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The Common Mistakes of “Anonymous” Hackers
Nerdo, known in the real world as Christopher Weatherhead, a 22 year old male, studying at Nottingham University, was busted earlier this year for allegedly taking part in the Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on PayPal that he allegedly conducted as part of the Anonymous Op, “Operation Payback”. A operation launched by the hacktivists in support of WikiLeaks when the PayPal site stop taking payments.
Nerdo was convicted on one count of “conspiracy to impair the operation of computers” after been found guilty by a jury last...
FAIL! Computer Says No!
Reports out of the US election, voters using electronic voting booths with touch screens that tried to vote for the incumbent President Obama are forced to vote for Romney!
See the video below:
The user taking the video reports, via Reddit, that he is a software developer by trade, so when he saw the problem immediately went in to troubleshooting mode. He attempted to select Obama, the computer selected Romney, he selected Romney, the computer selected Romney. He thought it might be a calibration error so decided to select the candidate below Obama,...
PayPal Should Be Pissed!
Yesterday was a fail day for mainstream media and the blogosphere. It was widely reported that Anonymous had hacked thousands of account details from PayPal, instantly slamming the organisation with a reputational hit. Who wants to send money through an organisation that can’t keep your details secure?
Supposedly the details were leaked as part of the Anonymous “Operation November 5th” that was being reported on Twitter under the hash tag #OpNov5. The security blogs picked up the reports and ran with it, as has now become normal...
Facebook Hacked?
It seems something is up over at our blue themed overloads, Facebook. Bogomil Shopov a blogger is reporting that he purchased close to a million Facebook account details, including, the Users email address, which you need to be able to brute force the account password and break in to the account, the User profile link and the user First and Last name, all for the grand price of, wait for it, five bucks!
The deal of the day was via, Gigbucks, which is a competitor to fiver.com, but offering gigs for up to $50. The seller was a user calling themselves...
Fancy Network Access to a Fortune 500 Company?
How would you like access to a Fortune 500 company network, to you know, do whatever you like. Yeah? Okay, that will be USD$5.
Dedicatexpress.com (now offline since the writing of this article) run by a bunch of Russian gentlemen offered access to corporate networks from across the globe via an RDP, (Remote Desktop) Connection.
Essentially these chaps had scanned the internet for open ports on the 3389 TCP port number and brute forced the username and passwords. Every Windows box out there starts with a user called Administrator, once you know this...
iPad Mini or iPhone Maxi
Apple today announced the new iPad, a slimmed down version of its big brother. However it seems to have a lot in common with the iPhone, for example the processor is the Apple A5 dual-core which is the same chip that was in the iPhone 4S, it will also have the tiny lightning dock connector introduced with the iPhone 5 and there will be versions that allow you to connect to cellular 4g data connections.
Obviously it will have the IOS operating system that comes on all iPhones and iPads. The screen will be a healthy 7.9 inches, but will not be the...
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!
Back in the fifties everyone had an idea of what the ”World of Tomorrow” would look like, some of the concepts were not far off, for example we do have mono rails, and Under Ground rail, but alas no personal flying transport.
According to the people of yesterday we should be living in the sea, maybe they knew more about global warming than we knew, and they thought we should have colonised the moon by now, to be fair Richard Branson is making some strides in the right direction on that one.
Below are some images of Vintage Tech, and how the...
Microsoft Forces Skype on Desktop Users
Despite never having the full versions of Skype on their machines previously, many users are today waking up with Skype mysteriously automatically installed on to their desktops. Depending on when your system was set to automatically update users are widely reporting the automatic install of Skype.
When investigating how the offending software was installed users will see an update in the “Update History Log” stating the software was automatically installed by the Windows update process.
The log also refers the user to knowledge base...
Early Flicker Bitch Slaps Anonymous
A French firm has taken a swipe at Anonymous by applying for a trademark on everything unique about the hacking group.
Early Flicker has registered the Anonymous headless man backed by a globe image and the Anonymous slogan “Anonymous, We are Legion, We do not forgive, We do not forget, Expect us”, with the National Institute of Industrial Property in France.
This theoretically would allow the French firm to produce and sell merchandising with the logo and slogan throughout the European Union.
Not surprisingly the Anonymous boys (ahem) and Girls,...
At Least You Can Now Tweet a Joke
Paul Chambers, 27 year old, male from Doncaster has had his conviction for “menacing electronic communication” overturned. Convicted in May 2010, Chambers was fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 costs at Doncaster Magistrates’ Court.
Chambers was found guilty after sending a Tweet stating the following “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”, out of frustration on hearing Robin Hood airport was shut by snow in...