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Hacker Breaks into FEMA Phone System, Makes $12,000 Worth of Calls

Cheryl — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:49:36 +0000

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 responding to natural disasters. At least, that’s the Wikipedia definition.

FEMA recently installed a new voicemail system in their Maryland Training Center, which uses the Private Branch Exchange or PBX phone network. This kind of system is used by thousands or maybe even millions of companies throughout the world.

Last weekend though, a hacker broke into the network and made over 400 international calls, totaling up to $12,000. Calls were made to various countries in the Middle East and Asia (ironic, huh) and lasted anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes per call.

When the fraud was discovered, all outgoing long-distance calls from FEMA’s National Emergency Training Center were halted. What’s even more embarrassing is that according to John Jackson, a security consultant, this type of attack is very old-school and used to take place around 15 years ago. Most telecommunications security administrators now know to configure security settings, such as having individual users create unique passwords and not continue to use the initial password assigned to users.

FEMA is busy investigating the situation, trying to determine who made the calls as well as the people who received them. As of now, it looks like a “hole” was left open by the contractor when the voicemail system was being upgraded. The agency refused to specify what the hole was or the name of the contractor believed to be responsible.

For something like this to happen to an organization like FEMA, it’s extremely embarrassing. It also underscores just how vulnerable a phone system is, which is why companies are shifting to Voice Over Internet Telephony services (VOIP).

In all likelihood, this is a practical joke that went a bit too far and the person responsible is just a fresh-faced kid who was fooling around. Then again, maybe not, considering the destinations of the calls. What do you think?

Tags: FEMA, Hacking, Homeland security, phone network, Security

Use Netflix Watch Now on more than 3 PCs

Martin — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:44:07 +0000

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 size of your household and your tech equipment.

Thankfully though it is fairly easy to authorize additional computers so that the Netflix Watch Now option is also available on them. The check if a computer may use the Watch Now option is done in the Windows Registry. The Tech Recipe website found a simply way to copy the key of an authorized computer and import it to another computer to authorize that computer as well.

A user who wants to do that needs to start the Windows Registry on a computer that has the Watch Now option enabled. This is done by using the Windows R keyboard shortcut, entering regedit and hitting enter. Now navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Netflix\ Movie Viewer\ and left-click the Movie Viewer key.

Now access the export option under File > Export and save that key to the computer. Now copy that key to another computer running the same operating system. Open the Registry again and import the key using the File > Import menu. The key is specific to the operating system of the computer which means that you cannot import an XP key into Vista and vice versa.

Tags: Hacking, netflix, netflix tips

Texterity Magazines offering free iPhone magazines

Martin — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:46:57 +0000

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 of charge.

Again the User Agent is used as the only mechanism to check if an iPhone connects to the service. If you have already installed the Firefox User Agent switcher add-on and added the iPhone user agent to it you are ready to visit the iPhone start page at Texterity Magazines to read any of the 50 magazines for free in your browser.

If you have not done this visit my first article that explains how you can change the User Agent in Firefox to be identified as an iPhone (Iphone user agent) when browsing the Internet.

Magazines seem to be specialized way more at Texterity. Some titles are The American Lawyer, Electronic Products, Extreme How-To, Greenlight Magazine and Popular Science.

Tags: Hacking, iPhone, iphone hacks, iphone tips, user agent

Read 20 Digital Magazines for Free

Martin — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:23:32 +0000

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 an Apple iPhone user is actually requesting it and not someone else ?

Yes, the same insecure User Agent check that did not work on so many occasions before. All that needs to be done is change the User Agent in your browser to the one of the iPhone which will trick the website into thinking that you are accessing it with an iPhone. This in turn will give you access to those magazines, among them PC Magazine, Technology Review, Macworld, Lonely Planet and, um, Playboy and Penthouse.

The content is provided in full screen in your browser and you can flip through the pages with a click. It’s probably not the most comfortable way but it’s free and easy enough. Pages are actually shown as images which means they can be saved to the local hard drive.

Firefox users can install the User Agent Switcher add-on and configure it with the following User Agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419 (United States)

just add the line into the User Agent field in the options of the add-on and any name in the description. Then switch to that User Agent and visit the Zinio website that was created for iPhone users. Thanks Scott for the tip.

Tags: Hacking, iphone hacks, iphone tricks, user agent

Spy Tech: I see what you write

Martin — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:49:31 +0000

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 is far from perfect and has a success rate of 40% which is enough to understand the meaning of the text that is written.

Words are chosen by probability and suggest alternatives which more often than not make more sense than the first word. This introduces a new technique to spy on users without having to actually access the computer at all, all that is needed is a good view of the hands and the measure of the keyboard.

The second spy tech could come right out of the latest James Bond movie. The researchers at Saarland University managed to write a computer algorithm that is capable of interpreting reflections of the computer screen on objects. The quality of the telescope plays an important role, a normal $500 telescope was able to read 12 point fonts of a reflection that was 5 meters away from the computer and 198 point fonts from a distance of ten meters.

A more powerful Dobson telescope for $27500 was able to yield the same results from a maximum distance of 30 meters. Other tests allowed the researchers to view the monitor from a white wall that was 2 meters away from the computer screen.

The best way to defeat the techniques ? Don’t access a computer in public, always close the curtains when working with your computer and make sure no cameras are installed in the room with a computer.

Tags: hack, Hacking, research, Science, spy, technology

NTFS Alternate Data Streams

Martin — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:51:55 +0000

This article is going to explain NTFS Alternate Data Streams: what they are, where they are, how you can detect them, create them and how they are used by hackers. In short, NTFS Alternate Data Streams can be used by hackers to fork file data into existing files without altering the existing file’s function or size. You can guess where this is going, right ? They make it relatively easy to hide malicious code inside them which is much harder to detect.

Creating NTFS Alternate Data Streams is not complicated at all. You can use the “type” command to do that. To fork the file virus.exe into calc.exe you would use the command type virus.exe > calc.exe:virus:exe if they are in the same directory. Add the path if they are not. The size of the calculator does not change, the only indicator is that the file changed stamp is altered.

But executing those files must be harder, right ? Wrong again. To execute virus.exe you use the command “start”, in our example it would be start calc.exe:virus:exe.

A software like Stream Explorer can find those NTFS Alternate Data Streams on your hard drive. An alternative is List Alternate Data Streams

Tags: Alternate Data Streams, hacker, Hacking, malicious, ntfs, virus

Use a Magnet to protect your PC

Martin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:46:25 +0000

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.

You basically cut the power button cable of the motherboard, install the reed switch (controlled by magnetic fields) in between and tape the reed switch to the front panel. Now, whenever someone presses the power button nothing happens. Only if you press the magnet against the case at the position where you placed the reed switch and the power button the PC will turn on.

This is of course a basic protection and someone who really wanted to access it could simply remove the switch again or replace the power unit in the PC. Take a look at the video below that walks you through the installation of the protection.

Pc Protection With Hidden Switch – A funny movie is a click away

Tags: Hacking, Hardware, magnet, pc, protection

Alter all websites in the world

Martin — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:52:12 +0000

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.

The changes are only temporary but you could make a screenshot and send them to your friends to have some fun with them. This is also a reminder that everything that is shown on screenshots can be easily faked. This is especially true for website revenue screenshots for instance.

All you need to do is load a website and load the following code in the address bar:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Make sure you paste everything in one line and hit enter afterwards. Once that is done you can easily edit elements on the website. I created a short video that shows how I edited the Microsoft homepage.

Tags: fun, Hacking, webmasters

User Data Stolen from The Pirate Bay

Martin — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:12:48 +0000

Two hours ago bkp made an announcement on the official The Pirate Bay blog confirming that some hackers have been able to use a security hole in the blog software to get access to the user database of The Pirate Bay. Information stored in there are the username, the password and the email address of the user who signed up. The password and the email address are encrypted which means that the hacker is most likely unable to receive any valuable information from the data.

Bkp also said that they know who did this but does not say how they know. He could be referring to IP addresses that they found, other traces or confidential information. They ask every user to change the password during their next login which is apparently happening automatically at the very moment. It remains to be seen if the encryption used to encrypt the email addresses is strong enough to withstand decryption.

Tags: exploit, hack, Hacking, piratebay hacked, the piratebay, userbase

Weak Passwords

Martin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:19:03 +0000

I came upon the article “How I would hack your weak passwords” yesterday and pondered if I should write an article about it. I decided that it would be worth it. The author of the article details how he would try and find out your passwords and get access to all of your accounts in the end. His first approach would be to use the most common used passwords by users on the net. He needs information about your personal life for some passwords but those information can be obtained pretty fast through social engineering. Trying those “top 10″ passwords would already cover a large percentage of online users, statistically speaking that is.

The common password approach is the one that could give him instant success if the user is really using one of those common passwords for his accounts. His next approach would be to brute force his way in by brute forcing the password on a website that has weak security. Those sites would not react if large amounts of password requests would come in in short time. Most sites however ban IPs at least temporary after several failed attempts, still no problem if you know how to use proxies to attack with different IPs.

But the brute force programs that he suggests are way outdated. Brutus ? wwwHack ? That’s last millennium. Current state of the art bruteforcers for basic authorization and form protected sites are C-Force or Sentry. The brute force approach has one disadvantage. If you do not know the username you have to try username and password combinations and there is no guarantee that you will discover the combination for the user that you want to hack. You could get login details for other users which are absolutely worthless to you. This means, bruteforcing is only an option if you know the username of the user.

There are actually two ways to bruteforce an account. The first would be to use pregenerated lists of usernames and passwords or try combinations to get into an account. The second to try every char combination possible. It should be noted that the second option could very well last several years or even centuries depending on the size of the selected password.

So, bruteforcing is not really an option and he is not explaining how he would get the username of the user in question except mentioning cookies. Cookies are stored on the targets machine which would mean that he needs either access to that machine or an exploit to get them while the user is online. Not very practicable.

So, what can users learn from his analysis ?

Don’t overuse passwords, it’s more secure to use different passwords. If you only use one password someone who finds this one out gets access to everything else that is protected by that single password
Don’t use passwords that are easy to guess or common. No names, no sport teams, relatives, pets, work related, hobbies , and so on
Use numbers and special chars if possible to increase the security of the password. Remember that size matters.
Write them down locally and put them in a safe or use a software that encrypts them. You could for instance use a True Crypt partition to store a textfile with your passwords in them
Every password could be important to gain additional information about a user, never choose weak ones

Tags: brute-force, Hacking, password-generation, passwords, strategy, weak-passwords

Introduction to new phishing techniques

Martin — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:59:54 +0000

Many users are still unaware of the dangers that phishing could mean for their life’s. They might now that hackers try to lure unsuspecting users to fake websites hoping that their victims would try to supply login information, credit card details or social security numbers while trying to use the service. Those users already have difficulties identifying those first generation phishing websites that undoubtedly look and feel more professional with every passing day.

Anti-Phishing toolbars and implementations in the major browsers are useful but can, as you will see, give the user a false sense of security. This can be attributed to the fact that databases that contain the information are not updated in real time. Someone has to report a phishing website before it will be added to the database, it would be more than difficulty to create a automatic solution for this problem.

A second difficulty are new techniques used by hackers that are not detected by ant-phishing toolbars and implementations.

Flash Phishing

Anti-Phishing toolbars do check the page content for signs of phishing but do not analyze flash objects at all. Hackers know this and tend to use this to their advantage by using flash to emulate the original website. Users tend to believe that the site is “clean” because their anti-phishing toolbar did not react to it.

It is however relatively easy to find out if the current website is fake.

You need to take a look at the url in the address bar. If it is not the original address leave it immediately.
Check if it is using https instead of http. If it is using http leave the site immediately.
If it is using https check the certificate.
If the site is only using flash leave it.
Never follow links in emails (unless you know the person)
Never follow links in chats (unless you know the person)

You should immediately contact the supposed owner of the website and ask for advice.

Social Phishing

Phishers use other means of getting sensitive data from users. We all know that we should contact the company if we have doubts about a website. What if you would receive a mail from your bank asking you to call them back because there was a security breach ? Would you call them back ?

What if the number was redirecting you to someone in China speaking fluent English ? Would you give him the information he would be asking for to verify´that you are the customer ? Sir, we need to make sure that you are indeed our customer. Could you please supply your credit card information so that I can verify your identity ?

This is not a huge market yet but it will grow over time.

Tags: flash-phishing, hacker, Hacking, phishing, social-phishing

SQL Injection Walkthrough

Martin — Tue, 16 May 2006 07:07:49 +0000

You might already know what sql injection means, in case you did not i post the definition of wikipedia:

SQL injection is a security vulnerability that occurs in the database layer of an application. Its source is the incorrect escaping of dynamically-generated string literals embedded in SQL statements. It is in fact an instance of a more general class of vulnerabilities that can occur whenever one programming or scripting language is embedded inside another.

What does it mean in plain english ? You try to utilise instances of a website that submits data to the webserver, this could be for example a login page, a form field or a comments form.

The article “SQL Injection Walkthrough” helps you identify vulnerable scripts and explains the methods to test, verify and exploit that vulnerability. After reading the article you will have a basic understanding of the technique, if you follow the links given at the end you will be able to read advanced topics on the subject.

Tags: Hacking, hacking videos, sql, sql injection

Top 15 Security and Hacking Tools & Utilities

admin — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 07:35:03 +0000

Finally a great darknet.org.uk article that lists 15 Security and Hacking Tools & Utilities. Users who are working in the security field will recognize many if not all of them and beginners will have a great list of tools with explanation that they can work with. You find for instance the telnet and ssh tool putty in the list next to the tool Eraser which overwrites files on your windows system more than once to make sure it can´t be restored that easily.

Here is a short list of all the other tools mentioned: Nmap, Nessus Remote Security Scanner, John the Ripper, Nikto, Superscan, pof, Ethereal, Yersinia, LCP, Cain and Abel, Kismet, Netstumbler and hping. Make sure you check the tools that you do not know about yet, it might be worth it.

Tags: ethereal, freeware, Hacking, jtr, password, ping, port, Security, sniff, ssh, telnet, Tools, utilities

The Anatomy of a Hack Video

Martin — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 07:44:34 +0000

If you are more the visual type of learner this video might be something for you. The anatomy of a hack is a record of a live demonstration how someone gets access to a laptop that does not have proper security. Procedures to fix those security holes are mentioned in the video as well.

[tags]hack, hacking, break in, security, exploit[/tags]

Tags: Hacking, hacking demos, videos

Essential Wireless Hacking Tools

Martin — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 20:34:19 +0000

Wireless hacking becomes more widespread these days. Many people drive / walk through town with their laptops trying to find unprotected wireless networks to do all sorts of things. Most harmless one would be to use your connection to surf and download, but it could also include downloading your files, spamming using your computer, installing malicous programs on your computer aso.

But this is no article on how to protect yourself, I probably write one soon. The Ethical Hacker Network published an interesting article by Daniel V. Hoffman about essential wireless hacking tools. The article has four chapters: Finding Wireless Networks, Attaching to the Found Wireless Network, Sniffing Wireless Data and Protecting Against These Tools.

Daniel reviews some tools in each chapter always giving you more than one choice to try out and finally use the tool that suits you best.

[tags]wireless, hacking, wireless hacking, hacking tools, ethereal, sniffing, network[/tags]

Tags: Hacking, wireless

Hacking Demos on Film

Martin — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 13:57:35 +0000

Have you every wondered how hackers actually do their hacking ? What tools they use, how they handle the tools and stuff like that ? I found a site that has some recorded demonstrations of hacking attempts.

All movies are about 20 megs in size and can be downloaded from their website. Topics include Penetration Test Reconstruction, Cracking WEP in 10 Minutes and Tunneling Exploits via SSH.

Use the following link to go to their website: hackingdefined.com

Tags: Hacking, hacking demos, videos

gHacks technology news » Hacking

Hacker Breaks into FEMA Phone System, Makes $12,000 Worth of Calls

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