Tag: Malware

After reporting on companies getting hacked, Fusion reporter Kevin Roose wanted to find out exactly how devastating it would be to have one’s online identity and information stolen. So he asked two computer security experts – Chris Hadnagy of Social Engineer and Dan Tentler of Phobos Group – to hack him.

Solid Snake and Fallout are wrong. War does change. At this very moment, hackers and their legion of enslaved computers are waging an invisible war online. Perhaps they’re trying to steal information or shut down certain websites.

Plenty of phones comes with bloatware, but most of the time, manufacturers tend to limit the scope of these and won’t include malware. Well, the Chinese seem to have taken it up a notch, and will deliver you a phone that comes standard with malware!

Ever wonder why SD cards are dirt cheap? At the 2013 Chaos Computer Congress, a hacker going by the moniker Bunnie recently revealed part of the reason: “In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception.”

Ad agency TDA_Boulder came up with Happy Hour Virus, a website that fakes computer problems. The idea is that you’ll be able to use the “problem” as an excuse to leave work. I don’t think it actually has a chance of getting you off of work, but you can use it to punk your non-techie colleagues for a few seconds.

These are the most malicious plushies you’ll ever see. They’re the Computer Virus Dolls and they might rub you off the wrong way, especially if you’re into IT and have to deal with problems that are caused by them on a daily basis.

Pacemakers save millions of lives, but a security researcher has shown that they can be used to kill on a massive scale as well. Speaking at the Breakpoint security conference, Barnaby Jack of IO Active reverse engineered a pacemaker transmitter – a device like this one used to monitor installed pacemakers – eventually enabling him to wirelessly deliver 830v shocks to a pacemaker using his laptop.

Franklin Zhao and Jason Zhou, security researchers for anti-virus firm AVG, were analyzing the contents of a Trojan they found from a Diablo III forum when a chat window popped up on their screen. It was the hacker, who promptly asked the researchers why they were looking at the malware.

Most adults these days have wisened up and refrain from clicking on banner ads that claim “You just one a prize!” or “You just won the 10,000,000th user award!” That means virus writers have to think of other measures to propagate their viruses and malware, and it seems that they’ve decided to go with the realm of free, online games targeted towards kids.

There’s a new threat in Azeroth, one so fearsome that not even the combined might of the Alliance and the Horde can stop it: Hackers. Apparently a trojan has been spreading that intercepts the authentication code generated by the Blizzard Authenticator.

Anyone who owns an internet-capable device knows that browsing without a keyboard or a good keyboard interface is a pain in the ass. As a PSP and PS3 owner, I can say that that is the case with both systems, not to mention the pathetic, slow-ass connection on the PSP.

It’s 10:54 pm, Saturday, January 31 here in the Philippines as I’m writing this. I noted the time because, right now, Google is going insane. How? I wanted to check out Google’s M-Lab after reading about it in Lifehacker.