hacking

Buzz Out Loud 744: A date with Firefox

Firefox 3 comes out June 17, and that's all we have to say, except we hope it fixes Molly's Flash problems so she doesn't have to get a Mac--or Opera. In other news of the day, you can now find out once and for all whether your car mechanic is giving you a good deal. Hint: No.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 744

Buzz Out Loud San Francisco Meetup! TONIGHT! http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/780695

Firefox 3 to release 17 June http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2008/06/11/coming-tuesday-june-17th-firefox-3/ http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200824/1225/Mozilla-Corp-confirms-Firefox-3-launch-for-July-17 … Read more

Comcast home page hacked

Comcast's Web portal has been hacked, leaving some subscribers unable to access their e-mail.

A company spokeswoman confirmed that the Comcast Web page had been hacked late on Wednesday. Subscribers who tried to access the site to check e-mail or access the company's official forums were greeted with this text instead:

The hackers apparently changed Comcast's registrar account at Network Solutions, which altered the DNS servers that were used to direct Comcast.net requests. In other words, the hackers essentially redirected traffic destined for the URL Comcast.net. Instead, the traffic went to IP addresses in Germany … Read more

Where 320 people can't be wrong

EPISODE 94

Libe Goad joins the guys of the 404 to talk about how the Wii gets hacked, GTA IV gets a lot of cash, get in shape with Wii Fit, Boom some Blox and some silly-ass stop signs. We also make fun of her husband, but shh...don't tell him.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Geek parent tip: Use Gmail as a baby book

Someday my son will hate me for this, but I just implemented a new way to record his daily achievements: A dedicated Gmail account. I got the idea for this tip from John Girard, CEO of Clickability, who sends tagged emails to his Outlook account. Anything with his special code in the subject means it's news about one of his kids, and he has filters to archive those notes into an offline file.

But it's so easy to set a new Gmail account, I thought, why not just do it this way? Plus, I can give account access … Read more

CNN.com survives random outages

Although CNN escaped a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack planned for Saturday, the site has experienced either random outages or inflated response times over the last 72 hours, according to one Internet research company.

Netcraft reported Tuesday that during a three-hour period on Sunday morning, the CNN.com site was unavailable from its listening post in Pennsylvania. And on Monday, the site experienced inflated response times. CNN.com did suffer a minor DDoS last Thursday, but recovered by limiting access from certain geographic areas, mainly Asia.

Also on Tuesday, The Dark Visitor, a site that tracks Chinese hackers, said a downloadable … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 707: Space is cancelled

The Russians have canceled their space tourism program, because space is too serious to monetize. Also, Skype offers unlimited long-distance on...phones. VoIP is so dead. You heard it here first. In other news, Microsoft bonanza: Windows predictions, welcoming ethical hackers, and burning down your house. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 707

Skype offers unlimited long-distance plan http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2141013920080421

Google tops Microsoft, Apple in brand power http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9924273-7.html

Britannica makes content free with widgets, publisher registration http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9923867-7.html

Hackers cancel attack on CNN http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144850/hackers_cancel_attack_on_cnn.html… Read more

Catch quakes with your laptop

In a project that's grabbing headlines this week, researchers at the University of California, Riverside and Stanford University are recruiting laptops to help them monitor seismic activity. The Quake-Catcher Network is a distributed network of laptops running software that takes advantage of a built-in accelerometer to monitor and report seismic activity. (The accelerometer's primary purpose is to detect a fall or shock to the chassis in time to stop the hard drive from spinning, though it's been a key element in several fun hacks, including the Smackbook [video] and SeisMac.)

Based on the same software as the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 691: The Babies Have Wi-Fi

In the future, we will love the cockroaches, because they bring the Wi-Fi. Sadly, autonomous deathbots will make life unliveable, and that's assuming the Large Hadron Collider hasn't turned us all into strangelets. In happier news, the music industry is floating a plan to tax everyone who uses the Internet so they can prop up the decaying corpse of their business plan! What a fun day. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 691

The music industry's new extortion scheme http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/the-music-industrys-new-extortion-scheme/ http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9905404-7.html

U.S. students, … Read more

Trend Micro's Web site hacked in massive attack

Security vendor Trend Micro's Web site was hacked earlier this week in an attack that spread to hundreds of other sites, according to an InfoWorld report.

The malicious code tries to embed software that steals passwords from users as they visit Web sites, according to the report.

Trend Micro discovered the attack on Wednesday and took steps to shut it down. It affected about 20,000 Web pages written with Microsoft's Active Server Pages Web development software. According to Trend Micro:

(A similar previous) attack seems to have started more than a week ago, and nearly 200,000 … Read more