hackers posts

Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Security, Commercial, Open Source

Does software piracy hurt the open source community?

by Danny Mendez Jul 30th 2008

Louis Suarez-Potts, the community manager for the open-source Open Office project, says software piracy also hurts the open-source community, and though it can be argued that open-source is bad for innovation, most of us love the open source community. So does the occasional pirated piece of software really hurt our beloved open source projects?

Suarez-Potts thinks it's bad for everyone including the open source community since pirated software theoretically takes "customers" away from open source projects. For example, a college student may never end up downloading Open Office since he copied Microsoft Office from a friend, but that's not to say it hurts the money-makers like Microsoft at all. A little bit of piracy helps to establish big company's products as "the standard", hurting open source projects even more and making it harder for them to get their foot into a user's door.

Now we'd like to pose a question: Like the college student used in the example above, does pirating software generally prevent you from trying Open Source software or would you have put the cash down anyway even if you couldn't get it for free?

Tags: community, hack, hacker, hackers, open, open source, OpenSource, piracy, pirate, software

Filed under: Internet, Security, Yahoo!

CAPTCHA hacks could lead to a flood of junkmail

by Brad Linder Jan 30th 2008

You know those annoying "please enter the code" requests you see when signing up for online services, leaving blog posts, or otherwise trying to prove that you're human and not a machine? Yeah, it turns out that the machines are getting pretty good at reading them too.

The basic idea behind the CAPTCHA (which stands for Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart is that computers can't read text if its hidden in an image file. But a Russian researcher claims that he received word that there was an automated CAPTCHA detection system floating around in the wild. So he decided to build his own and managed to create a system which he claims has a 35% accuracy rate.

The claim has some credence, since a Yahoo! spokesperson tells TMCnet that the company is aware of attempts to hack the CAPTCHA system and is working on improvements. In the meantime, if this thing catches on there's a chance you'll see a lot more junk mail letting you know about an opportunity to make $1,000,000 or enlarge certain body parts coming from Yahoo! Mail accounts and other free email services. While the CAPTCHA system was originally developed for Yahoo!, it is now widely used by other services and we're going to go out on a limb and say that if Yahoo!'s implementation of CAPTCHA can be hacked, we'll probably be seeing other sites hacked soon as well.

We suppose Yahoo! can always just make their CAPTCHAs harder to read. Or you know, impossible to read.

[via Slashdot]

Tags: captcha, hackers, junk-mail, spam, spambot, yahoo!

Filed under: Internet, Security

Hackers use Windows Update to download malicious code

by Brad Linder May 11th 2007

Microsoft's Windows Update has a component called Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that downloads updates while you're busy doing other things with your computer. If you get disconnected, the update will pick up where it left off when you get back on the network.

Sounds great, right? Well, generally it is. But since BITS is part of your operating system, your firewall doesn't really check to see what it's downloading. And while there is pretty much no risk of automatically downloading a virus or trojan through Windows Update under normal circumstances, hackers are starting to use BITS to download code to computers that have already been affected.

Say you click that file attachment in an email from an unknown source, expecting to see compromising photos of a young starlet. Turns out there's no photo, so you shrug and move on. Next thing you know, you're computer's trying to download all sorts of files to capture your passwords. Normally your firewall would help protect your computer from such attacks, but since BITS can fly under the radar, you may be out of luck.

According to a Symantec researcher there's no way to prevent hackers from using BITS right now, but Microsoft could redesign BITS to require a higher user level in order to work. Or Microsoft could only allow BITS to download files from trusted sources.

Tags: bits, hackers, windows update, WindowsUpdate

Filed under: Internet, Security, News, Symantec

Most hack attacks originate in the US says report

by Grant Robertson Mar 20th 2007

More hack attacks originate from inside the US than from anywhere else on earth and, increasingly they're coming from more organized and focused groups. Those are the findings of a report released yesterday by security firm Symantec.

The US was the source for 31 percent of attacks, with China following a distant second at 10 percent according to the report. To make matters worse, thanks to this vibrant underground run-amok, your credit card info can be purchased for as little as $1 US, and full sets of identification credentials (name, address, mother's maiden, etc) can be had for only $14 bucks. Yikes!

In unrelated news, my name will be Robert Paulsen from here on out. I got a sweet deal too!

Tags: hack, hack attacks, hack statistics, HackAttacks, hacker, hackers, HackStatistics, security, statistics

Filed under: OS Updates, News, Windows, Microsoft

Is Windows Vista Black Hat approved?

by Ryan Carter Aug 5th 2006

Microsoft brought Vista to this year's Black Hat conference, which is a bold move considering their usually nefarious operating system problems in the past. Microsoft proved what they think of Vista's security and capabilities by letting the world's foremost security experts play with and pull it apart, bit by bit. Everyone has accused Microsoft of not caring enough about security, as they continue to have many security holes, but this time the best in the business put Vista through the wringer. During my short stint using Vista, it seemed to be quite secure. Not that I am any kind of Black Hat or anything, but I have done a bit of work in the computer field. From what I could tell the security and access control systems seem to be much better than any previous version, and rightly so. It would be interesting if any Black Hats who attended the conference wouldn't mind sharing their take on Vista. Any takers?

[Via CNN]

Tags: blackhat, hackers, microsoft, windowsvista

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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