Hack Day

Meet the engineer, the philosopher and the lawyer who faced down the suits (and Bill Gates) to create the Open Source Movement and Linux operating system. A documentary on the Open Source movement, the Linux computing platform and their struggle to crack Microsoft’s iron grip on the world of computing. Includes interviews with Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, Richard Stallman, the ideologue of the movement, and other high-tech big shots like Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker and Rob Malda. Official Site

Ever wondered just how secure your WEP protected important; wireless network is? Well today I’ll show you how to test it. There have been a lot of articles written about this subject already and by now it is common knowledge that WEP is only the barest of security precautions. I’m going to show you how you can test your own wireless network’s security using the linux livecd distro back|track. Before we go any further, I feel it necessary to mention two things. The first being the ethics of hacking. Most of you are probably familiar with this subject already but, just to refresh your memory. Second, it goes without saying that this is for YOUR OWN NETWORK TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. Unauthorized access of other people’s networks is illegal. If you have problems or questions about anything in this guide, for the love of god use google/wikipedia and look it up …

As you may have seen in the preview of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista, tabbed IM windows are coming soon. This feature lets you group multiple conversations into one IM window and use tabs to navigate among them. As it turns out, there are several hidden features that are built into Yahoo! Messenger, which can be turned on with changes to the Windows registry settings. One of our Messenger engineers, Hung Nguyen, developed some code that when installed, adds tabs to Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 (on Windows XP).

More than 1 million computers are used by hackers as remote-controlled robots to crash online systems, accept spam and steal users’ personal information, the FBI said Wednesday. The government has no way to track down all the computers, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, that hackers have massed into centrally controlled collections known as botnets. But the FBI has pulled the plug on several botnet hackers, or zombies. One man was charged this week in a scheme that froze computer systems at Chicago-area hospitals in 2006 and delayed medical services.

Has this situation ever happened to you? You enter search keywords in Google for a very specific topic. In the resulting screen, you see the title of that perfect article with exactly what you were seeking. Hopeful, you click the link and receive a 404-error message saying that the page does not exist. This scenario sadly happens to everyone countless times. Fortunately, there are two ways to view these once accessible pages. Google Cache One of the features that set Google apart from other search engines is the Google Cache. As the Googlebot indexes web pages into the central database, it also saves the HTML portion. The HTML portion is basically the text and layout without the pictures. When searching in Google, you’ve probably noticed the “Cached” link.

In this age of prolific Internet use, a major concern that has emerged among webmasters and web hosts alike is the threat of hacking. Originally referring to the process of learning programming languages and computer systems, the term ‘hacking’ has now evolved to mean the practice of bypassing a computer system/network’s security (used interchangeably with the term ‘cracking,’ depending on the motivation). At any rate, hacking attacks have now become threats that system administrators and webmasters need to guard against. There are five forms of attacks commonly used against computers and networks, according to Aaron Turpen, in his article ‘Hacker Prevention Techniques.’

Only hours after Microsoft released a patch for the Windows Schannel Security Package, the researcher who discovered the vulnerability, Thomas Lim of COSEINC, released a public exploit for it. According to Microsoft, the Schannel security package implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) Internet standard authentication protocols. This vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page or used an application that makes use of SSL/TLS. In an e-mail to the Full Disclosure mailing list, Lim said that he discovered the vulnerability on August 28, 2006, and reported it to Microsoft on March 19, 2007. Researchers typically, although not always give a vendor time to patch a vulnerability. Once the vulnerability has been patched by the vendor, a researcher may make an exploit public to help system administrators test the patch and to minimize its value on the black market.