Chinese Web Vandals Attacking Western Targets
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Many of you would have noticed the heavy chatter in the media about China and its atrocities in Tibet. With the oncoming games, people are the world are protesting about the excesses China has been committing.
Apparently, CNN too couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon when one of their hosts trashed China on its harsh policies.
This ruffled quite a few feathers. Besides the Chinese government coming out against CNN, a bunch of hackers planned to get back on CNN by launching a full scale cyber attack against the online presence of news giant.
Wordpress Blog Hacked? Now What
If you still have the old version of Wordpress deployed, remember your site can be easily hacked because of known exploits. The hackers may or may not have a lot to gain by injecting malware or spammy links on your website but if you own the website, it could be your worst nightmare.
A spammed website will most likely be ignored by search engine crawlers resulting in dropped rankings. In fact, Technorati is totally junking the older versions of WP from its system.
Sites like Security Focus are publishing a bunch of hacks possible on older versions of Wordpress. So before you get mugged by a script kiddie, take the necessary action.
Lets say one fine day you wake up and realize your blog has been a victim of such an attack, what do you do?
Computer Commands That Hackers Use
What I am about to tell you should be used primarily for learning and education. Certainly not for any dubious activities. It is possible to connect to another computer through the internet and browse through their directory structure, update and copy the file etc. Before you can connect you are prompted for a login and password so obviously (and preferably) you need the other person’s explicit co-operation and consent.
If you try to login without consent and approval, it is deemed as hacking. Still, if your intention is neat, meaning you just want to probe and not damage, then you are a white hat hacker. But if you want to hold the other person hostage, then you are deemed a black hat hacker.
Orkut Phishing Scam
So today when I logged into Thunder bird to check my email, what do I see but a notification from Orkut asking me to verify my account or else it will be deleted.
Boo-Hoo.
Same old phishing scams which seem to be a dime a dozen these days. The email is pasted below as it is:
Latop Sniffer - Find Your Stolen Latop
Lost your laptop? An India based software security company might just have a solution for you. Unistal Systems has launched a software product powered by propriety technology to track and locate stolen laptops. When the thieves hook the stolen laptop onto the world wide web, the installed software, which by the way is operating in a stealth mode, would generate a report and update an online database. The users either have the option of logging into the website to check the details or configure it to send them an email whenever an update is detected.
Wordpress Under Repeated DOS Attacks
Wordpress.com saw DOS attacks beginning Saturday, and the attacks were continuing till yesterday as some of the users still could not log on to their site.
Matt Mullenweg, the brains behind Wordpress and its spokesman, also confirmed these attacks. There were spikes of about 6 GB of incoming traffic rendering the blogs inaccessible by some users for almost up to 15 minutes.
Hackers hack Antivirus Co website, Use It To Spread Virus
In an embarrassing blow to an Indian anti virus software maker, hackers compromised its website and turned it into a host for malicious code. This fact came to light when another security company, AVG, spotted the malicious code emanating from the download site for AvSoft’s SmartCop, an anti-virus software package.
Hacker Uses Networked ‘Crazy’ Toaster To Hack PC
The more paranoid among us have long been wary of the possibility that networked fridges might spontaneously turn off, perhaps after becoming infected with a computer virus, ruining milk in the process. Other networked appliances might also pose a danger of sorts, security boffins have shown.
A security expert from Check Point demonstrated at the recent ClubHACK 2007 conference in India how a networked toaster might be used to hack a computer. The party piece, carried out by Check Point’s Dror Shalev, turns the more conventional use of computers in vending machines and computerised household appliances (such as DVD players) on its head.
Shalev said he developed the networked toaster hack in response to a statement from a senior scientist from Google that there was no need to be afraid of a toaster at home. “But as a hacker, I came up with a toaster that could actually hack a computer,” Shalev explained. “I call it a ‘Crazy Toaster’.”