anonymity

This Day in Tech: Another missing iPhone; DOJ opposes AT&T-T-Mobile deal

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET News for Wednesday, August 31.

Exclusive: Another unreleased iPhone disappeared. CNET visited Cava22, the San Francisco bar where the iPhone went missing. "Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source," according to the CNET story. Read the full scoop here.

The U.S. government sued to block the AT&T and T-Mobile deal. Why? Because it believes the merger would lesson competition and reduce innovation … Read more

Anonymous claims DNS attacks against Symantec, Apple, Microsoft

The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days.

Posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin, the group is taking credit for launching "DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning" attacks against its victims.

DNS cache snooping is the process whereby hackers can query a DNS server to find out which domain names are being resolved into IP addresses.

DNS cache poisoning is a method through which hackers are able to insert malicious and fake records into the … Read more

When hackers become The Man

At DefCon III in 1995, the young crowd of 470 spent their time jamming a local radio station broadcast and playing Hacker Jeopardy at midnight when they couldn't drink at the bar. "Free Kevin" stickers were plastered everywhere protesting the jailing of fugitive hacker Kevin Mitnick, and a 14-year-old ran away from home to attend the event. (I know because I was there.)

At DefCon 19 this year, plenty of the nearly 12,000 attendees had gray hair, most work as security professionals, and some even brought their children. Mitnick was there signing copies of his latest … Read more

SF subway sets public debate on cell shutdown

The San Francisco-area transit system targeted by hackers after it cut wireless service in its subway prior to a protest, posted a letter to customers today explaining its position and announcing plans for a public meeting on the issue.

"BART's temporary interruption of cell phone service was not intended to and did not affect any First Amendment rights of any person to protest in a lawful manner in areas at BART stations that are open for expressive activity," reads the letter, posted on the BART Web site and signed by Bob Franklin, president of the Bay Area … Read more

'Anonymous' hacker quits, burns bridges on way out

This past Sunday, after reporting on Anonymous' hack of BART's Web site and leak of user information from mybart.org, I started receiving messages on Twitter and elsewhere from sources purporting to be tied to Anonymous. They were all critical of the leak of personal info from mybart.org--pointing to dissent on Twitter and Anonymous IRC channels. "Just wanted you to know not all of Anon approves..." read one of the messages. Then today, it seems to have all become too much for one former Anonymous hacker.

Until now, he's gone by the handle "SparkyBlaze&… Read more

Best of Buzz Out Loud 14: Google buys Motorola, Anonymous protests, and the right-brain computer

Google agrees to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, authorities face Anonymous protests over San Francisco mobile network shutdown, and IBM creates cognitive semiconductors: a step toward right-brain computers.

Google beefs up Android armament (week in review)

While beefing up protection for its Android mobile operating system, Google this week made a deal that puts it into the handset business.

Google has agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, giving the search giant valuable wireless intellectual property and simultaneously lending stability to and shaking up the Android world.

With Motorola, Google gets a treasure trove of patents to defend itself and its partners against a rising tide of legal opposition. Over the past few months, major technology players such as Apple and Oracle have sued either Google or its partners in an attempt to slow … Read more

The 404 885: Where we weeze the juice (podcast)

"Woot" joins "jeggings," "mankini," "noob," and 400 other new definitions in the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary published today, but what happened to "glamazon," "hangry," and "retrosexual"?

Along with our suggestions for new slang to be added, we're also warning everyone about a privacy breach called juice-hacking and a virtual hit-man service that charges $10 an hour for DDoS attacks. And we talk about whether it's necessary to reboot or shut down your computer at night.

This, plus a handful of Calls From the Public on today's episode--enjoy!

The 404 Digest for Episode 885

'Woot' is officially a thing, according to Oxford English Dictionary. Beware of juice-hacking. Russians outsource DDoS attacks for $10 per hour. Is it necessary to restart or shutdown your laptop every night? Congratulations to Sir Ron for completing the maze we featured on yesterday's show!

Episode 885 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Hackers break into BART police union Web site

Hackers have broken into a second Web site affiliated with the San Francisco Bay Area subway system, which has come under fire in the last week for turning off cell phone service before a planned protest.

A database belonging to the BART Police Officers Association was posted online today, complete with full names, e-mail addresses, home addresses, and passwords. BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the embarrassing information leak--a Twitter account affiliated with Anonymous said that no one has "claimed responsibility for the hack," and speculated that it … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1532: President Obama's on Foursquare (Podcast)

Barack, Do you really want everyone to know where you are? In the Googorola aftermath, Microsoft was reportedly one of the comapnies in negotiations with Motorola. And the best way to kill an iPad 3 rumor, is to squash it with another rumor that you made up. Plus, Wilson Tang of the 404 joins us in studio.