News (221)

Hackers attack White House

It was revealed last week that the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were hacked in recent months. Now, a report has surfaced that the White House has suffered multiple attacks in recent months as well. Read more »

NASA hacker loses second appeal

The man accused by the US government of accessing more than 73,000 US military machines has lost his second appeal to the UK Home Office against extradition. Read more »

World Bank gets hacked

The computer network used by the World Bank Group has suffered a series of at least six intrusions since mid-2007, according to a report. Read more »

NT hacker blames 'segregation'

A Northern Territory hacker who allegedly caused millions of dollars of damage to government systems this week blamed segregation and 'stress' for his crime. Read more »

Alleged Palin hacker indicted

A 20-year-old college student suspected of hacking into one of US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's email accounts was indicted Tuesday in the US, a district court announced. Read more »

E-passport fraud no threat to SmartGate

The Australian Customs Service today said its inbound e-passport authentication system SmartGate would not be fooled by fake details, after a Dutch hacker claimed to have broken through similar systems in Europe. Read more »

FBI searches apartment over Palin hack

US federal authorities are ramping up an investigation of a 20-year-old college student for allegedly hacking into US vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin's email account. Read more »

Palin hacker a US college student?

There were mixed reports on Friday in the US whether or not the son of a Tennessee state representative has been contacted by the FBI or Secret Service in connection with US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo Mail account. Read more »

Palin's email gets hacked

Hackers have reportedly broken into US Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account and posted some of the contents on the internet. Read more »

BusinessWeek site hacked

Hackers have broken into BusinessWeek's online site and set up an attack scenario in which visitors to a section of the site could have their own computers compromised and their data stolen, a security researcher said on Monday in the US. Read more »

Features (87)

Security in the Web 2.0 Era

At the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Sydney this week, Andrew Walls, the research director and security analyst at Gartner presented "Security in the Age of E-Commerce and Web 2.0". Read more »

50 significant moments from internet history

We take you through 50 defining moments of the internet. Read more »

10+ things you should know about rootkits

Malware-based rootkits fuel a multibillion dollar spyware industry by stealing individual or corporate financial information. If that weren't bad enough, rootkit-based botnets generate untold amounts of spam. Here's a look at what rootkits are and what to do about them. Read more »

What does a DBA do all day?

Data integrity is a DBA's number one responsibility, but do you know what else they do all day? Read more »

Hacking with no technology

The typical image of a hacker is a kid hunched over his keyboard in the wee hours of the night staring at commands on his computer screen that unlock the secrets of the national government. But the woman sitting next to you at Starbucks fiddling with her digital camera could be just as dangerous. Read more »

HTML 5: A change in course... straight for the iceberg

The W3C recently released a working draft specification for HTML 5. In its current iteration, this is the worst specification I have ever read. Read more »

Java security: Policies and permission management

This article explores three areas of Java security: security managers, access controllers, and access permissions. Read more »

Waiting for the OpenSocial hammer to drop

Veteran developer Marc Canter warns industry politics could stymie push to give social network users more control over data. Read more »

Be aware of the threat of hidden keystroke-logging devices

Learn about the different versions of keystroke loggers, and get tips for protecting your organisation and your users from this threat. Read more »

Handling Java I/O via remote connections

We continue our exploration of the I/O facilities provided by the Java platform by showing how the same techniques, classes, and data types used for reading and writing data to local file systems can be used when reading and writing data across remote connections. Read more »

Video (4)

Disable USB storage under OS X or Windows

Hollywood would have IT pros believe that the biggest threat to network security comes from international super hackers or high school kids trying to download games like global thermonuclear war. In reality, we face a far more mundane threat–our end users, particularly those wielding USB storage devices. Read more »

How to spoof a MAC address

MAC address filtering is often used to secure older wireless equipment. Is this technique effective? In this IT Dojo video, Bill Detwiler shows you just how easy it is to spoof a MAC address and why MAC address filtering might not even keep out the \"slacker hackers.\" Read more »

Defcon: Where feds and hackers rub elbows

It's an unlikely pairing: security officials and underground hackers. Every year, they make peace and share information at Defcon, Black Hat's sister conference. Read more »

Nasa hacker awaits Lords' decision

Gary McKinnon talks about his appeal to the House of Lords against extradition to the US to face hacking charges. He could face up to 60 years in jail if extradited. Read more »

Blog (9)

The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

Hack attack week

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- It wasn't a good week to be an Alaskan vice-presidential candidate, an online publication or even a multinational science project -- as all were compromised by hackers this week. Read more »

Targeted for hacking by reporters at my table

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- I should have known it was only a matter of time. I've been covering security conferences on and off for about 14 years and considered myself lucky not to have been hacked, that I knew of. Until Thursday. Read more »

Google App Engine sort of getting Perl support

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Google programmers are adding support for the Perl programming language to its App Engine service for hosting Web applications, but so far it's not really an official project. Read more »

One ID to rule them all

Lana Kovacevic [blogs:webanatomy] -- OpenID is an open-source mechanism enabling you to use a single online identity to log-in to different websites that support OpenID. Read more »

We don't need an eBay for security holes

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- It's been likened to an eBay for hackers -- new security site WabiSabiLabi is a market place for auctioning security vulnerabilities. Read more »

5 reasons restricting hacking is not like gun control

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Let's get it out of the way: Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. People with hacking tools can steal your personal data, shut down your system and deface your web site -- but is that any reason to ban them? Read more »

iPhone root password cracked in three days

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- It's been out just three days, but already the Apple iPhone has been taken apart both literally and figuratively. The latest: inquisitive Apple fans have hacked into the firmware and discovered the master root password to the smart phone. Read more »

Google destroys Security Through Obscurity

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Google Labs' new Code Search makes it easier for hackers to find database username and password details by entering strings that are commonly used within configuration files. Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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