of the West Midlands, UK (who we mentioned in our release post) is at it again and is stealing our work and passing it off as his own, he has done this before and this scam was reported by the Guardian and also by us before and was also covered in a very very long thread over at hackint0sh forums. We specifically restrict the commercial use of our software, and yellowsn0w is included in these restrictions. This dodgy geezer is selling our software to you at a bargain £19.99 he says:- “We can now fully unlock the iPhone 3G for use on any GSM network for just £19.99 DIY (£49.99 in-store at either London or Birmingham) - just in time for the release of the iPhone 3G PAYG in the UK (available from Carphone Warehouse and o2).” Jody’s “software” contains our code and also copyrighted code from elsewhere. All you need is free and outlined here . What he is doing just isn’t cool. If you are in Birmingham or London then if you could find out any information about Jody Sanders at “iph*neunl*ckuk” we’d be very appreciative. My guess is that this story is definitely going to start making its rounds in the UK and on other major news sites and it won't be long before iphoneunlockuk finds themselves in legal troubles for something completely unrelated to actually selling the iPhone Dev Team's unlock software... Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:37:00 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29390 Over than past few months, the Microsoft Virtual Earth team has been preparing the service for one of it's biggest updates since the release. What's the definition of "one of it's biggest"? Well it's over 48TB of new and improved imagery. Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth technical evangelist at Microsoft, announced that the service has updated it's global vector data for the majority of it's tile sets. The update includes multilingual tile sets for all zoom levels, localized tile sets for Japan, and all Bird's Eye imagery has been updated with new road map labels. Microsoft has also added tons of new imagery data for the following countries: Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Herzegovina, Hungary, Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:38:00 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29389 Modbook® manufacturer Axiotron® today announced that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple® Computer and a member of Axiotron’s Board of Advisors, will participate in the unveiling of Axiotron’s latest products and technologies in the main presentation area of Axiotron’s booth (#502) at the Macworld Expo. Mr. Wozniak will join Axiotron CEO Andreas E. Haas on stage on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009, at 12 pm. The event is open to all Macworld attendees. Axiotron’s booth will feature artists, designers and software representatives who will highlight the improved and enhanced Modbook® – the award-winning tablet Mac® computer – at numerous hands-on demonstration stations. Macworld attendees will also get an exclusive first look at Axiotron’s latest innovations, including Quickscript™, the company’s new handwriting recognition software. At Tuesday’s unveiling event, Mr. Haas will offer a window into Axiotron’s unique product development process and showcase the company’s newest hardware and software products and technologies. Mr. Wozniak will present his vision of how Axiotron’s approach may represent a bridge between past breakthroughs and future innovations. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:36:57 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29388 The security services have been warned that the internet is increasingly being used to train terrorists, raise money and as the main form of media to promote radical Islam. Computer experts in al-Qaeda have created an "online University of Jihad" that is recruiting and training potential terrorists in Britain without them having to risk travelling to camps in Pakistan. A new generation of encrypted software has been developed called Mujahidden Secrets 2 whose updated security is said to allow militants to communicate freely by email without fear of being spied on by the intelligence services. At a select conference on the Terrorist Threat to Britain experts from Jane's Intelligence Group said an online community was growing with younger and more impressionable people inadvertently sponsoring terrorism. Terry Prattar, a specialist in counter-terrorism with Jane's Strategic Advisory Services, said: "Al-Qaeda want to create a University of Jihad on line, both in a spiritual and financial sense. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:36:24 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29387 My colleague Jason Perlow has been playing with Windows 7, and he hates it. The sad thing is, all the things he hates are improvements, in my opinion, which just goes to show that you really can’t please everyone. But what’s sad to see is that every setting Jason describes as broken is in fact easily customizable so it works the way he wants it. The crux of Jason’s complaint is simple: “I learned how to use Windows in 1998. Don’t change a thing.” Here’s his main argument in a nutshell: I find it difficult to believe that Windows 7 was created to be easier to use than Vista — if anything, they’ve introduced a number of UI changes that make the system much harder to navigate, particularly if you’ve never used Vista and are going direct to Windows 7 from Windows XP, which is the path that many users will experience. Yes, there’s a learning curve. And if you insist on using those techniques you learned back in the last millennium with software that was designed differently, you will be frustrated. But I believe that an open-minded XP user who actually takes a few minutes to learn how the new UI works will be more productive very quickly. The secret is breaking old habits and developing new ones. Let’s take all three of Jason’s examples and work through them. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:35:34 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29386 Most scientists believe that allopatric speciation, where different species arise from an ancestral species only after breeding populations have become physically isolated from each other, is the dominant mode of speciation both on land and in the sea. The key to this theory is the existence of some kind of physical barrier that operates to restrict interbreeding (gene flow) between populations so that, given enough time, such populations diverge until they’re considered separate species. For example, finches that were blown by storms from South America to the Galapagos Islands (and were studied by Charles Darwin) were consequently isolated from their host populations and these isolated breeding colonies evolved separately from each other until they became separate species. Research by Dr Philip Sexton formerly of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (now at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego) and Dr Richard Norris (also of Scripps) suggests, however, that this mode of diversification may not be as prevalent for oceanic creatures as it is for land dwellers and somewhat controversially, they assert that the above model of speciation may actually be very rare in the world’s oceans. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:30:44 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29385 It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward." Here's what's amazing about the Mac as it turns 25, a number that in computer years is just about a googolplex: It can look forward. The Mac's original competition—the green-phosphorus-screened stuff made by RadioShack, DEC, and then-big kahuna IBM—now inhabit landfills, both physically and psychically. Yet the Macintosh is not only thriving, it's doing better than at any time in its history. Much of the attention directed at Apple over the past few years has focused on new products like the iPod and the iPhone. Click wheels and touchscreens have distracted us from the news that the Mac market share has quietly crept into double digits. That's up from barely 3 percent in 1997, just before the prodigal CEO returned to the fold after a 12-year exile. Any way you cut it, the Mac is on the rise while Windows is waning. Roll over, Methusela—the Macintosh is still peaking. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:30:04 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29384 There is no longer any doubt that hackers and malware writers are going after open source projects as they once went after Windows. Vulnerabilities are being found, discovered, created, exchanged. The best protection against vulnerabilities is to keep software updated, but most open source lacks update services. That’s one part of the Windows license that is worth paying for, and there does not seem to be an open source equivalent. An exception is Firefox (above, from SecurityMike). But how many take advantage of this? And how tied is Firefox to updating for security purposes? Remember we’re talking about pushing updates, not asking users to pull them. In any case, the enterprise market is more important here. Servers hold more secrets than clients. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:27:54 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29383 Yahoo and Intel built their success upon widespread use of personal computers, but the two companies hope products to be shown at next week's Consumer Electronics Show will mark the beginning of their Internet-fueled expansion to the world of TV as well. The two companies have attracted several significant manufacturing and content allies in the attempt to bring new smarts and interactivity to a part of the electronics world that has remained a more passive part of people's digital lives. Intel and Yahoo showed off Net-enabled TV prototypes in August, but the companies' technology will be presented in more finished form at the electronics show within products by Samsung, Toshiba, and a number of new partners that have signed on since the debut. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:25:25 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29382 Last month the first of seven centers due to issue ID cards for all non-EU nationals opened for business. Voluntary ID cards will be available to young people from early 2010 and to the rest of the country by the end of the year. In 2010 anyone renewing their passport will be required to provide biometric information and will automatically be entered onto the National Identity Register (NIR). By 2017 the Home Office intends that ID cards be compulsory for all citizens. Those who refuse will be fined up to £2,500. “We have reached the point almost of paranoia about civil liberties,” was the conclusion of Times columnist David Aaronovitch with regard to the debate surrounding the introduction of these cards in the UK. Aaronovitch insists there is nothing Nineteen Eighty-Four about plans for all citizens to carry compulsory biometric identification, and for this information to be stored on a centralized government database. Hysterical left-wing comparisons to the novel are ridiculous, he insists; the Big Brother state is nothing more than “a paranoid fantasy.” Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, is one such paranoid fantasist, saying of the government’s plans to extend the capacity of the database that, “1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a blueprint.” He can be soothed, then, as Winston Smith was, by Aaronovitch’s favorite platitude: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:23:24 +0000 http://hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29375 TUAW has the most complete description yet of the new Mac mini widely rumored/expected to launch at Macworld. It'll be topped with iMac-esque black plastic instead of white, and have a lip like Time Capsule. The lip conceals the Mac mini's optical drive slot, which is useful now since TUAW says that the new drive will be SATA, meaning it can be swapped out for a second hard drive, probably as a custom build option. The second drive is boon to the business crowd that uses Mac minis in server farms (like this one), since it not only adds more storage, but makes RAID1 mirroring easy. No other details on specs—we're pretty interested in what processor these things will be packing—though it's looking fairly certain (as certain as these things ever look, anyway) that they'll have Nvidia's GeForce 9400m chipset from the new MacBooks in tow. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:00:00 +0000