97% Of Brits Fear ID Theft

According to Gizmodo a recent survey for National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, showed that 97% of British consumers were concerned that companies are careless with their personal data. For more information about NIFPW visit StopIDFraud.

E-Passports Fail Security

The UK's Times Online have proved that the new high-tech e-passports being considered and used around the world can be hacked and cloned within minutes. A computer researcher working with the Times cloning the chips in two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. Both passports subsequently passed as genuine by UN approved passport reader software. The entire hack took less than an hour to complete.

Peeping Tom Hacker Gets 4 Years

In a story from theregister.co.uk, A 47-year-old computer technician has been jailed for four years after being convicted of hacking into internet webcams in order to spy on teenage girls. The man used Trojan horse spyware to gain remote control of a 17-year-old girls webcam and took illicit pictures of the young woman in her bedroom. The teenager's machine was infected after she opened an infected email attachment. There were a couple of girls who were affected in this way. The cyber-stalker attempted to blackmail The 17-year-old into posing naked in front of her webcam by threatening to email images hehad taken earlier to her friends. The contacted local police, who then tracked down and arrested the hacker. In another case a woman in florida was peeped upon by a young student who had "fixed" her computer. The peeper was discovered after the woman approached a friend who worked discovered software that the woman said she never authorized anyone to install. The software included Log Me In and Web Cam Spy Hacker. The peeper was identified as Craig Matthew Feigin, 23, who was subsequently charged.

Worm Hits MySpace and Facebook

Apparently a new worm is circulating on the social networks MySpace and Facebook, posing as the latest version of Flash Player. The worm works by pretending to be a new version of the player and asking you to download the latest version. If you click on the link, it launches it self and makes you an uwitting participant of a botnet. CNET and Kaspersky Lab beleive that this worm infects a users machine and the next time the user logs on to the site, the message is automatically forwarded to people on the users friends list." Like anything you have to click on be vary wary, in fact don't click at all. Please ensure you have up to date protection.

CanSecWest PWN 2 OWN Results

The PWN 2 OWN hacking contest at CanSecWest yielded some really interesting and amusing results. The MacBook Air on display was seized in just two minutes by Charlie Miller, who had prepared an exploit in advance which took advantage of a problem with Safari. Shane Macaulay and a few of his 1337 associates managed to crack the Vista equipped unit with 2 full days work. The Vista unit featured the extra protection offers by the SP1 version of Vista. The Linux unit was the only one left unclaimed at the end of the conference. but this was largely due to the fact that none of the attendees wanted to put in the necessary effort to crack it.

Rogue Programmer Sabotages Naval Systems

According to a story by Simson Garfinkel of the Technology Review, "Richard F. Sylvestre, a former government contractor who had a top-secret clearance, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to sabotaging computers used to track U.S. Navy submarines." Sylvestre apparently planted a logic bomb in several navy computers after his company was passed over on a bid. He subsequently fled for Italy. Three of five navy computers that are used to track submarines were shut down as a result of his logic bomb. If all five had been shut down, the navy would have been essentially blind. I'm sorry to say it, but if the idiot actually did this, he should be taken out and shot. (Ed. Note: Shot? Sure. But only after he's captured, arrested and interrogated to ensure the navy has a chance to plug its seive-like security.)

WEP Is A Doddle To Crack

WEP which is used by many to protect their home networks is proving to be a frail old security protocol. In 2001 when WEP was first hacked, it took about 4 million packets of data to crack a security key. Subsequently this has dropped substantially. Recently in the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany a team of engineers have managed to extract a 104-bit WEP key in around three seconds, and all this only using a laptop with a 1.7GHz Pentium M processor. Collect the required 40,000 - 85,000 packets of data, and the hack could potentially be carried out a hacker using a cellphone or PDA. For more read info article...

New Reviews on KSN - Friday March 2, 2007

Review of Photo Mechanic 4 - digital photo sorting & tagging Review of the Microsoft Zune Media Player - new competition for the iPod Review of the Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera - entry level SLR Review of Norton Internet Security 2007 - the biggest keeps getting bigger Review of jetAudio v6.28 VX Plus - audio/video media player