Ever since the Blu-Ray video format was first announced, it has been claimed that the copy-protection on the system was uncrackable.  This is because is uses technology in your HDMI port to determine the authenticity of the video source.  Without this technology built into the port’s circuitry Blu-Ray video simply won’t work, which caused problems with some [...]

Sega is the latest company to admit to being hacked and has admitted that in a recent attack on its computer systems, the personal details of 1.29 million customers was stolen. The news first emerged on Friday when they said that the email addresses and dates of birth of customers on its Sega Pass database [...]

It’s being reported that hackers have stolen the details of thousands of Citibank customers including their account details and personal information. The breach has not exposed the names, dates of birth and card security codes and all of this information remains safe. The breach reportedly occurred in May and Citibank have been criticised for not [...]

Maybe you have heard that Sony has taken their Playstation Network (PSN) offline on April 20. It first was not clear why it was taken down, with many suspecting a DDOS attack to be the reason. Back then, Sony let everyone know that the services were taken offline because of external intrusion. No one knew [...]

I’m well known for being a PC minimalist. I even make a bit of a fuss about this in my book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, that if you want to have to keep repairing problems in Windows one of the best ways to achieve this goal is to keep installing software into it. There’s [...]

Sony have announced that they’re suing the hackers who uncovered the security codes for the PlayStation 3, that the console uses to determine that software is genuine.  This means that anybody who has access to this code can use it in non-approved (and even pirated), software to get that to run happily on the console. Microsoft are [...]

Reuters are reporting that traffic for some “highly sensitive” US websites was briefly redirected through China.  In a report by the BBC, the incident, which happened for 18 minutes last April saw China Telecom send out incorrect routing formation. There’s no confirmation on whether this was intentional or not, but it comes at a time [...]

The FBI claims to have cracked a major cyber-crime network and made more than 100 arrests in the US according to the BBC.  The suspected members worked as mules for fraudsters based in Eastern-Europe who sole around $70m from companies and consumers in the US by hacking into their computer systems. The FBI worked with police [...]

HDCP is a security encryption key for copy-protecting Hi-Def video content, most notable Blu-Ray players and set-top boxes.  Now a story has appeared that a master key has been found to permanently unlock the security. Engadget reported the news shortly after it first appeared in Twitter.  HDCP is configured in such a way that should any [...]

No, the BBC isn’t trying to subsidise its coffers by branching out into cyber-crime.  As an experiment the British public-service broadcaster wants to know just how secure smartphones really are. The malware takes the form of a game that spies on the smartphone’s owner and was built using the standard software toolkits that are available  [...]

Hackers have moved in the last few years away from attacking platforms such as Windows, and instead on to attacking software.  This is in a large part because the security of operating systems such as Microsoft Windows have increased incredibly in recent years while other software companies have remained complacent. The latest threat is another [...]

Is it possible, is there such a thing as an attack that can tell a hacker where you live?  The BBC has revealed that a specially booby-trapped website can tell a hacker where you are to only a few metres. The attack was dreamt up by security expert Sam Kamkar who demonstrated at the Black [...]

Leveraging search engines to identify vulnerable systems and data in corporate networks, websites and services is generally known as Google Hacking, with Google standing synonymous for all search engines. Recent changes in Google’s SOAP-API rendered many security tools using Google useless. The aim of the Diggity project is to provide security researchers and network admins [...]

The British Government has today launched a national competition to find the next generation of computer security experts according to the BBC.  The competition, which is primarily aimed at teenagers and school-leavers, has prizes that range from bursaries to study at University to full-time employment. Defending all of our interests in cyberspace is a relatively [...]

Hackers have exploited a vulnerability on AT&T’s US network when iPad users authenticated themselves online that has allowed them to gain access to a list of 114,067 email addresses belonging to owners, it has been reported by gawker. The group, calling themselves Goatse Security harvested the data using nothing more than a PHP script and [...]

Disk space is cheap, but there are still situations where you’d like to reclaim space. For me, one of them is getting the maximum of the free Dropbox account I use to synchronize my applications between work and home. hey, don’t say my sysadmin I do this, he’d get a heart attack from the sole [...]

I’m fairly confident that you have, at one time or another, run across an md5checksum file as you have perused the internet. Whether it was a download file or even an application upgrade, those md5 files are there for a reason. But just what is the reason? When someone puts a file up on a [...]

As I continue with my line of iPhone updates, one thing is becoming pretty clear – Apple is going to have a massive year next year. They have always been good at generating vas amounts of publicity by not saying anything at all regarding their future plans and now we have rumors of a Verizon [...]

I am going to be doing a series of iPhone related posts for the next few posts. We have people doing interesting things with their iPhones and have more interesting accessories coming out for it now. In the meantime, the first ever worm for the iPhone gives everyone a bit of a scare. Get over [...]

Apple has begun the week a bit weirdly by banning Atom out of Mac OS. Whether this will last, we don’t know yet but if it is made permanent then the hackintosh netbooks will have some major difficulties running. In another interesting turn of events, Orange has this T&C in place that actually blocks apps [...]

Pentagon has been working on a special type of technology that would turn bugs in to something that would really live up to the multiple meanings of bug. Okay, I will give it to you straight – they are working on something that’ll turn normal bugs in to remote controlled ones that can be controlled, [...]

SSH is a way to remotely and securely access command prompt/terminal on another computer, giving you access to that computer’s files, services, network connections and programs. Some services offer free SSH accounts, to edit and access files anywhere, host websites, use them as proxies (or IPv6 gateways) and some even let you run processes like [...]

Joe’s post today was about the importance of backing up your blog, and it’s something which I now realize can never be taken too seriously – only this week another website I write for, Make Use Of, was hacked and the editors blackmailed. You may read Make Use Of, if you don’t then it’s one [...]

I just came across an amusing news excerpt about the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, which is a part of Homeland Security. For those of you who don’t know, Homeland Security is a Cabinet department of the U.S. federal government with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the U.S. from terrorist attacks and [...]

Online services like Flickr and Google’s Picasa are primarily photo-hosting and sharing sites. This means that apart from image files, you can’t really upload any other type of file you choose. Well, all that is about to change. Digital Inspiration has come up with a way to embed or hide an mp3 file within a [...]

Each Netflix subscription gives the user access to a smaller movie library that can be accessed instantly from up to three PCs. All subscription plans except for the cheapest one include unlimited hours of watching movies on the computer. This service is limited to three computers though which might not be enough depending on the [...]

Just a few minutes ago I completed the article that explained how to read 20 digital magazines for free by changing the browser’s User Agent to the one of the Apple iPhone. I decided to look for additional free iPhone offers and discovered that Texterity Magazines are also providing 50 magazines to iPhone users free [...]

Apple Iphone owners get more. They get free Wireless access at AT&T Hotspots, which no longer is that easy to defeat and now they also get to view free digital magazines of 20 or so popular magazines without costs, courtesy of Zinio. Guess how they are providing those free digital magazines and figuring out that [...]

Finally a innovative proxy website. Web Proxies are all alike, mostly. They use the same four of five proxy scripts that are available, may have a different design and tend to disappear after 1-12 months. Worldproxy added an interesting new feature to it’s proxy: Country selection. Many multimedia services, like streaming Internet radio or video, [...]

Two new techniques to spy on computer users have been revealed these days by two independent scientific studies conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany. The researchers in California developed an algorithm that can estimate what a computer is writing by watching the hands move. The algorithm [...]

Apple iPhone users can access the Internet free of charge through AT&T hotspots, that’s what Macrumors is reporting. That’s a great additional feature for iPhone users and apparently for everyone else as well. The way of determining if a device is eligible for free access is by checking the User Agent of the device. We [...]

Some videos on Youtube are only available to users of a specific country, countries or region. Everyone else may not watch the video and receives a message stating that “This video is not available in your country.” Youtube is also restricting access to videos that have been flagged to contain (possible) inappropriate content and users [...]

Adding new functions and features to hardware is normally accomplished by replacing the firmware with a new or hacked one that adds the new functionality to the device. It’s slightly different if you are the owner of a Canon Digital Camera with DIGIC II or DIGIC III firmware because it is possible to load an [...]

What’s a good way of catching the attention of someone who is advocating the use of biometrics? German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble is pushing biometrics and data collection in Germany all for the sake of security and the fight against terrorism. The Chaos Computer Club, a renowned and popular club of hackers and privacy advocates, [...]

If you are the proud owner of an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you know by now that you are subject to a lot of limitations such as being restricted to the AT & T Network. In addition, you will be unable to install or run any third party applications on your device. With all [...]

The Beta version of Firefox 3 is already out and it has a whole bunch of new and improved features for you to play with. However, as of now, most Firefox extensions have not been updated by their developers. This means you cannot take your favorite add-ons for a spin in the Beta version. I [...]

If you would use an image host, put up some of your images and set them to private, would you expect them to be still accessible by anyone ? This is apparently the case over at Smugmug where a private setting simply means that the pictures and image galleries are not directly linked from the homepage anymore but can still be accessed by simply entering the url directly in the browser address bar or download manager.

I think we all have faced a situation before where we wanted to know if an email was read by a recipient. Did he / she receive the mail, was the email read ? You can’t know for sure even if you added read / write notifications to the email because most email programs ask the user about those. There is no sure way to notification at all if the recipient is cautious, most are not on the other hand and these tricks will work most of the time.

A wonderful tip about a hack was send to me yesterday by Joe. It describes how to change the way a PC, or most other devices that use a power source, can be protected by by a simple magnet and some stuff that does not cost more than $5. All you need is a reed switch, a magnet and some duct tape. It does secure your pc as well from someone that wants to turn it on without your permission.

If the process to unlock your Apple iPhone fails you might end with a so called bricked iPhone that is not working properly anymore. That’s probably the worst scenario for any iPhone user who tinkered with the phone trying to unlock it.

Trend Micro have published another excellent article on their malware blog entitled A Tangled Web … of Malware. It describes how hackers use popular media websites to spread malware and how their methods become more sophisticated by each passing week. The one published on the Trend Micro blog is interesting because of two aspects. The [...]

Companies release new DVD writers all the time that have new functions and work better with certain type of media. They neglect DVD writers that they have produced before and it is quite common that those DVD writers will have problems with certain blank DVDs that have been newly produced.

Schools, libraries and even colleges like to restrict access to their public computers and some do not even have a link to an Internet browser although they might be connected to the net normally. This is done to get rid of those users who occupy a computer to chat on the Internet while its main purpose is to do something else, e.g. research books.

The following is a nice trick that I learned in a webmaster forum. I thought it would be nice to describe it to my readers as well because you can have some fun with it. It allows you to manipulate all elements of a website. You could for instance create number one positions on Google, add your own products to Amazon or write a cover story at CNN.

Clickbank is a large advertiser that is mainly known for informational products such as ebooks. If you look around on their website you find a lot of webmaster related products but also products of other niches such as Business to Business and Money & Employment. The interesting part (for us) begins when we take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages, that sell Clickbank products.

I have to admit that I like to play flash games from time to time and enjoy some tremendously. It happens that websites that offer flash games are not available at the time that you want to play the game which is why I would like to explain how you can easily save flash games on your hard drive to play them without an Internet connection.

If you did update your version of Windows Vista with the latest release candidate of Service Pack 1 you might have noticed an annoying text in the lower right corner of your operating system stating Windows Vista (TM) Evaluation Copy. Build 6001 even if you are running a genuine version of Windows Vista.

Microsoft revealed some changes to their Windows Genuine Advantage protection scheme for Windows Vista which determines if the copy of Windows Vista is legit. A non validated Windows Vista operating system would reduce its functionality after 30 days and make only security updates available for that system.

Selectively deleting your history entries seems like something you do in adolescence and while I hope I may help my young friends in this area, my reason for wanting to do this is to un-clutter my history. If you visit a video on Youtube often for example, you will have a hard time just typing [...]

I have to admit, I’m not the cheapskate, I don’t try dodging costs and I don’t employ the technique described here, but it is a fairly easy way to get rid of SMS expenses once and for all. There are numerous ways to minimize mobile costs nowadays, I have a “family pack”, which means that [...]