hacking

A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday alleged.

According to the lawsuit filed by a high school student and his parents, the Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. has spied on students and families by "indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the Webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District."

Approximately 1,800 students at the district's two high schools have been given laptops as part of a state- and federally-funded "one-to-one" student-to-laptop initiative.

Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.

The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property.

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I have pointed you to resources on how to hack WEP enabled wireless networks in the past. Now it is time to do so again, with a strong reccomendation that you immediately stop using WEP, and move on to WPA-PSK.

So if you are still on WEP, please make an appointment with yourself to change it. And please do so now.

Websites are a vital part of any serious business. As an entrepreneur, it is very easy to think you will save some bucks by buying a cheap website from some some kid (your own, your neighbor+++), and focus only on saving cash.

This approach is wrong.

Again, this approach is wrong. Let me tell you why.

You are running a serious business, and your website is an increasingly important window towards your potential and existing clients. No, do not argue, just accept that as a fact. And your website should present you in a manner that will impose the best possible image of you towards the visitors.

If you do not agree, then you will be much better off by NOT having a website at all. If you choose that path, you can stop reading now :)

With a website, you need to make sure that it imposes the best possible image of you towards your clients, prospects and any other visitor. (Yes, I just told you above). There are a number of factors that needs to be considered with a website, and most of those things there are other blogs that covers much better. Some of the things include:

• Looks and feels - make sure you are using a design that enhances your image.
• Content - you should focus on relevant content, focusing on what you think your visitors need or are looking for. Generally, information on a website is a very cost-efficient way to communicate with your clients and should be used to the maximum effect. As an example, consider making, printing and distributing a 50 page product catalog, versus just publishing the PDF on your website.
• Platform & security - this is the purpose of this post. By avoiding the kids (your own or others) to make your website, you can make sure that you show the high level of standards you want. Use professionals, and make sure they also focus on security of the website. Today, it has become way too easy to hijack websites and use them for bad, and we all need to be responsible. After all, you would not want your customers to be attacked by someone using YOUR website, would you?

The first two points, I suggest you go elsewhere (ask your website development partner for help), but the last one you can check right away by using this quick and easy assessment from Jason. His post is well written, and easy to understand - even if you have no clue of technology or IT.

Go on! Check! And if it turns out your website is at risk, contact your supplier right away and make sure they do their job good!

hacking, linux

• vendor or service provider, focusing on promoting their own products/services
• (enterprise) risk management, focusing on what many SMEs will consider theory and not very relevant to their everyday focus
• IT-security, focusing on technology, hacking, and "geek" stuff

entrepreneurship, jci, security

There is a Feedburner hack available. It seems to let you increase the number of readers on your blog. WRONG - it increases the number SHOWN - thus only making your blog appear more popular than it really is.

Why would you even care for such a self fooling hack? I am pretty sure that some script kiddies and equally !mature creatures out there may use this tip to show off their number of readers to their friends, not realizing how easy it is to see through.

Personally, I prefer real readers who actually read what I write. So thank you - for reading!

Gnucitizen established a new community project called House of Hackers. The purpose is to create an area where 

"...support the hacker culture, mindset, way of life, ideologies, political views, vision, etc."

If you are into hacking, and interested in keeping with the community, I suggest you pop over and take a look.

Have you ever wondered how to learn how to do SQL-injection attacks? Rescue is here!

You are now able not only to read about attacks and try to understand their logics, you can now set up your own lab and start doing injections directly. Thanks to Gerasimos Kassaras (I had a hard time spelling that, and will not even try to pronounce it), who have written this excellent walk-through on the topic!

He will even walk you through setting up IIS and the other tools required!

Still not into SQL-injections?

Well, you should be. Security now and in the future will be about two things - information management on one hand, and application security on the other hand.