Ghacks is running on a linux rootserver. It should be fairly secure but there is always a chance that someone might get access to it and comprimise the system. One of the biggest threats is the installation of a root kit which will be used to access the system at a later time and clean tracks of logins that might have occured.

Microsoft Windows users who are living in the U.S., U.K., Malaysia, Australia or New Zealand have to deal with Microsofts next step in their fight against piracy. A user who opted for automatic security updates will recieve the new anti-piracy tool which will install and ask for a reboot. After that reboot the license of your windows operating system is checked. You might see the following message:

You probably read my article about the bank heist in London where the robbers used a hardware keylogger to recieve sensitive information that allowed them to perform wireless transfers. The bank made the decision to super glue every cable to the back of the personal computer making it impossible to add the keylooger between the keyboard and the computer

The study "password security: what users know and what they actually do" was conducted by the department of psychology from the Wichita State University. The study investigated the common password generation practices of online users. All participiants took part in a survey querying (1) the types and number of different password protected accounts maintained; (2) actual practices used in generating, storing and using passwords; (3) practices believed they should use in generating and storing passwords; and (4) general demographic information.

This little device has apparently been used to pull of one of the greatest bank heist in history. You attach this device to the keyboard cable at the back of the pc and it´s able to record 130000 keystrokes. The bank robbers installed this device inside the bank and got access to Sumitomo Bank's wire transfer capability. With all the information at their hand they proceeded to transfer more than 400 million $ to various foreign accounts.

Ok this seems to be serious. If you open a webpage that contains a certain html code your windows will crash. The html is looking like this:

This is the follow up to the proxy filtering program Calamity. It provides a fully customisable way of filtering out unwanted proxies via control files, a proxy tester to check anonymity - and a fully functional search engine crawler to find lists of posted proxies. Included within the kit is a php checker which can be uploaded to your own webspace to spread the processor load and bandwidth of the actual testing. This is fully integrated into Charon where it will simply send your pages lists of proxies and harvest the results

Lots of people are demanding more proxy sites because many have already been banned by their school or workplace. It´s not easy to find new ones but maybe the list from econsulting might help you. They have a list of 250 web proxies that might not be banned. I think it´s worth a try if you are that desperate.

Todays world is becoming a wireless one. If you signup for a new internet provider you have most of the time the choice of a modem that uses cables and one that is wireless. Now, most people tend to chose the wireless one because their homes don´t look that messy after all, cables everywhere seems to turn certain people off quite a bit.

Lot´s of people complain that webproxys are not working at their works / schools computer because they have been banned by administrators. A way around this would be to setup your very own proxy server that is being hosted a) by a free webhosting service that supports either php or cgi or b) your own website that is being hosted by a webhosting company.

Now this is an interesting analysis of password recovery speeds. It compares password length and chars used to the time different computers need to bruteforce the password, ranging from Class A (speed of a pentium 100) to Class F (supercomputers, large scale distribution) computers.

I´ve written about virtual computers before and found a nice way program to make the same method available for virtual software installations. Altiris Software Virtualization Solution lets you install every kind of software in a protected environment that prevents access from this software to your core system. This is great if you want to try out some new alpha / beta software or software that you are suspicious about.

The question that many people ask is why would someone want to surf anonymously in the first place. Why would someone who does not do something illegal want to surf anonymously at all ? I can think of lots of reasons, here are a few: