Elamb Cybersecurity

Category: hackers

  • where the hell is DC719?

    I’ve been thinking of going to Defcon17 this year, but I’m reluctant because I keep remembering how lonely I was the last time I went Defcon14. There I was at the MECCA of all things security basking in the glow of technological brilliance and completely alone.

    Everyone seems to have a crew there. All loners I meet are to paranoid to talk to anyone. So I end up going from lecture to lecture alone. Don’t get me wrong. I like learning new things.. But too often I feel like it was something I could have just watched on TV (if it was on TV). I want to get more involved, but I don’t have skills or the time to dedicate to another mega hobby like Hacking.

    So I thought about rolling out with DC719 (my local defcon group), but I’ve yet to find them. dc719.org seems to have not paid their bill or something. I heard they are all crazy gun nuts, which I think is pretty awesome. Guns and hacking seems like my kind of crowd. Strange, huh?

    Anyway, dc719.. if your out there hit me up .. I might want to roll with you guys [or at least say hi]. elamb[dot]security[at]gmail.com

  • More GMAIL Problems

    This was news I could not ignore because I really, really like Gmail. These hacks are ridiculous. I hope that google is getting a handle on this. It looks like the accounts are getting hacked with some sort of script that runs from a site or email while gmail is opened:

    According to David Airey & gnucitizen.org:
    The victim visits a page while being logged into GMail. Upon execution, the page performs a multipart/form-data POST to one of the GMail interfaces and injects a filter into the victim’s filter list. In the example above, the attacker writes a filter, which simply looks for emails with attachments and forward them to an email of their choice. This filter will automatically transfer all emails matching the rule. Keep in mind that future emails will be forwarded as well. The attack will remain present for as long as the victim has the filter within their filter list, even if the initial vulnerability, which was the cause of the injection, is fixed by Google.
    — gnucitizen

    As many of you already know on November 2nd, MakeUseOf.com’s domain was stolen from us. It took us about 36 hours to get the domain back. As we have pointed out earlier the hacker somehow managed to get access to my Gmail account and from there to our GoDaddy account, unlock the domain and move it to another registrar.

    You can see the whole story on our temporary blog makeuseof-temporary.blogspot.com/

    I wasn’t planning to publish anything about the incident or cracker (person who steals domains) and how he managed to pull it off unless I was completely sure about it myself. I had a good feeling it was a Gmail security flaw but wanted to confirm it before posting anything about it on MakeUseOf. We love Gmail and giving them bad publicity is not something we would ever want to do.

    Now the thing is the domain name domainsgames.org is protected by Moniker and they hide all the contact info for it.

    Domain ID:D154519952-LROR
    Domain Name:DOMAINSGAME.ORG
    Created On:22-Oct-2008 07:35:56 UTC
    Last Updated On:08-Nov-2008 12:11:53 UTC
    Expiration Date:22-Oct-2009 07:35:56 UTC
    Sponsoring Registrar:Moniker Online Services Inc. (R145-LROR)
    Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
    Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
    Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
    Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
    Registrant ID:MONIKER1571241
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Name Server:NS3.DOMAINSERVICE.COM
    Name Server:NS2.DOMAINSERVICE.COM
    Name Server:NS1.DOMAINSERVICE.COM
    Name Server:NS4.DOMAINSERVICE.COM

    More at Makeusof.com

    The Google Fix

  • Al Qaeda Sites getting Hacked

    This was an article that really cheered me up today. Al Qaeda websites are still getting hacked constantly. Sometimes it seems that the free world is WAY off on the “War on Terror”. With most resources going to Iraq, political rhetoric and pandering and the almost complete absence of anyone talking about capturing and/or killing Osama bin Laden, its easy to get discouraged. Its good to see that the cyberwar is still being waged on those who promote and or support terrorism.

    Octavia Nasr | BIO
    CNN senior editor for Arab affairs

    A hacking war is raging on Jihadi websites. Radical Islamist sites have been attacking and getting attacked for quite some time. The website hacking practice was common in 2001 and 2002… Following the 9/11 attacks when al Qaeda used only one website to communicate its messages to supporters and foes alike. That website was called alneda.com. It was getting constantly hacked… sometimes several hackings a day. After every hacking the site managed to resurface on the net until it disappeared from the scene in 2004 to be replaced by other websites — What started as one al Qaeda-linked site mushroomed into dozens which branched out into hundreds of supporting sites that serve as dissemination centers over the internet.


    More.

  • Neuromancer

    Physicists, mathematicians, futurists and sci-fi writers are the ne0-prophets of our time. Einstein, Max Plank, William Gibson, Georg Cantor are the new world prophets determining the probable future transfinite realities among absolute infinity.

    Neuromancer is an example of probable futures. It is THE work of fiction by William Gibson that popularized the cyberpunk genre. In the book, Gibson actually coined the phrase cyberspace and the matrix, a multi-diminsional virtual reality that allows users to jack their brain directly into the cyberspace.

    Case is a hacker is hired to do the biggest hack ever. The book is brilliant. Some of my favorite characters are Molly, the assassin, who looks like this:
    Molly, neuromancer
    William Gibson himself

    and Wintermute, the corporation/Artificial intelligence and Maelcum A member of Zion, a Rastafarian space station community.
    Neuromancer the book

    A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly.
    All the speed he took, all the turns he’d taken and the corners
    he’d cut in Night City, and still he’d see the matrix in his
    sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void. . .

    Its such a brilliant piece of work that I am surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie yet.

  • untraceable movie

    untraceable movie

    I just saw a movie called Untraceable. It is cyberterrorism meets Seven. Although it is very violent, it falls short of the pure “torture porn” genre (i.e. Hostel, Saw). They didn’t sensationalize the FBI computer crime team. They made the characters real people with real problems.

    The best part of the movie is that it addresses hard societal questions that we are still struggling with. The killer’s greatest weapon was the Internet itself. He used the anonymity and distributed non-centralized power of the net to broadcast killings on the Internet. Once he captured a victim, he would put them in a contraption that would torture them to death based on how many people came to the site. The FBI is at a loss, because their equipment (while it can easily bait & hunt small time phishers, criminal hackers and adults soliciting sex from kids online) it is useless against this serial killers level of software, Internet, and electronics sophistication. They eventually call upon the NSA, who tell them that they are not allowed to use their resources for domestic issues. With the Patriot Act and NUMEROUS presidential NSA acts, I don’t believe this is entirely true. But the movie seems to suggest that it is.

    Although, I disagree with the message of giving more power to the FBI & NSA to catch bad guys (as it would require the loss of more civil liberties of law abiding citizens), I definitely recommend this movie.


    Movie fact:

    The site used by the killer (www.killwithme.com) actually exists. It’s owned by the movie studio and it’s used to promote the movie. In it, users are taken to a replica of the FBI computer used by the character Jennifer Marsh. Her desktop gets hacked by the killer who provides the visitor with four test he/she must complete to deactivate his site.

  • Sysadmin tries, fails at being l337 hax0r, gets jail time

    A 51-year-old sysadmin has gotten a record jail sentence after attempting (and failing) to write code that would have destroyed everything on one of his company’s servers.

    Digger SalineMist:
    You just know the other admin found it like this:

    #
    # SECRET CODE FOR REVENGE
    # last change Andy Lin 4/20/2004
    #

    lol
    Digger 89Vision:
    Samir: I have a question.
    Peter Gibbons: Yes?
    Samir: In… in these conjugal visits, you can have sex with women?
    Peter Gibbons: Yep, you sure can.
    Samir: OK, I’ll do it.

    read more | digg story

  • GMail Security Hole Allowed Malicious Hacker to Invade the Life of a Blogger

    Mr. [tag]David Airey[/tag] a blogger and designer from UK had his [tag]site[/tag] Hacked by some useless bastard. This [tag]gmail[/tag] hacker set up a malicious site that exploited a security flaw in gmail to set up an email filter that autoforwarded all David’s emails to another malicious email account. Although Google has appearently fixed the problem, if you have been affected by one of these malicious webpages the filter may still be in your gmail account. David Explains how to find it and get rid of it:

    MPORTANT: If you use GMail, it’s absolutely vital that you check your account settings now.

    Here’s what to do:

    When logged into GMail, click on the ’settings’ tab in the upper right of the screen. Then check both the ‘Filters’ and the ‘Forwarding and POP’ sections.

    Get more information from David Airey.

    Right now David is fighting to get his domain back legally after refusing to be manipulated by the gmail hacker.

    To David,
    Good on you, man! And as bad as it is, I’ve been emailed a couple of people who have lost thousands from hackers. I’ve been on the receiving end of these desperate criminals too… and like you I choose to use my blog like a gun.

    read more | digg story

  • Tranax ATM Default Passcode is 123456

    It reminds me of Space Balls.  The evil Space Balls kidnap Princess Vespa and force King Roland into giving up his password that will allow them to suck all the precious air off of planet Druidia.  That password it “12345” (which just happens be the same password Space Ball President Skroob has on his luggage).

     The Triton ATMs have two levels of password: an administrative passcode for routine daily operations, and a “master passcode” that also lets you change the cash machine’s basic configuration.  Mastrorocco says he changed the administrative code when he got the machine three years ago, but Cardtronics never told him to change the master passcode, which he didn’t normally use.

    http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/atm-reprogrammi.html – ATM Reprogramming Caper Hits Pennsylvania

     

  • Cell Network Hack – Athens

    While this is the first major infiltration to involve cellphones, the scheme did not depend on the wireless nature of the network. Basically, the hackers broke into a telephone network and subverted its built-in wiretapping features for their own purposes. That could have been done with any phone account, not just cellular ones. Nevertheless, there are some elements of the Vodafone Greece system that were unique and crucial to the way the crime was pulled off.

    Basically, the hackers broke into a telephone network and subverted its built-in wiretapping features for their own purposes.

    Interactive Time Line: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul07/5280/time

    — More on this article from Spectrum – ieee.org

  • China Readying Cyberweapons

    “The Defense Department reports China is building cyberwarfare units and developing viruses.”
    Sounds like the stuff I read about in Tom Clancy’s NetForce. I guess the new arms race will be in cyberspace waged by superhackers and insane software engineer mercenaries. Sounds very “Shadow Run-esque”.

    read more | digg story

    More links: cnn china cyber war