CAT TECHIE -Hacker

Read An interesting chapter of cattechie aka vaidehi sachin

2011-10-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

lawyer-turned-journalist- writer Vaidehi Sachin from Mumbai- India's famous journalist and most controvercuial writerVaidehi sachin is group editor of NBC and also editor in chief of Afternoon voice, vaidehi sachin presently doing research on Hackers and she is been victimized them on various issues, read more about vaidehi sachin on her web site www.vaidehisachin.com. To contact vaidehi sachin you can mail her on editornbc@gmail.com..

German Hackers

2011-09-18T07:28:00.001-07:00

German is not only the beautiful country but is has given us very good hackers. This country still continues to struggle with a number of social issues High School dropout rates; adolescent Violence, Religion in education, Reunification; Political extremism; Gender roles and demographics. The ... People often make the claim that Adolph Hitler adhered to Atheism, Humanism or some ancient Nordic pagan mythology. None of these fanciful and wrong ideas hold. Although one of Hitler's henchmen, Alfred Rosenberg, did undertake a campaign of Nordic mythological propaganda, Hitler and most of his henchmen did not believe in it. Many writers have written and television documentaries have shown, preach of Hitler's "evil" have eliminated Hitler's god for their Christian audiences, but one only has to read from his own writings to appreciate that Hitler's God equals the same God of the Christian Bible. Hitler held many frenzied beliefs which not only include, God and Providence but also Fate, Social Darwinism, and ideological politics. As the issues have grown the cyber terror too on rise, there the hacker is born.

Recently German hackers heat headlines by gaining access to Lady Gaga’s computer, German hackers are actually great music lovers, and if you look at the history they have attacked maximum singers that to pop singers for stealing music. Especially the new bee hackers are much in to these kinds of attacks. Stealing music is their passion but they are very popular for hacking cell phones and IPods, or you can say telecommunication networks. Last week two German hackers gained access to the computers of over 50 pop stars, including Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga, in an attempt to steal unreleased songs and issue blackmail threats over intimate photographs, prosecutors have alleged. The duo used nothing Trojans, which can break into private computer networks. But they are alleged to have hacked into the computers of a string of world famous stars and downloaded hundreds of documents including music, credit card details, emails and photographs. Their haul included a picture of the American singer Kesha, reportedly naked and having sex. The two had tried to blackmail the singer, but no money changed hands. Celebrities are open for any sort of controversies and that hardly affects them, there are many celebrities who made big name out of such meager attacks.

If you look at the history then I must mention here one of the top most German hacker 34 years Boris Floricic, whos handle was Tron, whose death in unclear circumstances has led to various conspiracy theories. He is also known for his Diplom thesis presenting one of the first public implementations of a telephone with built-in voice encryption, the "Cryptophon". He was subsequently sentenced to 15 months in jail for the physical theft of a public phone but the sentence was suspended on probation.

Another German hacker Deniz A (known as DJ Stolen), was given a prison sentence of 18 months. The other, Christian M (known as CEE), received a suspended 18-month sentence. Both were found guilty of copyright theft and computer intrusion. Deniz A was also found guilty of extortion. Cyber crime is the latest and perhaps the most complicated problem in the cyber world. German fund of a name of Vau Holland (Wau-Holland-Stiftung) which founders are connected with German hacker club Chaos Computer Club, have collected 750 thousand euro of donations for site WikiLeaks specializing on information leakages. Holland’s fund Vau has been based in 2003 by relatives and close friends of the known journalist to Germany and the expert in IT technologies Hervarta Holland-Moritz (Herwart Holland-Moritz), died in 2001. Holland has received popularity as one of founders of the oldest hacker club Chaos Computer Club which has been created in 1981. A diffuse group of people often called ``hackers'' has been characterized as unethical, irresponsible, and a serious danger to society for actions related to breaking into computer systems. Dominik Iacono, Dave Ackermann, were arrested the two were allegedly found with two Bangkok Bank passbooks, two ATM cards, two laptops, five mobile phones and a USB storage device containing bank and credit card transaction information.

The German hackers delivered speeches at many forums on Urban Hacking, Hacktavism & Culture Jamming. The Chaos Computer Club was formed in Berlin back in 1981 and became world-famous in the 1980s when it managed to hack a key German computer network, forcing a bank in Hamburg to debit a large sum of money in an online account. The money was returned the next day in front of the press.The group celebrated its 20th birthday by 'enhancing' the famous Berlin building Haus des Lehrers.

German hacking legend “Wau” who died from complications of a stroke he suffered. Holland -- born Wau ,Herwart, Wernery, ipV6, Denis.Stalker, MagiKHanD, hunksmarty, Pirate81176, zEr0, tatu19ph, Deniz A, Christian M, Clwilson, are few known and new Hackers of Germany.

Cattechie aka Vaidehi Sachin again in news for the hackers,by the hackers of the hackers

2011-04-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

The server got hacked at 6.18 precisely in the morning, the attack was going on continuously from last 3 days and it’s still going on. They were doing bruteforce attack after they failed in DDoS, they were trying all over the places they can do it, they tried it on WHM panel, Cpanel of all the domains, FTP accounts, emails of some of the mail accounts specially feedback@sabkileak.com , it looks like somehow their main target was http://www.sabkileak.com/

ICW, indishell, ICA,DNA, stuxnet, all hacking shit we can knock your doors anytime”. What a shit is this? Why you need to knock the door, if you have guts please come in the doors are open. We may have some differences with our aims and goals but when someone offends us we should be united as one... and this heinous attack should not be tolerated at any cost. Long back “khujli chodary” issued one PDF warning to all hackers for not using particular name for defacement and on that page similar warning was issued. Khujli tried his level best to bend all hacker but fortunately they gave dame to his intentions. More over what I feel is, the main motto behind this hack was not to give a message to icw, ica, indishell, dna, ics etc., it was done by someone who hates our success... we are working to find out, my guys are back to me and they will dig the ground till they reach and find out the evil punks hiding in underground hell. Any ways I never ever came across such stupid underground group.

Cybercriminals are spreading invisible infections far and wide across the Internet by hammering hundreds of thousands of websites. SabkiLeak website based on the lines of WikiLeaks which is to be launched on 1st May, 2011 was apparently compromised by a group of hackers called Fake ICA seeming to be registered in New Delhi. Assisting Fake ICA is its owner’s girlfriend who was once known as the slaughter house for anti-Indian and anti-Hindu worms and the power House of Hindus. But, later she was caught providing information to the Pakistani counterpart and hence was boycotted by hackers hacked the website using Brute force .

The intentions behind the attack from the rivalries appear to be an outcome of sheer envy or the fear of getting their corruption practices exposed. It is also not so skeptical that the hacker group must be hired by some government officers for the attack. Despite the fact that they have tried their best to interrupt the path of SabkiLeak, the website authorities assures to launch it on the scheduled date itself. On the contrary, the attack has only made the website owners gain more confidence and simultaneously get a wider exposure. The whole incidence has only left the ignorant hackers and authorities behind the attack bang their heads against empty pots. In a way, the attack has proved to be a training session for the Kaizen wannabees and its technical staff under the leadership of R45C4l to fight against this kind of attacks on organizations, business groups or any part of the IT sector. Since SabkiLeak is only a virtual media and nothing related to print and paper, there was not any loss in actual. Although the server was down for few hours, the problem is believed to be solved soon.

one of the close source said getting root is not big issue, The guys who did it is against r45c4l, the source said that they are from inj3ct0r and 1 of them managed to steal openSSH 0-day which was written by anti-sec (romeo)... guys are from USA... (Indians in USA).... openssh 0-day is INEVITABLE! 99.99% of the servers are vulnerable to it...!!! someday try to research on milw0rm and threat to milw0rm by anti-sec coz of openssh 0-day its a mastercard which has to be broken somehow!anyways it want make difference because my virtual existence is not much as compare to print.

Hackers had left a message after defacing the website which said there is no point wasting time on defacing Pakistani websites forming small groups. It is essential to form a united group which will help the nation to be cyber secured. Defacing sites of organizations like CBI or PM office is not a great thing as it can be done by any hacker. Responding to the attack, SabkiLeak said that these kinds of attacks are not going to stop it from achieving its motive and also that the website will be launched on 1st May itself standing true to its promises. To be precise, the attack was a message to hackers group like ICW, Indishell, ICA, DNA-stuxnet, ICS and many other ethical hacking groups claiming to be the best. Lately, Cattechie having the same vision had tried bringing all these groups together under one roof ‘Unite Hackers’ for a better prospect of the country but due to some miscreants the attempt received a setback.

Hey guys I really felt like laughing at the defaced page. Those guys are watching every strange thing… hey what this mean? Anyways I am happy; my websites became message board for the entire hackers group other than “khujli” group. Not a big problem... attention creator shower off your ass. So silly and amateur attack, any ways thanks for this hack. All my lost brothers got united once again. This was worth.

Any ways guys I feel this attack was not against me but it’s a open challenge to all groups lets unite and show we may be separated by groups but once challenged we r united... GoodLuck

NEWSMAKERS AWARD 2010

2011-04-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

India would have reached final despite loss

2011-04-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

There was something very shocking yet interesting things on ibn news, i am putting odd post but hackers take lods of interst in sports so thought of sharing this with them.

Had India lost the World Cup semi-final match to Pakistan at Mohali on Wednesday, the Indian government would have been under pressure to demand a repeal of the result. If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had not stepped in to prevent a controversy that had the potential to snowball into an international crisis, India could have come close to invoking a rarely-cited section of the International Cricket Council (ICC) code of conduct to annul a Pakistani victory.According to highly placed sources at the Prime Minister’s Office, Singh, in an uncharacteristic display of firmness, set aside moves by the Indian cricket board to invoke a dusty law in the ICC rulebook that would have disqualified Pakistani players of disputed domicile. This exclusive comes in the backdrop of a highly anticipated World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, even as the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met marking the resumption of official contacts, which India broke off after militants attacked Mumbai in late 2008.ICC’s Law 1.4 (11), that explicates the eligibility criteria for players, clearly states that to play Under-19 cricket or above at the international level, a player has to be a) a national or b) be born in a recognized country or c) is resident in the country for at least 90 days in each of the immediately preceding seven years. A sub-section of the law that enumerates a "disputed domicile" states that any player from a country/state not recognized by all Test-playing and associate members of the ICC can be disqualified at any time if they fail to submit a certificate of clearance issued by the world cricketing body 30 hours prior to a match to the host country. Several players of the current Pakistani World Cup squad were born in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and have stated PoK as their domicile in documents submitted to the Ministry of External Affairs.However, due to a technical snag at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry the players reportedly could not submit their ICC clearance certificate to the MEA on time, a technicality the Indian side was ready to pursue had they lost to Pakistan in the semis.
This basically means that had India lost to Pakistan in the semis it would be still eligible to play Sri Lanka in the final had it invoked Law 1.4(11) to get some of Pakistan’s top spinners and a middle-order batsman disqualified. The law further states that if four or more players are disqualified then the match result is null and void and the defeated team is automatically eligible for a walkover.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, told IBNLive in an exclusive interview that he first came to know of the delayed certificates through a MEA leak. “After a hectic midnight meeting with the BJP top brass before the crucial semifinal match, I immediately brought it to the notice of Mr S M Krishna,” Jaitley said.India has not won the Cup in 28 years and emotions are riding high in a country hungry for a win that eluded them several times. Even as a billion people in India sat glued to their television sets as India took on Pakistan at Mohali, Krishna and Jaitley, along with senior leaders from both Congress and BJP, met ICC President Sharad Pawar Wednesday evening to discuss the possibilities of a repeal in the event that India lost the match.Sources at the MEA said an emergency cabinet meeting was called at around 5 pm, when the Indian innings seemed to be floundering after in-form Yuvraj Singh lost his wicket to a full toss and Pakistani spinners took control leaving India gasping at 194/5.“That’s when I told Mr Krishna, a win looks impossible,” Jaitley told IBNLive.com. Pawar, who Jaitley said was open to the idea of a match reversal asked to see the official papers of four Pakistani cricketers who we are told originated from PoK. MEA sources said the identity of the Pakistani players were not to be divulged for security reasons. But there are two spinners and a middle-order batman among the four, the sources said.
A reversal would not only result in the Pakistani team being disqualified from the semifinal and India being given a secured final spot but had the potential to trigger off a major diplomatic row between the two nuclear-capable cross-border rivals.Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani watched the epic encounter at Mohali from the VVIP stand along with his wife at the invitation of the Indian Prime Minister.A cricket controversy would not only have resulted in a bitter feud between the two nations but sour diplomatic ties as well, which are gradually on the mend after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that claimed over 160 lives.Krishna, who reportedly contacted Singh to apprise him of the latest development, was asked by him not to go ahead with plans of a match reversal in case India lost to Pakistan to uphold the spirit of the game.Singh is said to have told Krishna that “India will always play fair, be in war or in cricket, and there will be no exception to that rule.” A united Opposition led by Jaitley said they were ready to dispute Singh’s decision to “play the game fair” had India lost to Pakistan, in Parliament’s monsoon session starting July 26.As it turned out, India won the match, making all of this a hypothetical possibility only. But it remains to be seen whether Singh’s refusal to take this drastic step will be continued in his management of India-Pakistan relations in the face of a belligerent Opposition.Said the editor of IBNLIve.com to all readers when publishing this report, “Considering the date of the day before the World Cup final, there is no reason to believe any of this.” He confirmed that this report was a figment of the imagination, in keeping with the spirit of the first of April

R45c4l,micr0,javed,chaota hacker, Vaibhav and Cat techi to conduct Hacking seminar all over India

2011-04-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

We are here to set trends in hacking world, where ever you go some play with key loggers, some provide you kits and some teach you basics to drag you to slaughter house called ethical hacking classes. They mint money you learn what you never wanted to.. And land up seeking help from others because the one who showed wasted dreams to you is never at your disposal. hacking, Hackers, Crackers ,How to become a Hacker,Information gathering of target Information gathering of target network..Oh ho all this is old time story..There is much more to explore and much more to experiment..Don’t create brand..Become one
Eligibility
Only basic knowledge of computer and Internet requiredWorkshop benefits
Our approach is to aware common population to fight against cyber-terrorism, online threats and there cure, some vocational trainings and 24/7 support
Good and respective carer
Workshop Duration
12hours (6 hours /day)
Certification Policy
Certificate will be given to all participants onthe successful completion of workshop.
Contact detailed
Are you satisfied about the seminars which you have attended?if not contact us at
securing.india@gmail.com

Hacker5 to conduct security seminar for all hackers,students and corporate sectors- special lectures by Rascal,Javed and cattechie

2011-03-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

securing India (Awareness Workshop on ethical hacking and Information security)

Our basic concern is to aware our Young generation from upcoming online threats to move towards secure India by empowering our country through education medium lets be unite and tell our enemy countries we are Indian's not a easy bolt to crack

The most popular information security and hacking training would go in-depth into the techniques used by malicious, black hat hackers and the dangers they pose. While these hacking skills can be used for malicious purposes, this class would teach how to use the same hacking techniques to perform a white-hat, ethical hack, on one’s organizations. One would leave with the ability to quantitatively assess and measure threats to information assets; and discover where his organization is most vulnerable to hacking in this network security training course.The goal of this seminar is to help one master a repeatable, documentable penetration testing methodology that can be used in an ethical penetration testing or hacking situation. This ethical security training course has a significant Return on Investment as you gain knowledge of ethical hacking and walk out with skills that are highly in demand in today’s digital world.Nowadays with the increased advancement of technology, cyber threats too have taken a modern form. At one side where computers have made our day to day lives easier and faster, on the other hand it has also become a tool to many people for committing various criminal activities.

why should it required ?

We believe that next world war is not fight by arms or atom bombs its cyberwar result may be drawn our country 20 years back. So we are preparing our country for securing them self

Another big issue of our country is employment there is huge gape between a good education and employment all courses are so much theoretical that cant fill the requirement of upcoming industry need we design a very good syllabus to reduce the gap between eduction and employment as much is possible

"NASSCOM predicts requirement of 1,88,000 professionals by the year 2010. Currently the number of security professionals in India is around 22,000."

What do you expect from Hacking classes and seminar?

More practical less theory
live demo

New and latest technology

Knowledge about Cyber Terrorism

Use of manual methods rather then use of automated tools

Who should attend ?
Students
IT Students & Professionals

Network Engineers

System Administrators
Every Indian how using computer

Eligibility

Only basic knowledge of computer and Internet required

Course benefits

Our approach is to aware common population to fight against cybertarisum

online threats and there cure
Good and respective carer

Workshop Duration18 hours

Certification PolicyCertificate will be given to participants on completion of workshop.

Contact detailed
Are you satisfied about the seminars which you have attended?
if not contact us at

Phishing scams in India and legal provisions

2011-03-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

“phishing, noun, the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online.”

SUPPOSE, ONE day you open your email, and find a weird looking mail from your bank, beware, it could be something phishy! A message in your inbox from your bank with which you have an internet enabled account asking to update your account with your personal information, login detail, etc., on the pretext of upgradation of server of the bank, should not be opened. You would also see a link, by clicking on which you would be linked to a look alike website of your bank, which looks quite authentic and convincing. However, you may be smart enough to know that this is a trap by a con to get your vital personal information to make fraudulent financial transactions and swindle your money. But there are many others who are not as smart as you, and fall into the trap and pass on their vital login details and lose their valuable money.
Phishing is an internet-age crime, born out of the technological advances in internet age. “Phishing" is a newer form of social engineering. Typically, Phishing is a form of social engineering, characterised by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords, usernames, login IDs, ATM PINs and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message.
The phishing attacks will then direct the recipient to a web page (mirror webpage) so exactly designed to look as a impersonated organization’s (often bank & financial institution) own website and then they cleverly harvest the user's personal information, often leaving the victim unaware of the attack.Phishing has become so rampant that even the Oxford English Dictionary added “Phishing” to its latest publication making it a definitive word of English Language.
It defines “Phishing” as:
As per the American Banker’s Association “Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent Web sites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, Social Security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5 percent of recipients to respond to them.”
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), which is an industry association focused on eliminating identity theft and fraud from the growing problem of phishing and email spoofing defines Phishing as a form of online identity theft that employs both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. According to the Annual Report of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Deptt. of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, (Govt. of India) in the year 2009, the CERT-In handled about 374 phishing incidents.
Major factors for increase in Phishing Attacks:
There are three major factors behind the recent spurt in phishing attacks worldwide particularly in India: Lack of awareness among public: Worldwide, particularly in India, there has been lack of awareness regarding the phishing attacks among the common masses. The users are unaware that their personal information is actively being targeted by criminals and they do not take proper precautions when they conduct online activities.Lack of awareness about policy – The fraudsters often count on victim’s unawareness of Bank/financial institution policies and procedures for contacting customers, particularly for issues relating to account maintenance and fraud investigation. Customers unaware of the policies of an online transaction are likely to be more susceptible to the social engineering aspect of a phishing scam, regardless of technical sophistication.Technical sophistication – Fraudsters are now using advanced technology that has been successfully used for activities such as spam, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and electronic surveillance. Even as customers are becoming aware of phishing, criminals are developing techniques to counter this awareness. These techniques include URL obfuscation to make phishing emails and web sites appear more legitimate, and exploitation of vulnerabilities in web browsers that allow the download and execution of malicious code from a hostile web site.
Techniques of Phishing attacks Man-in-the-middle attacks: In this class of attack, the attacker sits between the customer and the real web-based application, and proxies all communications between the systems. This form of attack is successful for both HTTP and HTTPS communications. The customer connects to the attackers server as if it was the real site, while the attackers server makes a simultaneous connection to the real site. The attackers server then proxies all communications between the customer and the real web-based application server – typically in real-time.
URL Obfuscation Attacks: Using URL obfuscation techniques which involves minor changes to the URL, the fraudster tricks the user to follow a hyperlink (URL) to the attacker's server, without the users realizing that he has been duped. URL Obfuscation uses the unspoken, unwritten secrets of the TCP/IP protocol to trick users into viewing a website that they did not intend to visit.
XSS (Cross-site Scripting): Cross-site scripting attacks (XSS) make use of custom URL or code injection into a valid web-based application URL or imbedded data field. In general, these XSS techniques are the result of failure of a site to validate user input before returning it to the client’s web-browser.
Phishing scenario in XSS:
•Victim logs into a web site
•Attacker has spread “mines” using an XSS vulnerability
•Victim fall upon an XSS mine
•Victim gets a message saying that their session has terminated, and they have to to authenticate again
•Victim’s username and password are send to attacker
(To be continued)

NEWS MAKERS ACHIEVERS

2011-03-28T04:19:00.000-07:00

News makers achievers awards in IT sector Best ethical hacker -Manu Zacharia, black hat hacker –r00t, Hacking seminar- Null Con, security agency- AAA technologies, Cyber security officer – Vijay Mukhi, Best ethical hacking coaching Innobuzz.

Not everybody pays their life for society. A person in any field whether an artist or a social worker should be appreciated, if he has contributed his time and efforts for the sake of society. We, Newsmakers Broadcasting and Communications Pvt. Ltd., (NBC) comprehending the importance of such people in society who have never claimed for their name to be cherished for their contribution; not only salute their hard work to improve the society but also like to count them amongst deserving citizens for awards which will be honoured on May 1st, 2011.

MOTIVE:

NewsMakers Broadcasting and Communications Pvt. Ltd, has set new horizons of ethical journalism is honouring unsung heroes of our society through the NewsMakers Achievers' Awards to the people who have risen from the rank and file of the common man to act as the beckon light for the multitude of humanity to rise to a notch above the ordinary.

NOMINATION: This honour will be presented at a grand function which will be attended by delegates of many countries, celebrities, business dignitaries, politicians, et al. A star studded event that will be remembered and cherished by every Indian. To be unbiased and transparent, the nomination procedure is kept open to the public. One can nominate their favourite heroes by sending us SMS or via email.

ABOUT US:

NBC has within a brief span of time become a name to reckon within the media. Our publication are fast being recognized for comprehensive analysis of events covering a wide range of subjects, the magazine has been appreciated on more than one occasion for its bold presentation of facts. The exclusive news, views and interviews have become the talk of the town. Our readership profile comprises of, besides the common man, the businessmen, hoteliers, entertainment industry, medical profession and others interested in gaining in-depth understanding of the subject. In-depth coverage of top stories dealt with responsibility, courage and honesty has made our presence felt in the market in a matter of just seven months! It was launched on 3rd July, 2009 and it has reached majority of the stalls all over the city with a wide readership.

Our core competency lies in providing extensive and exclusive coverage to all spheres of information, which is made possible by our dynamic team, comprising of the right blend of youth and experience. This provides our publications freshness and depth. Honest reporting with an emphasis on ethics is our forte. We are a multi-dimensional media company involved in a multitude of activities in electronic and print media, which includes, among others, production of TV serials and documentaries and our leading publications include Beyond the News, the international fortnightly magazine and a daily eveninger Afternoon Voice; both being printed and published from Mumbai.

'Afternoon Voice' is a Mumbai daily covering all aspects of the city. Besides the daily diet of news, sports and business; readers are served stimulating columns and features related to the theme of the day. With an ever-expanding readership base, our newspaper tries to be different by not just focusing on city-centric reporting but also present the relevant national events with the city's viewpoint. Detailed contents of these are available on our websites www.afternoonvoice.com and www.beyondthenews.biz respectively. Maritime Bridges is our monthly trade magazine which gives the readers an insight on the shipping industry and maritime events happening along the country's vast coastline. Soon to reach stands are Mee Mumbaikar, a monthly Marathi magazine and Mumbai Manoos, a Marathi daily; both shall have superlative and fresh content specially drafted for the niche readers. Today, everyone is speaking in hushed voice about the growing popularity of our publications and even veterans in the field are feeling threatened by this fledging. We set new trends in the industry and our production and editing standards are being taken note of by even well established print and production houses

more details on www.newsmakers.co.in

The truth about vaidehi sachin - how she tarnished the Indian Hacking Scene and exploited Indian Hackers and backstabbed them

2011-03-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

The truth about vaidehi sachin - how she tarnished the Indian Hacking Scene and exploited Indian Hackers and backstabbed them

Hey this was one of the hilarious slide show and animation made by a Delhi group and I am proud of them, they made this much efforts on me. One line I liked the most is “don’t feed Cat” yes friends don’t feed cat because she is feeding others. She no needs to be fed.
The group of losers, unnecessarily dragging ICA here I clearly indicate indishell and ICW the guys are working with me and pretty happy.

This series is worth seeing for the extraordinary imagination and grief portrayed by group of hackers, who joined me with big dreams and parted digging their own graves, killing anyone is small thing, killing cat is even more easy, but for that you can only imagine a story board but can’t do anything much beyond.

Coming to my PM with fake profile leaving some nasty dialogs, leaving some awful comments on group walls, creating blogs, making animations..What is all this? Simply you are wasting your time and I am utilizing the same time and growing, I am where I should be. Just moving ahead, but where are you? Why wasting so much time on me? The reason you don’t have much to do and I have no work for you guys..Poor losers..Somewhere at the bottom have you realized one thing? I am still keeping you busy and the task is also me THE CAT… ha ha ha..The elite world of so called social system blesses me looking at these videos, thinking Oh my god the girl has real guts to take hackers on task…bravo..

The hackers working with me are proud of me because they know the fact and who is who..

The hackers still failed to understand me are in dilemma and the hacker’s newly associated with me are not even sacred of these traits. Then what is the use of such videos, accept you making fun of yourself, one benefit is there, some where you are learning animations and may be little bad sequencing and rendering but well began is half done, good creative work go ahead boys, god bless you..
Oh just forgot to remind blogging, defaming.damaging has become your lifestyle.
oh..gosh..Some of your fairer side is good at SEO make best use of it..Good bad or ugly I want CAT to exploit maximum space over cyber world…

Thanks for helping..

Fat CAT is still alive and follow Vaidehi Sachin

Kaizen, me and my dream project

2011-03-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

The very first question people ask us is “What is the meaning of Kaizen ?” .

Well when we were planning to start the organization, we had several issues in our mind. Kaizen is a upcoming Information Security Company, which we are going to start with like minded people who are dedicated and passionate and having a vast amount of experience in the Info-Sec domain, and who understands the importance and necessity of Info-Sec in the present world scenario.

Kaizen is actually a Japanese word, Kaizen is a philosophy or you can say its a practice that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business process, and management. It has been applied in a lot of fields from healthcare to physiotherapy, from life-coaching to banking and government and many other industries.

One of the most important reason behind starting Kaizen is that we are very disappointed by looking at the way most Info-Sec consulting companies are providing services and solutions to Corporate, government organizations and various other small - big organizations. Most of the time the people are not at all aware of the actual security threats and mind sets of cyber criminals who are dedicated to break in to your system and networks.

We have a very dedicated and highly experienced team and we have many ideas and proposals to offer which none of the security companies are offering. We are going to give the best solution and security practice.
Another most important reason behind starting up this company is providing every possible help to our government agencies and bureaus to fight against these cyber criminals and highly sophisticated cyber terrorists who are a big threat to the security of our country.

Kaizen and Hacker5 were a dream project and it was a ambitious project too with just one thing in the mind and it was “providing a platform to the fresher’s and young talent hackers who are doing extremely good in “Hacking (in its real sence) “ but they were getting misguided or not getting an opportunity to make a recognization for themselves in the industry. Infosec is a very rigid domain and moreover the concept is very new here in India, most of the people are not at all familiar with what actually it is all about. Another big problem is that when these young guys talk about making a career in infosec, parents and relatives don’t really understand what actually it is all about and because of the ignorance and the way term “hacking or hackers” is abused by media, people think that this is something illegal or something related to criminal activities.

We started Hacker5 with just one aim, to provide a global platform to all these young and very talented people to contribute and show there work so that it can reach to various organizations, companies, security professionals and all the places where there work can be recognized and appreciated. All this would not have been possible without the support and encouragements of all our friends and well-wishers and those who believed in our dreams. The most important names I would like to mention is Vaidehi Sachin and NBC pvt ltd. The concept of Hacker5 is the brain child of Vaidehi and she started Hacker5 with the same reason and purpose for which we are coming up with Kaizen. When she came to know about Kaizen, she immediately showed her willingness to carry on the Kaizen project and gave us every possible help and support. The entire NBC team supported us in every possible way. They very well understand the value and importance of securing the data and the valuable customer information from any unauthorized person.

We can create this awareness and make people understand the importance of infosec not just by providing good service to them but also by making the common people capable enough to secure there assets, and this can be achieved by giving proper training to them. With this aim the hacker5 and Kaizen team is going to provide seminars and workshops at the educational as well as corporate level with the help of a very dedicated and talented team. The aim is to create awareness as well as help those who want to make a career in infosec. We will be working as well as providing solutions to various government and other law enforcement agencies too.

For the hackers by the hacker

Anonymous Vs Bank Of America

2011-03-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

Anonymous is back!!! - a week back the hackers group has released the documents and a series of internal emails of bank of america - one of the 'major US Bank'...The documents were released with the help of 'BOA n Balboa insurance' former employee. This docs contains the mortgages issued by a major US bank, that shows Bank Of America committed mortgage Fraud. Anon says the documents exposed of "corruption and fraud", and relate to the issue of improper foreclosures.
Some of the e-mails hint at an organized effort to tamper with loan numbers and audit trails. So many code words r used in the mails - difficult to understand and how much impact is it really merging this documents n mails. and no one knows how much it gonna damage the reputation of BOA were as Bank of America has denied wrongdoing and called the claims "extravagant"Any one can check out the files on http://bankofamericasuck.com/
when Bankofamericasuck.com Web site was posted - soon it was unreachable for periods of time due to the huge traffic - when it got released on monday.Anonymous says that this was just "part 1 of the Emails" ^_^ - They says "Stay tuned though. You’ve only seen the first shot. Despite every effort on BofA’s part to silence me, Part 2 is coming"
it was expected that WikiLeaks would publish the secret documents, not a site associated with Anonymous. This is nothing compared to what WikiLeaks has in store.. ^_^
Kai
" There is a fear of being launched..."

Hackers Accross The Globe

2011-03-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

The hackers groups and their intension of existence
Kosovo Hackers group
Motto: - they want to realize Serbian people about their lost families in their battle between Bulgaria and Serbia war – this group of hackers attacks Serbian sites they are also known with name Albanian hackers. ..They loud saying - Our final word is that we honor all families who lost someone in the war against you. We want justice and we want our missing people back

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China gal security team - The leader of the group Xiao Tian, is 21 years old
Motto: spread hacking awareness among Chinese people

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Turkish hackers name - cyber warrior
Motto: Against Turkey Publications, Society and the public conscience of the Negative
Affect situations - there general principle of Misyon'un Mission coverage and faith on the Internet and the attack on the moral values, helped shape the brains for the contents contain pure, Satanist and pornographic content, publications challenge. Said by Turkish hackers group cyber warrior
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Honker hackers group
Honker is a symbol of patriotic Chinese hackers
Motto - Honker Union of China to launch network attacks against Japan and supporting the Chinese government against what they view as the imperialism of the United States and the militarism of Japan. The group is currently merged with the Red Hacker Alliance. Red Hacker Alliance - responsible for poisoned for cnn attack on april 19th 2008

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SKIDROW Hacker Group -
Motto - crack licensed games and cheats n publish it on internet

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Female hacker group Beng Hacks
Motto: No motive and no evidence - still doubt on its existence - need 2 get more info on it

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Gjilani Hackers Group - Albanian hackers group
Motto: - no motive, just geeks promoting as communist group of hackers
http://ghg-crew.ace.st
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Somaliland hackers group - Somalia country
Motto: 2 provide info n educate people on how to protect computers vandals and how to be secured
SGH - also known as ethical hackers in their country - helping country government
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Kurdish Hacker Group - Iranian country
Motto- take revenge - by defacing sites of Turkish and Assyrian - and steal the info of government and military org
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Palin Hacker Group's - known as anonymous in early days of 2008
Motto - to expose Scientology. in jan 2008 targeted - the Church of Scientology — which its members considered to be an overly litigious
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Eastside Hackers Group
Motto- all developers ..work on Microsoft platform - this group members r - Microsoft lovers! Work for Microsoft
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Romanian hacker group
Motto - exposing security shortcomings on corporate and anti-virus websites -
- > indirectly helping corp. sec More recently the group, whose most famous member is a hacker called Unu
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Burmese hackers group
Motto - people from Burma government, mission to stand against Russia and Georgia states
Also known as ygn ethical hackers group
MUSLIM hackers group
Motto - spread Islam around the world by defacing sites and stop hatred against Islamism community
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Shadowy hackers group
Motto: target enemies of wiki leaks
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Delta hackers group
Motto - hackers r gaming freaks play online games with bets and crack commercial games
and upload them for free on web
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Hacker group L0pht - raised from Boston in early days
Motto - security awareness in IT's and conduct sec workshop
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Dutch hackers group
Motto: - help other hackers and make sense of their world - best of the best hackers supporters in the world...
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091 hackers group
Motto- community based hacker group and involve in sec projects and help them with all trends
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Chaos Computer Club - early days famous hacker froup from germany
Motto - Supports principles of the hacker ethic, this group also fights for free access to computers and technological infrastructure for everybody
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PHIRM - old days hacking group
Motto - to reflect a favorite television show in old days on the time of airwolf - now this group is disappeared / or got shut
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The Humble Guys THG - hackers group in early days - of 1980
Motto - Breach security of IBM PC's and IBM devices
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Red Hacker Alliance - chinese hackers group
Motto - make the largest hacking group in the world
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Shmoo hacker Group
Motto- security think tanks in early days - provide sec solutions to needy ppl
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The hackers groups such as the fallowing given list but they are not much active
Ctg Hacker's Group
ULQINZ hackers group
prishtina hackers group
Prizreni Hackers Group
House of Hackers
Nerezi Hacker's Group
l33thackers group
omega hacker group - russian
DJ hackers group
Drenica Hackers Group
HacDC group
w00w00 security team/ hacker group
This are the few hacker community groups highlighted... all around. As i was researching this info came 2 know able the existence of ANONYMOUS hackers is since long! So don't really know when they have raised... need 2 get more info on it.
SOURCE By Kai

Hacker vs. Hacker

2011-03-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

The hacking and public humiliation of cyber-security firm HBGary isn't just entertaining geek theater. It's a cautionary tale for businesses everywhere Greg Hoglund's nightmare began on Super Bowl Sunday. On Feb. 6 the high-tech entrepreneur was sitting in his home office, trying to get to the bottom of some unusual traffic he was seeing on the Internet. Two days earlier he'd noticed troubling activity hitting the website of HBGary Federal, the Sacramento startup he helped launch in 2009. He suspected some kind of hacker assault and had spent the weekend helping to shore up the company's systems. A few hours before Green Bay kicked off to Pittsburgh, Hoglund logged into his corporate account on Google (GOOG)—and confirmed his fears. He couldn't get in. Someone had changed the password and locked him out of his own e-mail system. Stolen passwords and hackers are facts of life in the Internet Age. Twitter, Facebook, MasterCard (MA), the Washington Post Co. (WPO), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the U.S. State Dept., and countless other organizations large and small have had to deal with cyber-assaults. More often than not, the security hole is plugged and, if the victims are lucky, the plague abates. Not this time. HBGary Federal is a spinoff of Hoglund's HBGary Inc., a cyber-security firm that offers protection to corporations and governments from cyber-attack. Hoglund built his career on the business of hacker-proofing—getting hacked meant HBGary failed at the very thing it's paid to get right.

Hoglund called Google's corporate technical support to shut down the account, but a representative told him that doing so would take time. It didn't matter. Intruders were already helping themselves to tens of thousands of internal documents and e-mails, some of them personal exchanges between Hoglund and his wife, Penny Leavy, president of HBGary. Then the hackers—who turned out to be members of the anarchic cyber-guerrilla organization that calls itself Anonymous—triumphantly posted their electronic booty on an online file-sharing service for all the world to see. That's when Hoglund's real problems began, and the resulting controversy—involving a high-powered Washington (D.C.) law firm, the Justice Dept., and the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks—hasn't just been entertaining geek theater but a rare look into the esoteric realm of cyber-security. It's a world where only a select few understand the workings of the computers and networks we all use, where publicly antagonizing the wrong people can have disastrous consequences, and where some participants tend toward self-aggrandizement and flexible differentiations between right and wrong.

The HBGary Federal documents—to Hoglund's surprise, he says—revealed unethical and potentially criminal plans to build a digital-espionage-for-hire business. "They really showed how bad things are getting," says Bruce Schneier, a renowned computer security expert. "Blackmail, espionage, data theft. These are things that were proposed as reasonable things to do. And no one said, 'Are you crazy?' " The plans were conceived in part by HBGary Federal's top executive, a former U.S. Navy cryptologist named Aaron Barr. Barr was working in conjunction with two other security companies. In a bit of cloak-and-dagger grandiosity, the firms dubbed their collaboration Team Themis, after a titan of Greek mythology who embodied natural law. (Forsaking Themis brings on Nemesis.) Team Themis proposed to electronically infiltrate grass-roots organizations opposed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the powerful Washington lobbying organization. In a separate and even more legally dubious proposal intended for Bank of America (BAC), the group laid out a plan to infiltrate WikiLeaks and intimidate its supporters.

Team Themis's machinations were exposed before they got past the proposal stage. But the schemes the security firms came up with were Nixonian in scope and Keystone Kops-like in execution. In a 12-page PDF sent to Hunton & Williams, the Washington law firm representing the U.S. Chamber, Team Themis suggested creating dummy documents and online personae, and scouring social networks such as Facebook for intelligence on their prospective client's most vocal critics. In the proposal for Bank of America, the security firms suggested hacking WikiLeaks itself to expose its sources. For Hoglund and his 30-person company, the fallout from the revelations continues to grow. Employees of HBGary and their families have been besieged with hostile phone calls and e-mails, including some death threats, and the company canceled its presentations at the annual RSA cyber-security conference in February. News sites that cover computer security have plumbed the document dump, turning HBGary and Barr into objects of ridicule. Barr resigned on Mar. 1 and declines to speak publicly about the ordeal. All of it makes Greg Hoglund furious. "These individuals are not hacktivists, they are criminals," he tells Bloomberg Businessweek, referring to his Anonymous adversaries. "If you let a gang of cyber-thugs hack into systems with impunity and get away with it, what kind of precedent does that set for cyber-security?"

Hoglund, 38, is widely respected in the computer security world for his expertise with "rootkits," software that facilitates privileged access to a computer while evading detection. The HBGary chief executive officer never went to college and learned his trade on the fly, spending time with other hackers and writing his own security software. He co-founded HBGary in 2004, providing corporations with tools to detect, analyze, and combat sophisticated malware attacks from hostile foreign governments. (The firm's name is derived from Hoglund and his two original partners, Shawn Bracken and Jon Gary.) Among the companies HBGary has worked with are Morgan Stanley (MS), Sony (SNE), and Walt Disney (DIS).

Fifteen months ago, Hoglund decided to branch out into a new market and spun off HBGary Federal to perform classified work for the U.S. government. Employees of the subsidiary would have military experience and top security clearances. To run the operation, Hoglund tapped Barr, then an engineer in the Intelligence Systems Division of military contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC). "Aaron has a very high IQ. He's a very smart individual," says Hoglund. "He also has an incredibly good reputation, or he did at the time." In the year after he was hired, Barr had little success building HBGary Federal's business. The firm initially attempted to break into the "incident response" market, selling its spycraft to government agencies so they could shut down leaks and identify cyber-attackers. That field is competitive, and paying work sparse for startups. By October 2010, in the e-mails that later became public, Hoglund warned Barr that HBGary Federal was "out of money and none of the work you had planned has come in." In his reply, Barr agreed. Barr did have one possible lifeline. On Oct. 19, Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto (Calif.) cyber-security company whose terrorism analysis software is used by the Pentagon and the CIA, reached out to HBGary Federal and another security firm, Virginia-based Berico Technologies, with a tempting offer. Palantir said it had been approached by Hunton & Williams, a century-old firm with ties to the Republican Party and the defense industry. The firm needed investigative services on behalf of a high-profile, deep-pocketed client.

Barr and representatives from the other companies discussed the project via e-mail and visited Hunton & Williams in November to meet with Richard Wyatt, co-head of the firm's litigation group. A person who was at the meeting says Wyatt wore suspenders, smoked a cigar, and propped up his cowboy boots on his desk—a cartoonish vision of a D.C. power broker. But the security professionals were impressed when they learned the identity of the prospective client: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which had just backed a wave of successful conservative candidates for Congress. The Chamber, it seemed, had a public-relations problem: Activist organizations such as U.S. ChamberWatch, Velvet Revolution, and Change to Win were accusing it of financial improprieties and using foreign donations for political purposes. The Chamber believed all these grass-roots organizations were working in concert with the surreptitious backing of major unions. According to the e-mails released by Anonymous, Hunton & Williams was already amassing reams of information, including union rosters, and needed expert help in digesting the data. The security firms' mission, should they choose to accept it: Infiltrate the activist groups and their leadership, compile dossiers, and help the law firm "truly understand and eliminate emerging threats that could cause harm to their clients," according to a Team Themis document.

The team's members spent much of November working up their proposal. They highlighted how they would funnel their gleanings through Palantir Technologies' military-grade terrorist-tracking software. "We need to blow these guys away with descriptions of our capabilities," wrote Matthew Steckman, an engineer at Palantir, in one of the e-mails in the published documents. "Make them think that we are Bond, Q, and money penny [sic] all packaged up with a bow." Then there was the matter of price. Such private online espionage was hardly common practice, and there was no industry-standard pay scale. Team Themis landed on $2 million. For that sum, the client would get a "daily intelligence summary," "link diagrams," and "target impact analysis," among other services. Hunton & Williams, on behalf of the Chamber, balked at the price, so the security companies agreed to do a pilot on spec. (The law firm has not commented on the matter.) Hunton & Williams clearly saw potential in Team Themis. On Dec. 2, in a message with the subject line "Urgent: Opportunity," a partner at the firm asked the group to come up with a new plan, this time to combat WikiLeaks on behalf of a different prospective client—Bank of America, which believed WikiLeaks was about to publish a cache of its documents. (The Justice Dept., the e-mails suggested, had recommended that Bank of America hire Hunton & Williams.)

Barr took the lead in crafting what would become an infamous 24-slide PowerPoint presentation that called for a cyber-campaign of disinformation against WikiLeaks. The document analyzes WikiLeaks' server infrastructure, talks about planting news stories about the exposure of its confidential informants, and proposes online attacks. Some of the language is comical, like a verbal version of an old Spy Vs. Spy cartoon from Mad magazine: "Speed is crucial!" blares one slide. "The threat demands a comprehensive analysis capability now." A person familiar with the creation of the presentation said it was the result of late-night brainstorming, and that the security firms knew Bank of America would likely reject the most aggressive tactics.

As with the Chamber of Commerce scheme, the WikiLeaks proposal never got a final hearing. While HBGary Federal and the other security firms awaited a formal go-ahead from Hunton & Williams and its clients, Barr decided to deploy his new research techniques on Anonymous.

Anonymous has had a busy winter. The group, which appears to be less a formal organization than a loose coalition of tech-savvy radicals, attacked government websites in Egypt and Tunisia. It launched denial-of-service attacks on Amazon.com (AMZN), PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa (V) after those companies declined to do business with WikiLeaks. Barrett Brown, an unofficial spokesman for the group, says its goal is "a perpetual revolution across the world that goes on until governments are basically overwhelmed and results in a freer system." Barr had come to believe that companies would have to defend themselves against this anarchic sensibility using the same tactics as the mischief makers. He also believed he had the skills and experience to join the battle. His principal weapon was a method he developed to associate the real identities found in social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn with the anonymous profiles of hackers. So while Hunton & Williams weighed Team Themis's proposals, and with the ultimate fate of HBGary Federal hanging in the balance, Barr figured the time was right to demonstrate how social networks could yield an intelligence bonanza.

Barr began by hanging out in an online forum called Internet Relay Chat (IRC), using a fake identity. At the same time, on social networks, he "friended" people thought to be senior members of the Anonymous collective. Barr then compared the times that suspected hackers logged into IRC chat rooms anonymously and into their own identifiable social networking accounts. The exposed HBGary e-mails would later reveal that Barr's own employees thought he was overreaching and that they feared retribution from the vengeful Anonymous. But Barr plunged ahead. He proposed a talk at the RSA conference in San Francisco titled "Who Needs NSA when we have Social Media?" Then he promoted the talk by suggesting he would expose the identities of the primary members of the group. On Feb. 4, a Friday, Barr bragged to the Financial Times about his upcoming talk and claimed he had obtained the identities of the group's de facto leaders. Bad idea. As Stephen Colbert summed it up, lampooning the HBGary affair on his TV show, "Anonymous is a hornet's nest. And Barr said, 'I'm gonna stick my penis in that thing.' "
When hackers taunt, they often use the term "pwned"—as in, "I so pwned you, newbie." No one seems to agree where the word came from. Google it, and you'll find claims that it's a corruption of "owned," or that it's from a computer game, or maybe it's just a shortened form of the chess term "pawned." Whatever its origins, the term connotes humiliating domination by another person or group. That's roughly what happened next to Barr, Hoglund, and HBGary. Responding to Barr's public claims, the Anonymous hackers exploited a vulnerability in the software that ran HBGary Federal's website, obtained an encrypted list of the company's user names and passwords, and decoded them. Barr and some of his colleagues, Anonymous then discovered, had committed computer security's biggest sin: They used the same password on multiple accounts. The hackers commandeered Barr's Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, lacing both with obscenities. One of the passwords also opened the company's corporate Google account. Jackpot. In less than 48 hours after Barr's Financial Times interview appeared, the hackers had the keys to the kingdom. They immediately started downloading HBGary's e-mails. All told, Anonymous got hold of 60,000-plus—about 4.7 gigabytes worth, including attachments—and quickly put them all online in conveniently searchable form. The material details online security holes at HBGary clients and prospects such as Sony, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Disney, ConocoPhillips (COP), and dozens of others. The e-mails showed that DuPont (DD) was breached in 2009 (by the same hackers who hit Google) and again in late 2010. DuPont employees on a business trip to China even found that their laptops had been implanted with spyware while the hardware was supposedly locked inside a hotel safe.
In the ensuing days, Barr and Leavy, HBGary's president, took to IRC channels to plead with Anonymous for mercy. None was forthcoming. Members of the group and their supporters gleefully defaced and posted photos of Barr, published personal details about his family, tweeted his Social Security number, and generally gloated about pwning a professional adversary. They said the "ninja team" that hacked HBGary included a 16-year-old girl named Kayla. (Rumors online suggest that "Kayla" is actually a 26-year-old man living in New Jersey. Who's right? Not even Anonymous may know.) "We have no choice but to defend ourselves and defend WikiLeaks by these means," says Brown, the unofficial Anonymous spokesman. "This has just begun. We're absolutely at war now."

Meanwhile, the other members of Team Themis deny they wanted to push the operations as far as Barr did—despite the volumes of incriminating e-mails. Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp blames HBGary for conceiving the plot, decries any attempt to develop "offensive cyber capabilities," and has placed on leave Steckman, the engineer who coordinated with Team Themis. Palantir also issued a public apology to Glenn Greenwald, a Salon.com journalist who was singled out in a Themis proposal as a WikiLeaks defender and thus a possible target. In a statement, Berico Technologies says it "does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations, or individuals." At the same time, it cut ties with HBGary. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a press release that it's "incredulous that anyone would attempt to associate such activities with the Chamber," adding that it had not seen the incendiary proposals before they were made public. Morgan Stanley dropped HBGary as a security contractor. Barr never delivered his speech and when he tendered his resignation three weeks after the Anonymous attack, he said he was confident HBGary would be able to "weather this storm." As for Hoglund, even his friends in the security industry wonder how long HBGary can survive amid the onslaught of negative publicity. But the CEO claims his company has undergone a rigorous security review and is back on track. He says the hackers "made a hole-in-one from 200 yards away" and that it will never happen again. "They are nowhere near as sophisticated and scary and large as they would like people to think they are," he says.

And while the lesson of the HBGary saga may be that it's not always easy to tell the black hats from the white hats in the ambiguous game of computer security, Hoglund has no doubt which is which. "It will get worse," he says. "This whole event has only emboldened them. I hope this isn't the way the Internet has to be. Right now it's a domain of lawlessness. This is bigger than HBGary, than my company. Right now, the pendulum has swung way over to the bad guys' side

Sourse Bloomberg

Julian Assange and ‘cypherpunk’ connection

2011-03-09T05:13:00.000-08:00

source- robert manne

The world's best-known 'cypherpunk' has long been on a mission to stop governments watching our every move. It is said to be the key to understanding WikiLeaks. Although there are tens of thousands of articles on Julian Assange in the world's newspapers and magazines, no mainstream journalist so far has grasped the critical significance of the cypherpunks movement to Assange's intellectual development and the origin of WikiLeaks. The cypherpunks emerged from a meeting of minds in late 1992 in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Its founders were Eric Hughes, a brilliant Berkeley mathematician; Timothy C. May, an already wealthy former chief scientist at Intel who had retired at the age of 34; and John Gilmore, another already retired and wealthy computer scientist - once number five at Sun Microsystems - who had co-founded an organisation to advance the cause of cyberspace freedom, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They created a small group, which met monthly in Gilmore's office.

At one of the early meetings of the group, an editor at Mondo 2000, Jude Milhon, jokingly called them cypherpunks, a play on cyberpunk, the "high-tech, low-life" science-fiction genre. The name stuck. It soon referred to a vibrant emailing list, created shortly after the first meeting. At the core of the cypherpunk philosophy was the belief that the great question of politics in the age of the internet was whether the state would strangle individual freedom and privacy through its capacity for electronic surveillance or whether autonomous individuals would eventually undermine and even destroy the state through their deployment of electronic weapons newly at hand. Many cypherpunks were optimistic that the individual would ultimately triumph. Their optimism was based on developments in intellectual history and computer software: the invention in the mid-1970s of public-key cryptography by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, and the creation by Phil Zimmerman in the early 1990s of a program known as PGP, "Pretty Good Privacy". PGP democratised their invention and provided individuals, free of cost, access to public-key cryptography - and thus the capacity to communicate with others in near-perfect privacy. At the time the cypherpunks formed, the US Government strongly opposed the free circulation of public-key cryptography. It feared making it available would strengthen the hands of the espionage agencies of America's enemies abroad and of terrorists, organised criminals, drug dealers and pornographers at home.

One of the key projects of the cypherpunks was "remailers", software that made it impossible for governments to trace the passage from sender to receiver. Another key project was "digital cash", a means of disguising financial transactions. Almost all cypherpunks were anarchists who regarded the state as the enemy. Most but not all were anarchists of the right, or in US parlance, libertarians, who supported laissez-faire capitalism. The most authoritative political voice among the majority libertarian cypherpunks was Tim May, who, in 1994, composed a vast, truly remarkable document, Cyphernomicon. May thought the state to be the source of evil in history. Assange joined the cypherpunks email list in late 1995. There were many reasons he was likely to be attracted to them. Even before his arrest (for alleged hacking) he had feared the intrusion into his life of the totalitarian surveillance state. Assange believed that he had been wrongly convicted of what he called a "victimless crime". The struggle against victimless crimes - the right to consume pornography, to communicate in cyberspace anonymously, to distribute cryptographic software freely - was at the centre of the cypherpunks' political agenda. Moreover the atmosphere of the list was freewheeling - racism, sexism, homophobia were common.
Cypherpunks saw themselves as Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe. It must have been more than a little gratifying for a self-educated antipodean computer hacker, who had not even completed high school, to converse on equal terms with professors of mathematics, whiz-kid businessmen and some of the leading computer code-writers in the world. Assange contributed to the cypherpunks list from December 1995 until June 2002. Almost all his interventions have been placed on the internet. On the basis of what historians call primary evidence, the mind and character of Assange can be seen at the time of his obscurity. The first thing that becomes clear is the brashness. Over a technical dispute, he writes: "Boy are you a dummy." When someone asks for assistance in compiling a public list of hackers with handles, names, email addresses, Assange responds: "Are you on this list of morons?"

In a dispute over religion and intolerance, one cypherpunk had written: "Because those being hatefully intolerant have the 'right' beliefs as to what the Bible says. Am I a racist if I don't also include an example from the Koran?" "No, just an illiterate," Assange replied.

If one thing is clear from the cypherpunks list, it is that the young Assange did not suffer those he regarded as fools gladly. Some posts reflect his faith in the theory of evolution. Assange forwarded an article about the role played by the CIA in supplying crack gangs in Los Angeles. A cypherpunk responded: "I wish they'd get back to the business, but add an overt poison to the product. Clean out the shit from the cities. Long live Darwinism." "Darwinism is working as well as it ever was. You may not like it but shit is being selected for," Assange shot back. Other posts reflect his recent life experiences. Assange had helped Victoria police break a paedophile ring in 1993. On the cypherpunks list, he defended the circulation of child pornography on the internet on the grounds that it would cut the need for new production and make it easier for police to capture paedophiles. In another post, he expressed deep anger at perceived injustice regarding those with whom he identifies - convicted hackers.
One, Tsutomu Shimamura, had not only played a role in the hunting down of a notorious American fellow-hacker, Kevin Mitnick, but had even co-authored a book about it, Takedown. "This makes me ill. Tsutomu, when Mitnick cracks, will you dig up his grave and rent his hands out as ashtrays?"
Assange also posted on the reports of violence against another hacker, Ed Cummings, also known as Bernie S, imprisoned in the US. "I was shocked. I've had some dealings with the SS ... Those that abuse their power and inflict grave violence on others must be held accountable and their crimes deplored and punished in the strongest manner. Failure to do so merely creates an environment where such behaviour becomes predominant."

Where did Assange stand with regard to the radical cypherpunks agenda of Tim May? Assange was, if anything, even more absolute and extreme. In September 1996, Esther Dyson, the chair of the lobby group for freedom in cyberspace, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as being in favour of certain extremely limited restrictions on internet anonymity. On the cypherpunks list, a furious controversy, called "the Esther Dyson Fuss", broke out. Some cypherpunks defended Dyson, saying she had every right to argue a more nuanced position and it was healthy for individuals to speak their mind.
Assange went further. "Examining in detail Dyson's interests, it appears she maintains a sizeable and longstanding interest in East European technology companies. She is also very far to the right of the political spectrum (rampant capitalist would be putting it mildly). She also speaks Russian. "I'm not saying she's been working for the CIA for the past decade, but I would be very surprised if the CIA has not exerted quite significant pressure ... in order to bring her into their folds." "At least you don't accuse me of being a communist," Dyson responded. "I am not a tool of the CIA nor have they pressured me, but there's no reason for you to believe me." When Assange was in trouble last year, she wrote a piece on the Salon website arguing that even unpleasant characters need to be defended. From beginning to end Assange was, in short, a hardline member of the tendency among the cypherpunks that Tim May called the "rejectionists" - an enemy of those who displayed even the slightest tendency to compromise on the question of Big Brother and the surveillance state. On another question, however, Assange was at the opposite end of the cypherpunks spectrum from May. At no stage did Assange show sympathy for the anarcho-capitalism of the cypherpunks mainstream. In October 1996, a prominent cypherpunk, Duncan Frissell, claimed that in the previous fiscal year the US Government had seized more tax than any Government in history. Assange pointed out that, as the US was the world's largest economy and that its GDP had grown in the previous year, this was a ridiculous statement and deceptive.
In October 2001, Declan McCullagh expressed "surprise" when a "critique of laissez-faire capitalism" appeared on the cypherpunks list "of all places". Assange replied: "Declan, Declan. Put away your straw man ... Nobel economic laureates have been telling us for years to be careful about idealised market models This years [sic] Nobel for Economics won by George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence and Joseph E.Stiglitz 'for their analysis of markets with assymmetric [sic] information' is typical. "You don't need a Nobel to realise that the relationship between a large employer and employee is brutally assymmetric [sic] ... To counter this sort of assymetery. [sic] Employees naturally start trying to collectivise to increase their information processing and bargaining power. That's right. UNIONS Declan."
Assange was, then, an absolutist crypto-anarchist but one who leaned decidedly to the left. There is also evidence he was increasingly repelled by the corrosive cynicism common in cypherpunks ranks. From 1997 to 2002 Assange accompanied all his cypherpunks postings with this beautiful passage from Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." Another time, a cypherpunk suggested that in the great struggle for privacy and against censorship ordinary people could not give a damn. In what was one of his final cypherpunks postings, Assange responded: "The 95 per cent of the population which comprise the flock have never been my target and neither should they be yours; it's the 2.5 per cent at either end of the normal that I find in my sights, one to be cherished and the other to be destroyed."
Increasingly, Assange began to mock Tim May.

Many thought of May as an antisemite, with good reason. In November 2001, when May used a quote from a cypherpunk fellow traveller, David Friedman, Assange emailed: "Quoting Jews again, Tim?"

Assange was a regular contributor to the cypherpunks mailing list, particularly before its decline in late 1997 after a meltdown over the question of the possible moderation of the list - censorship! and the departure of John Gilmore. The cypherpunks list clearly mattered to him deeply. Shortly before his travels in 1998, Assange asked whether anyone could send him a complete archive of the list between 1992 and the present. While commentators have failed to see the significance of the cypherpunks in shaping the thought of Assange, this is something insiders to the movement understand. When Jeanne Whalen from the Wall Street Journal approached John Young, of Cryptome, in August last year, he advised her to read the Assange cypherpunk postings he had just placed on the internet, and also Tim May's Cyphernomicon. "This background has not been explored in the WikiLeaks saga. And WikiLeaks cannot be understood without it." Likewise, in his mordant online article on WikiLeaks and Assange, the influential cyberpunk novelist and author of The Hacker Crackdown, Bruce Sterling wrote: "At last - at long last - the homemade nitroglycerin in the old cypherpunks blast shack has gone off."

Fewer than 20 years ago Julian Assange was sleeping rough. Even a year ago hardly anyone knew his name. Today he is one of the best-known and most-respected human beings on earth. Assange was the overwhelming winner of the popular vote for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” and Le Monde’s less politically correct “Man of the Year”. If Rupert Murdoch, who turns 80 this month, is the most influential Australian of the postwar era, Julian Assange, who will soon turn 40, is undoubtedly the most consequential Australian of the present time. julian asange,Murdoch’s importance rests in his responsibility for injecting, through Fox News, the poison of rabid populist conservatism into the political culture of the United States; Assange’s in the revolutionary threat his idea of publishing damaging documentary information sent by anonymous insiders to WikiLeaks poses to governments and corporations across the globe.

My experience at Null con

2011-03-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

The recently concluded Null con seminar for hackers was my first experience and first ever hackers seminar I have attended. Before reaching there I had all sort of mixed thoughts in my mind. However, I was excited to meet all those loving and hating hacker friends on my Facebook and experience the vibes of their world.

I and my team entered the seminar hall and tried to locate any known face. And then, a thin, humble and cute guy named Murtuja noticing me came and shook hands with us. Since we were one of the sponsors of the event, I regularly interact with him online. Young guys all around and enthusiastic ambience made me feel that my visit was not worthless. One thing which kept my mind very busy was to understand the meaning of the event’s name Null con. Because if we go by dictionary, Null means illogical or worthless and CON meaning defraud, cheat etc… Thus, Null con would mean worthless defraud? This name was sulking me somewhere but finally I got the answer on their website…It said:

Long time ago the land of mortals was plagued with numerals. Men were grappling to get hold of the unknown, the void, the zilch. How does one quantify, measure something that doesn’t exist. The legend goes like this – A few good blokes meditating under a banyan tree further under the influence of some nourishing herbs, in a profound moment of awesomeness, it dawned on them to seek the eternal wisdom of ...nothing. And so was born what we call 0零nullnu . The rest, as they say, is history. Nullcon celebrates this quest for knowledge and desire to carry on this legacy. If you too share this passion for knowledge, if a core dump brings glimmer to your eyes, if you want to share your hack with others and you have an inquisitiveness to learn, then nullcon is the place for you. If meeting hackers/researchers/phreaks in a 2 days event packed conference and the sun-bathed beaches of the tropical paradise called Goa won’t get you off your bed, nothing ever will.

That’s true what they have said. The way they have explained is simple and appropriate. I must appreciate these young organizers Murtuja, Corrupt, Aseem Jakhad and few other chapters of nullcon for conducting such a well-organized seminar. Everything was taken care off; mind blowing arrangements outstanding choice of speakers was something worth watching. The dignitaries invited were quite high profiled people. Even though this was just their second seminar, it was really worth applauding…

I couldn’t attend many speakers on the first day of the seminar but whomever I attended, the best out of them was Hari Prasad. Having very good oratory skills and experience, his subject of speech was Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines: Memoirs of a whistleblower. He was the one arrested and released. He was a very calm and down to earth speaker. Elections in India are conducted almost exclusively using electronic voting machines developed over the past two decades by a pair of government-owned companies. These devices, known in India as EVMs, have been praised for their simple design, ease of use, and reliability, but recently they have also been criticized following widespread reports of election irregularities. Despite this criticism, many details of the machines’ design have never been publicly disclosed, and they have not been subjected to a rigorous, independent security evaluation. In this paper, we present a security analysis of a real Indian EVM obtained from an anonymous source. We describe the machine’s design and operation in detail, and we evaluate its security in light of relevant election procedures. We conclude that in spite of the machines’ simplicity and minimal software trusted computing base, they are vulnerable to serious attacks that can alter election results and violate the secrecy of the ballot. We demonstrate two attacks, implemented using custom hardware, which could be carried out by dishonest election insiders or other criminals with only brief physical access to the machines. This case study carries important lessons for Indian elections and for electronic voting security more generally.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend Anurag Dhanda, Assaf Nativ , Sunil Kumar, Abhijeet Hatekar and Harsimran Walia’s speech but got very good feedback about their sessions.

Another pocket size power house was Rahul Sasi. Although he was lacking in communication skills and little shying by character, he was aggressively possessing command over his subject and had a composed personality. His presence made me remember the event of teacher’s day of my schooldays. Jokes apart… But, his command over Penetration Testing a Biometric System and the research work reveals the methodologies that could be aided in checking the security of a Finger Print Scanner, Remotely and Locally. The biometric system, almost all runs with a remote administration module in the MIPS, which would be connected to network via the same switch, Man in the Middle attacks is always possible and other attacks like: http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/11822/ but the issue of identifying these devices as normal network scans would only detect these as a Linux System. So he had built an Nmap script which could spot such devices on the network. The script works on the basis of internal databases of [banner and services] used by Biometric Hardware vendors, current list populates most used devices [India only]. A video or if possible, a real scenario would be demonstrated. And usage of Nmap module was usp of his session.

I found him great because there were so many over rated speakers present for the event. These are considered to be demi gods and patriotic hackers of this country but when it came one to one in giving presentation, there were many flaws like poor communication skills and monotonous way of explaining. The feel was as good as attending some so called ethical hacking introductory seminars.

Saumil Shah, a witty, humorous and having very lively personality did his presentation in a very simple and sober manner. Simple expressions, good explanations and research were superb. It was quite a play way method of teaching and sharing. Even a noob like me could understand nicely. Attack techniques have undergone a paradigm shift. 2000 was the year of the “full frontal” attack, as he calls it, the first line of defence and the network perimeter. What I liked about this speaker was his easy go attitude, his interaction and communicative skills. His way of relating things and explaining made it for the audience to understand. His talk explores some innovative exploit delivery techniques arising out of broken standards, poor trust relationships and bloated desktop software. This talk ends with a discussion on exploit sophistication and the shape of things to come for 2011.

Yarochkin Fyodor, another sweetheart and a black hat hacker conveyed his message very smartly to whomever he wanted. His speech left me speechless…No bullshit on underground crime: traces, trends, attribution techniques and more. We’ve been analyzing underground crime scenes from eastern European block and China for past few years, on the top of it we’ve been working heavily on discovering malware outbreaks and other crime activities, His experience and findings were discussed brilliantly. In short he really took my heart away.

I must say Saumil, Hari Prasad and Fyodor were the show stoppers of the seminar.

long awaited but most disappointing presentation was of Alokji (NTRO). It was like the same old wine in new bottle. Same excuses, same narration and when it came to the time of interaction, he left his audience craving for digging graves of lapses in securities on GOVT front. As nullcon Dwitiya approached its end. Mr P.V. Kumar (Chairman, NTRO) the chief guest on the second day delivered his message in typical government officer’s style. Just as one of the formality but worth appreciating fact was he marked his presence there.

Whatever it is, I am glad that I could meet many people. Nullcon has really become a major security event in the Indian subcontinent. I am also sure they will attract the who's who in the security industry. The good bye session was little painful because second day was the day when everyone had started knowing each other better but ultimately that was last day of the seminar. I am sure that, there are many like me who left the venue eagerly waiting for another nullcon to happen with heavy heart and withdrawal symptoms...

One thing more which I would like to say is that there is no intention of mine to criticize or demoralise somebody. Whatever I said is completely based on my true thoughts and feelings as far without wrong motives or reasons.

keep it up guys…

My experience at Null con

2011-03-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

Long time ago the land of mortals was plagued with numerals. Men were grappling to get hold of the unknown, the void, the zilch. How does one quantify, measure something that doesn’t exist. The legend goes like this – A few good blokes meditating under a banyan tree further under the influence of some nourishing herbs, in a profound moment of awesomeness, it dawned on them to seek the eternal wisdom of ...nothing. And so was born what we call 0|零|null|n|u . The rest, as they say, is history. Nullcon celebrates this quest for knowledge and desire to carry on this legacy. If you too share this passion for knowledge, if a core dump brings glimmer to your eyes, if you want to share your hack with others and you have an inquisitiveness to learn, then nullcon is the place for you. If meeting hackers/researchers/phreaks in a 2 days event packed conference and the sun-bathed beaches of the tropical paradise called Goa won’t get you off your bed, nothing ever will.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend Anurag Dhanda, Assaf Nativ , Sunil Kumar, Abhijeet Hatekar and Harsimran Walia’s speech but got very good feedback about their sessions.

Long awaited but most disappointing presentation was of Alokji (NTRO). It was like the same old wine in new bottle. Same excuses, same narration and when it came to the time of interaction, he left his audience craving for digging graves of lapses in securities on GOVT front. As nullcon Dwitiya approached its end. Mr P.V. Kumar (Chairman, NTRO) the chief guest on the second day delivered his message in typical government officers style. Just as one of the formality but worth appreciating fact was he marked his presence there.

Whatever it is, I am glad that I could meet many people. Nullcon has really become a major security event in the Indian subcontinent. I am also sure they will attract the who's who in the security industry. The good bye session was little painful because second day was the day when everyone had started knowing each other better butultimately was last day of the seminar. I am sure that, there are many like me who left the venue eagerly waiting for another nullcon to happen with heavy heart and withdrawal symptoms...

Keep it up guys…

Blocking out bloggers

2011-03-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

The blocking of a blogging website, even if only for a short period, raises the disturbing question of curbs imposed on free speech in India through executive fiat. There is a clear pattern of Internet censorship that is inconsistent with constitutional guarantees on freedom of expression. It is also at odds with citizen aspirations in the age of new media. What is worrying is that the rules governing online publication are being tinkered with periodically to facilitate such filtering. This is done under the Information Technology Act, 2000. The Department of Information Technology recently published the draft Information Technology (Due diligence observed by intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011 that specifically mark bloggers for scrutiny, and require intermediaries such as service providers not to themselves host or publish any information. Evidently, this can be interpreted to cover blogs and other websites. What is worse, the rules propose to authorise the intermediaries to remove access to ‘infringing' material if they themselves have actual knowledge or are asked to do so by a mandated authority. These are retrogressive provisions that weaken constitutional freedoms and the parent law. As it stands, the IT Act merely requires the intermediary to exercise due diligence and does not talk of not hosting or publishing information. Ideally, the only criterion online publications should have to meet is compliance with the general laws of the land.

The emergence of the WikiLeaks phenomenon and the use of online tools in North Africa and West Asia to inform and organise people underscore the power of citizen publishing. This is a new reality governments must learn to live with. Conflicts are bound to arise if the rules for online publication are modified specifically to prevent such publication. For instance, draft rule 3(2)(a) for intermediaries requires the user not to publish or display information that belongs to another person. Potentially, secret documents ferreted out by investigative journalists or whistleblowers in the public interest may be interpreted to belong to a third party — and blocked from the public domain. It is inconceivable that such a restriction could be applied to traditional media, which have a robust record of exposing corruption in high places. What all this makes clear is the need for wide public debate on any move to impose restrictions on online publishing. It is unacceptable that access to some websites is blocked through executive orders issued by technical bodies such as the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, with no explanation on why such action was taken

source Hindu

Hackers are a great predictor of the future

2011-03-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

Hacker5 got three precious awards in four months of its publication. Initially we were very much confused when we started this magazine. None of us were hacker, we were just new to this filed and the groups of hackers associated with it were newbees too and so they misused this platform. This magazine was started with an intention to provide platform to hackers and voice their opinion. But section of hackers in Hacker5 team had disputes over holding powers; finally they were evicted because management was not in a position to compromise with the reputation of this magazine.
Show must go on, no matter some come some go, every beginning has a hitch and that hiccup is the foot hold for further growth, r45c4l ( Gaurav Singh) came in and took charge as associate editor and things fell in place. Good writers started contributing. That's how we not only got settled but also gained popularity, readership and appreciations.
Now our Magazine is reaching almost every possible city. Apart from this we have 1,985 individual subscribers for the same. This month onwards we will be seen in Indian airlines flight too. We could also reach Nullcon by sponsoring hacker's seminar in Goa. Now, the magazine has reached to some level of standards and has its own committed reader.
If society, and life itself for that matter, always move towards that far unseen shore of discovery, then it is the process of extrapolation, that immeasurably small dance of creation, which propels it ever forward to the bigger breakthroughs. We now live, thankfully, in a world where innovative ideas, regardless of their origin, are rewarded instead of being suppressed as they were in the past. Here's a good illustration of what I'm talking about. Medieval notions quite often laid waste brilliant discoveries that were stated in haste, But the world is round one cried while in a heretics fire he fried,
For his theories were just not in good taste.
Those who enjoy experimenting with hacking explore software and hardware more than a security persona; the most important fact is that hackers work on new technologies for the sheer enjoyment of it. They have ability to exploit possible best technologies available in the market. Programmers who remixed data from different websites well before Web companies started offering similar applications and services, and the community wireless networks created long before Wi-Fi was a common feature in coffee shops and homes.
As for current activities that might make the mainstream in the future, money is on hardware hacking and collective intelligence. The projects like the Quake Catcher Network, which uses standard laptop sensors to detect earthquakes. This is a very different future in which all of these applications are being driven by sensors. We are moving out of the world in which people typing on keyboards will drive collective intelligence applications. It's high time we need to take a call to apply such technologies to the more serious problems facing the world, such as those presented by climate change. The Man Watching," which concludes, "Winning does not tempt that man.
Coming back to the point, I would like to again emphasize this magazine is platform for every hacker to display his skill, voice his opinion and fulfill his dreads as write.

Forensics in Cloud Computing

2011-03-06T05:56:00.000-08:00

Nowadays almost every considerable proportion of our day to day business operations are conducted via computer, it is likely that you use a range of software, such as a word processor, email client, accounting package and client relationship management tool and endless things. There is usually a purchase cost involved in licensed software, and that extend to further costs and man hours associated with repairing, updating and upgrading the software as and when necessary. But since there could be hundreds, thousands or even millions of subscribers, it is possible for the application to be offered with no user-end maintenance required at a comparatively low cost. With cloud computing, the application is hosted on a central server, which means that updates and maintenance can be carried out by the provider, and the costs spread between all the users in the form of a subscription fee. 'Cloud computing' addresses this issue by moving away from 'software' applications installed on the client's computer and instead offering access to the applications via the internet, Proponents of the cloud ecosystem touts its "vastness, flexibility and scalability as advantages for the implementation of cloud services.

However, from a digital point of view this can be a veritable forensic challenge as we view the cloud in terms of its scope and diversity. Within the digital forensic process where there is a no one-size-fits-all solution for a digital forensic examination, all forensic evidence must follow the Forensic process of Collection - Examination - Analysis - Reporting.

Within the cloud computing ecosystem there may be a dilemma in terms of time stamps. A question for cloud vendors would be, with a distributed and "vast" infrastructure how will they ensure synchronized clocks across all their systems? Synchronized clocks across a distributed global system may not be a possibility, and if this supposition holds true, then what other solution will a cloud vendor provide in such an instance? Another challenge can be with that of reciprocity. Digital forensics within the cloud computing environment can have legal implications within an international jurisdiction which will require corporation from established relationships with legal entities in foreign countries and/or the establishment of new ones if possible.

As with any live forensic examination another challenge will be the establishing of snapshots of the system in operation. But in this case one can question if this is good enough for such a "vast" and possibly globally distributed ecosystem. Take the instance of malware injected into the kernel space of a system; it is possible that it may be programmed to modify data or functionality...or both, in a variety of ways upon detection of a probe, or simply set to shut-down, obfuscate evidence, or delete pertinent data residues within a set time frame. Can a forensic examiner be notified of this change, or more pertinent can a cloud service provider implement protocols, tools or processes to ensure that such an event can be mitigated in real time? At least, not for now.

However a solution of sorts to this dilemma can be gleaned from thesis suggested in a paper by Wolthusen states that: Data may be present or available in a given configuration for a limited time or be staged through different levels of storage hierarchies; it is hence important to place bounds on events in question so as to be able to capture events of interest completely.

In terms of the "vast" distributed environment that can comprise a cloud ecosystem under investigation; we have to be aware of the fact that within such an ecosystem, any forensic investigation can cause: parallel or unrelated services to be interrupted to completed halted, infringe on third party rights and cross jurisdictional boundaries and in the case of duplication require infeasible storage volumes. A key challenge to a digital investigator called to pursue an investigation with cloud resources as a subset will be to establish and map computational and storage structures that will fall within the realm of the investigation. Bear in mind that for any system (cloud or otherwise) security incidents will cross boundaries of responsibility and access. As increasing numbers of businesses move their operations into the cloud, computer crime investigators are not only presented with new benefits, but also problems. Computer forensic investigations involve the scientific analysis of computer equipment to recover legally admissible evidence. In an instance where the security of a firm's digital data has been compromised, computer forensics experts might be called in to analyse each computer terminal involved for evidence, the first stage of which is to carefully replicate the contents of each drive exactly so that original evidence cannot be contaminated.
This process can be very time consuming but if the information is all stored within the cloud, then a simple click of the mouse could potentially produce an exact image of the current state of the firm's data, allowing the investigation to progress much more quickly. However, there is also a downside to cloud computing. If an application is accessed via the cloud, registry entries (which record user activity) and other useful artifacts such as temporary files will be stored within the virtual environment and so lost when the user exits, making evidence traditionally stored on the hard drive potentially unrecoverable. In response to this, some commentators have suggested that the information could be provided by the application vendor on request from law enforcement officials, but this too poses problems. The recovery of computer-based evidence in the UK must follow a strict, auditable procedure as laid out by the Association of Chief Police Officers, so it may be that information extracted by non-experts could be unintentionally contaminated and thus rendered inadmissible in a court of law. In addition, while the confiscation of physical computer equipment following an arrest is relatively straightforward, the legal process required to gain access to private data held online is more complicated, so this could put a delay on investigations where the recovery of evidence is typically time critical.

At present, there is no foolproof, universal method for extracting evidence in an admissible fashion from cloud-based applications, and in some cases, very little evidence is available to extract. As such, cloud computing represents just one of the fast-paced technological developments that is presenting an ongoing challenge to legislators, law enforcement officials and computer forensic analysts think that cloud computing would add to the complexity of your computer forensics program? The resounding answer to this is no, by leveraging the inbuilt abilities of cloud computing, computer forensics becomes an “on demand” service. One of the very nice things about cloud computing is that you basically exist in an on demand system, so if you are served with a preservation letter, or other legal reasons to preserve an environment, you can easily backup your environment and put it onto the cloud for the investigators to use, while the normal course of business happens. This also means that all the data stores or other information that investigators will require also be cryptographically hashed much easier and much quicker using the on demand resources in the cloud.

The forensics tools can also be in their own off shoot of the environment allowing for very tight control over who has access to those tools and how they will be used. There are definite advantages to having a separate investigation environment for all the resources that are on the same cloud. Costs can be contained by making direct DVD copies from the investigation environment as needed or when needed making the process much more portable as well if information has to be turned over to the legal department or other investigators. This is the reason that cloud computing is compelling, a near instant backup of an environment with the ability to expand and contract at will rather than leaving resources in the data center unused waiting for something that might happen infrequently. This kind of on demand service also runs at the speed of the cloud making the process much quicker when doing a bit by bit copy. These realizable advantages to cloud computing security as a service will also make the business office happier because they are only paying for space they are using, and can allocate waiting resources for something else saving the company money in the longer run.

WikiLeaks hacker 'The Jester' to blame for Westboro DDoS attacks

2011-03-01T00:22:00.000-08:00

Things not seen by many - > Anonymous N th3j35t3r

Infamous hacker ->The Jester<-(anti-jihadi hacker) has claimed responsibility for the distributed denial of-service attacks which crashed the web site run by the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. It was widely reported last week that Anonymous sent an open message to Fred Phelps and his family at Westboro Baptist Church last week. The hacker collective supposedly put the Phelp clan on notice. Anonymous later posted an emergency press release on the same site saying that Westboro wrote the initial letter itself in an attempt to entrap the hacking group. In an online debate on the David Pakman show, an Anonymous spokesperson denied that it was directly responsible. A spokesperson for Westboro Baptist Church taunted the Anonymous spokesperson to the point that the Anonymous group posted a message during the interview.

IT HAS NOW EMERGED THAT ' PATRIOTIC HACKER' The Jester was responsible for the attack.

-The jester-

The Jester, who it is suspected has strong military connections, first came to light during the WikiLeaks US cable saga when he took the site down for the leaks, which he considered had put US soldiers' lives at risk. The Jester is known for his prior attacks on militant jihadi websites, and his innovative DoS technique in which he employs an application-level attack that exploits an inherent flaw in the majority of servers which can be executed with one single low-spec machine. his campaign against militant Islamic websites, and now reveals the development of an automated version of his DoS attack, which he calls the XerXeS project.The Jester’s intentions are explained in detail on his blog, in a post dating from September. In the post, the Jester describes the flaws of Wikileaks’ “insurance policy,” which consisted of making available an encrypted file, supposedly containing the secret documents that were leaked afterward. The file is useless without a decryption key, which would be provided by Wikileaks in case someone takes the site down .The Jester said at the time that it took down WikiLeaks ‘for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops and other assets' XerXes uses a graduated attack - which usually takes a site down in less than 30seconds .but if it can't take the target out in 30 seconds, it triggers the al and adjusts the attack.

Westboro Baptist Church has made a name for itself by staging vocal protests at the funerals of U.S. military members killed in action, though the message delivered at the protests are generally anti-homosexual in nature and have little to do with the conflicts in the Middle East. Anonymous members and The Jester have publicly traded jabs for several months, each threatening to undermine and expose the other's operations.

There has been a lot more coverage of the “hacktivist” group called Anonymous, as the group has gained notoriety from recent activity. There are rumors that Anonymous had acquired a new target. A website loosely affiliated with Anonymous had an open letter posted, which issued a stern warning to the Westboro Baptist Church. However, seems like to not be entirely genuine. Members of Anonymous have asserted the group has larger priorities than the little church known for its hate speech. Although, it wouldn't be a surprise if someone took out a pay day loan to use in their efforts to stop Westboro, it isn't hacktivist.
Strangely enough, they may have had a meeting of the minds when it comes to their mutual disdain for the Westboro Baptist Church, and it will be interesting to see if there is any subsequent softening of the rhetoric between the two parties.

_________some old jigs describes ____________
thejester posted a message to #anon00ps on his blog saying

'A small team of A players can run circles round a giant team of B and C players.’ – Steve Jobs Well it’s been a really interesting December. As most of you will be aware, I have taken a break from my usual activities to play with Anonymous/Op Payback. And in turn they have been [...]'

(according to the media) anon is having so much trouble trying to find out who exactly The Jester is

A - he started jerking the jihadis’ chains when he came back from Afghanistan, had time on his hands, wanted to keep his hand in the game while waiting for his next contract. Suspect he was a contractor in Afghanistan doing Information Operations, and that he got that gig because of active duty experience in Special Forces, Psychological Operations, Signal or possibly Civil Affairs.

Assuming the above speculation is fairly close to the truth, more or less, one might further speculate that Assange pissed The Jester off and he did unto Wikileaks as he had done unto jihadislong back Anonymous Turns Operation Payback Towards 'The Jester'.the more direct reason was may be the attack on wikileaks by 'jester'

Now...
Anonymous is claiming that it was The Jester that took the sites down, not them.whatever both are against wbc. Thejester is a Jester for all the “BAD GUYS” and Anonymous r defenders of truth and justice, both fights for justice and bad guys! even though they don't work together but they fight for same objective... this make The Jester and Anonymous friends now

I support the Jester! and i do support anonymous - keep up the great work!
the Jester is walking a fine line and anonymous always with it.., i also like that every time someone else supports Jester,
the Anonymous, we are many n growing everyday

I salute you for your contributions.

- Open your heart and speak out ... comments are welcome

post by Kai Farmer

NewsMakers achievers

2011-03-01T00:10:00.000-08:00

Nomination Categories

http://www.newsmakers.co.in/gallery.html

Media Category
• Best journalist
• Best anchor
• Best news channel
• Best entertainment channel
• http://www.newsmakers.co.in/gallery.html

Best publications
• Hindi
• Marathi
• Gujrathi
• English
• Tamil
• Telgu
• Bangla

Government Sector Awards
• Best IAS officer
• Best IPS officer
• Best Political debutant
• Best Performing Maharashtra CM
• Best Mumbai Mayor
• Best Doctor
• Best Hospital

Business Leaders Awards
• Best Entrepreneur
• Best Fashion designer
• Best Theme Hotel
• Best Builder
• Best Shipping Company
• Best IT security agency
• Best Writers
• Best Performing Artist
• Best Lawyer
• Best Spiritual Guide
• Best Sports Person
• Best Entertainer
• Best Jewellers
• Best Director
• Best Singer
• Best Social worker
• Best astrologer

Education Awards
• Best Teacher
• Best School
• Best Parallel Education centre

Cyber world
*Best ethical hacker
* Cyber security agency
* Best hacking seminars

http://www.nbcvoice.com/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=173&video_id=46

send in your nominations for news makers achievers

world's smallest computer system

2011-02-27T03:56:00.000-08:00

Scientists have created the world's smallest computer system that is just one square millimetre in size and can fit into ones eyeball.Developed by a team of scientists, the unnamed tiny device is just one square millimetre in size but packs a hefty punch, containing an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory and a thin film battery.Developed by a team at the University of Michigan, the unnamed tiny device is a pressure monitor that can be implanted in a person's eye to treat glaucoma. It may be just one square millimetre in size but packs a hefty punch, containing an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory and a thin film battery, the Daily Mail reported.It also has a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device, the researchers said. The device is already being touted as the future of the computing industry, although it needs several more years to be commercially available.Its creators, Professors Dennis Sylvester, David Blaauw and David Wentzloff, claim that as the radio of the device needs no tuning to find the right frequency it could link to a wireless network of computers. A network of such units could one day track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable, the scientists said.Prof Sylvester said: "When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices. The next big challenge is to achieve millimetre-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be tens to hundreds of them per person and its this per capita increase that fuels the semi-conductor industry's growth. Currently, the system is a pressure monitor designed to be implanted in the eye to continuously track the progress of glaucoma, a potentially blinding disease."The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers Phoenix chip, which uses a unique design and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption. The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts. To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to 10 hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight.It can store up to a week's worth of information. While this system is miniscule and complete, its radio doesn't equip it to talk to other similar devices, which is an important feature for any system targeted towards wireless sensor networks. Forget search engines, try the new 'answer engines'The "answer engine" breaks new ground by giving direct answers to questions.Forget search engines, try the new 'answer engines'. Computer wizards have claimed that by using a 'cutting-edge' technology they have created a clever website that gives direct answers to direct questions. According to creators, "trueknowledge.com" site is an Internet "answer engine" which breaks new ground by giving direct answers to questions. Co-founder William Tunstall-Pedoe, who is based in Cambridge, said the website is a "phone-a-friend" on the Internet which can answer "trillions" of questions."What's new is that it is a website which answers the question," the Daily Mail quoted Tunstall-Pedoe as saying."It doesn't give you references to articles mentioning the words in the question. It gives you the answer. Ask it when Bob Dylan's birthday is and it will simply tell you. And it if doesn't know the answer it will say it doesn't know. "It doesn't know everything but as we input more information it will know more and more."
"It's cutting-edge use of computers. It uses unique semantic technology, which has been many years in development."It understands user questions, represents knowledge in a way that the system can understand and process and can combine existing knowledge to infer new facts and answer questions it has never seen before."Powering the platform is also a database of facts: a unified representation of the world's knowledge containing factual, common sense and lexical knowledge."We can already answer trillions of questions and as this knowledge base grows, we understand and answer more and more," he added. Moscow: After 257 days in a locked steel capsule, researchers on a mock trip to Mars ventured from their cramped quarters recently in heavy space suits, trudging into a sand-covered room to plant flags on a simulated Red Planet.The crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese entered a network of modules at a Moscow research centre last June to imitate the 520-day flight and see how they handle the constricted, isolating conditions of space travel minus the weightlessness.Several participants donned 30-kilogram suits to perform the mock landing on Monday in an adjacent capsule. They planted the flags of Russia, China and the European Space Agency, took samples from the ground and conducted faux scientific experiments.All systems have been working normally. The crew are feeling fine, said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian space agency.Psychologists said long confinement would put the team members under stress as they grow increasingly tired of each others' company. Psychological conditions can even be more challenging on a mock mission than a real flight because the crew won't experience any of the euphoria or dangers of actual space travel. Davydov described the experiment as an important part of preparation for flight to Mars and predicted that the real mission could take place in about 20 years, but only with international cooperation. Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way. At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist, scientists announced. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope. Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope. Kepler science chief William Borucki says scientists took the number of planets they found in the first year of searching a small part of the night sky and then made an estimate on how likely stars are to have planets. Kepler spots planets as they pass between Earth and the star it orbits.
So far Kepler has found 1,235 candidate planets, with 54 in the Goldilocks zone, where life could possibly exist. Kepler's main mission is not to examine individual worlds, but give astronomers a sense of how many planets, especially potentially habitable ones, there are likely to be in our galaxy. They would use the one-four-hundredth of the night sky that Kepler is looking at and extrapolate from there. Borucki and colleagues figured one of two stars has planets and one of 200 stars has planets in the habitable zone, announcing these ratios Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. And that's a minimum because these stars can have more than one planet and Kepler has yet to get a long enough glimpse to see planets that are further out from the star, like Earth, Borucki said.

Census of stars: This file picture shows part of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from Australia. Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way. At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope. For example, if Kepler were 1,000 light years from Earth and looking at our sun and noticed Venus passing by, there's only a one-in-eight chance that Earth would also be seen, astronomers said.To get the estimate for the total number of planets, scientists then took the frequency observed already and applied it to the number of stars in the Milky Way.For many years scientists figured there were 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, but last year a Yale scientist figured the number was closer to 300 billion stars.Either way it shows that Carl Sagan was right when he talked of billions and billions of worlds, said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, who praised the research but wasn't part of it.And that's just our galaxy. Scientists figure there are 100 billion galaxies.Borucki said the new calculations lead to worlds of questions about life elsewhere in the cosmos. "The next question is why haven't they visited us?" The Hubble Space Telescope revealed this majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841.Seen above is a bright cusp of starlight marks the galaxy's centre. Spiralling outward are dust lanes that are silhouetted against the population of whitish middle-aged stars. Much younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.Notably missing are pinkish emission nebulae indicative of new star birth. It is likely that the radiation and supersonic winds from fiery, super-hot, young blue stars cleared out the remaining gas (which glows pink), and hence shut down further star formation in the regions in which they were born. NGC 2841 currently has a relatively low star formation rate compared to other spirals that are ablaze with emission nebulae.NGC 2841 lies 46 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This image was taken in 2010 through four different filters on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Wavelengths range from ultraviolet light through visible light to near-infrared light.
This image shows a bright arc of scattered light (white) from the protoplanetary disk around the young star LkCa 15 (centre, masked out with a dark circle). The arc’s sharp inner edge traces the outline of a wide gap in the disk. The gap is decidedly lopsided – it is markedly wider on the left side – and has most likely been carved out of the disk by one or more newborn planets that orbit the star.Planets form in disks of dust and gas that surround young stars. A look at the birth places means a journey into the past of the earth and its siblings. Now, astronomers have been able to obtain detailed images of the proto-planetary disks of two stars using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii.This is the first time that disk structures comparable in size to our own solar system have been resolved this clearly, revealing features such as rings and gaps that are associated with the formation of giant planets. The observations are part of a systematic survey to search for planets and disks around young stars using a state-of-the-art high-contrast camera designed specifically for this purpose.Planetary systems like our own share a humble origin as mere by-products of star formation. A newborn star's gravity gathers leftover gas and dust in a dense, flattened disk of matter orbiting the star. Clumps in the disk sweep up more and more material, until their own gravity becomes sufficiently strong to compress them into the dense bodies we know as planets. Recent years have seen substantial advances both in observations (mostly indirect) and in theoretical modelling of such "protoplanetary" disks. The two new observations have added intriguing new details, revealing some structures that had never before been seen directly.

One of the two studies targeted the star LkCa 15, which is located around 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. At an age of a few million years, LkCa 15 is a young star - the Sun is a thousand times older. From previous observations of its infrared spectrum and its millimetre emissions, scientists had deduced the presence of a large gap in the centre of its protoplanetary disk. The new images show starlight gleaming off the disk surface, clearly outlining the sharp edge of the gap for the first time. Most interestingly, the elliptical shape of the gap is not centred on the star, but appears lopsided.
A sketch of the three-dimensional shape of the protoplanetary disk around the star LkCa 15. Only the light reflected from the outer disk (shown in yellow) is seen on the HiCIAO images. The other structural features have been inferred from previous indirect observations of the system. The large gap between the inner and the outer disk has most likely been carved out by one or more newborn planets that orbit the star. The planets themselves have not been detected – yet."The most likely explanation for LkCa 15's disk gap, and in particular its asymmetry, is that one or more planets, freshly born from the disk material, have swept up the gas and dust along their orbits," says Christian Thalmann, who led the study while on staff at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). Intriguingly, the disk gap is sufficiently large to accommodate the orbits of all the planets in our own Solar System. It is therefore tempting to speculate that LkCa 15 might be in the process of forming an entire planetary system much like our own. "We haven't detected the planets themselves yet", adds Thalmann. "But that may change soon."
The second observation, led by Jun Hashimoto (National Observatory of Japan), targeted the star AB Aur in the constellation Auriga, at a distance of 470 light-years from Earth. This star is even younger, with an age of a mere one million years. The observations were the first to show details down to length scales comparable to the size of our own solar system - for comparison: At a distance of 470 light-years, the solar system has the same apparent size as a 1 Euro coin viewed at a distance of more than 10 km. They show nested rings of material that are tilted with respect to the disk's equatorial plane, and whose material, intriguingly, is not distributed symmetrically around the star - irregular features that indicate the presence of at least one very massive planet.Both observations where made with the HiCIAO instrument at the 8.2 metre Subaru Telescope. Imaging a disk or planet close to a star is an enormous challenge, as it is very difficult to discern the light emitted by those objects in the star's intense glare. HiCIAO meets this challenge by correcting for the distorting influence of the Earth's atmosphere and by physically blocking out most of the star's light.
The observations are part of the SEEDS project, short for Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru. MPIA's managing director, Thomas Henning, one of the project's co-investigators, explains: "SEEDS is a five-year systematic search for exoplanets and protoplanetary disks. We are thrilled about the images the Subaru telescope has produced as part of this project. Detailed observations like these are the key to understanding how planetary systems, including our own solar system, came into being." SEEDS involves more than 100 researchers from 25 astronomical institutions in Asia (NAOJ and others), Europe (MPIA and others), and the US (Princeton University and others).

Facebook 'improves social skills'

2011-02-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

A study has suggested that Facebook can encourage people to be more sociable. The Cambridge University findings go against other studies which suggest using online social networking sites makes people less social. Researchers discovered Facebook gave people more choice on how they conduct relationships and was "a way of storing biography and enhancing social memory". The study showed many people used it to track people they liked or to find out what ex-partners were up to.
Members log on to Facebook to look at profiles and pictures because more information can be gleaned from it than a phone call or letter, the study said. But people also used it to keep in touch with old school and university friends who they might otherwise lose contact with. As a result it could change the way people associated at a fundamental level, meaning former relationships and associations can be revived, according to the study. The findings are based on focus groups with students and interviews. More than 15 people took part in focus groups and seven people had in-depth interviews about Facebook lasting several hours.

Baptist Church targeted by Anonymous

2011-02-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

What is Anonymous?

'Anonymous' describes itself as an 'internet gathering'. The term is used to describe a collective of people who come together online, commonly to stage a protest. The groups vary in size and make-up depending on the cause. Members often identify themselves in web videos by wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the book and film V for Vendetta.Its protests often take the form of disrupting websites and services. Its use of the term Anonymous comes from a series of websites frequented by members, such as the anarchic image board 4Chan.These allow users to post without having to register or provide a name. As a result, their comments are tagged "Anonymous". In the past, groups have staged high-profile protests against plans by the Australian government to filter the internet and the Church of Scientology. Many Anonymous protests tackle issues of free speech and preserving the openness of the net

Hacker group Anonymous appears to have singled out its next target - the controvesial anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in the US.An open letter, purporting to be from Anonymous, accused the church of bigotry and fanaticism.It warned that Westboro's websites would be attacked if the congregation did not stop its public protests.
In a defiant response, the church said it would not be silenced, and urged Anonymous to "bring it".Westboro Baptist Church has been widely condemned for its aggressive anti-gay campaigning.A number of US states have passed legislation, banning Westboro's members from protesting close to military funerals.The church's leader, pastor Fred Phelps, was banned from entering the UK by the Home Office in 2009.
Activist hackers
Anonymous is known for its "hacktivism", targeting individuals, companies and governments whose behavior it objects to.The group recently crashed a number of Egyptian government websites, in support of the country's pro-democracy protests.
It also attacked several online companies that it believed had helped clamp down on Wikileaks' activity, including Paypal and Amazon.
Pastor Fred Phelps was banned from travelling to the UK in 2009.
Laying out its case against Westboro Baptist Church, the letter said: "We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion".
Despite being posted on an Anonymous news site, there was some uncertainty surrounding the provenance of the letter.Further messages on the same website questioned its authenticity.The confusion is understandable, according to Graham Cluley from security firm Sophos. "Anonymous is a headless organisation," he said.
Mr Cluley warned that its followers could potentially be led into mounting a major hack under false pretenses."There are dangers in future that someone may pose as Anonymous and say that they want an attack".The Westboro Baptist Church issued a statement, branding Anonymous "a puddle of pimple-faced nerds".It called the threat a "bad miscalculation", and appeared to goad Anonymous to action, with the phrase "bring it!". The church's website, godhatesfags.com was unavailable.