Posts Tagged ‘hackers’

Computer Virus Travels Into Orbit, Lands on the Space Station

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astronaut and laptopA pesky computer virus that has popped up on computers around the world has now made the leap into space. NASA announced yesterday that several laptops on board the International Space Station were infected with the virus in July, and also admitted that such infections have happened before.

“This is not the first time we have had a worm or a virus,” NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. “It’s not a frequent occurrence, but this isn’t the first time.” … NASA downplayed the news, calling the virus mainly a “nuisance” that was on non-critical space station laptops used for things like e-mail and nutritional experiments [Wired News].

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August 27th, 2008 Tags: , , , ,
by Eliza Strickland in Space, Technology | 2 Comments » | RSS feed | Trackback >

Russian Invasion Included the First Real Use of “Cyber Warfare”

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computer hacker2Computer experts are investigating the cyberattack that brought down Georgian Web sites during Russia’s invasion of Georgia, and say the assault may mark the first large-scale attempt at “cyber warfare.” As Russian tanks began to roll into Georgia on Friday, millions of extraneous requests — a so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack — took down Georgia’s banking and government sites. [Security expert Graham Cluley says:] “In modern warfare, it’s not unusual to see opposing forces take over TV stations, radios and newspapers. In our century, taking over Internet sites is now part of the same kind of strategy” [Venture Beat].

The attack is similar to an incident in May 2007 when Estonian government Web sites were brought down in response to the government’s plans to move a Russian-installed monument; a 20-year-old Russian hacker was later convicted of organizing that attack. As for who’s responsible for the current online strike against Georgia, the theories range from “some kids who got overexcited” [CNET] to a criminal network directed by the Russian government.

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August 13th, 2008 Tags: , ,
by Eliza Strickland in Technology | No Comments » | RSS feed | Trackback >

MIT Students Who Hacked Boston Subway Silenced; Report Gets Out Anyway

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SubwayThree MIT undergraduates who found weaknesses in the fare cards for Boston’s subway system had planned to give a talk about their work at a hackers’ conference in Las Vegas this weekend. But on Friday the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority sued the students and MIT to stop the speech, and on Saturday morning a federal judge slapped the students with a 10-day restraining order to keep their mouths shut.

The MBTA said that they needed time to investigate the student’s claims, and if they were true, to try to correct them before sensitive information got out via the students’ slide show presentation. One slide explains that the presentation would teach attendees how to generate fare cards, reverse engineer magnetic stripes on cards and hack radio frequency identification (RFID) cards. The next slide says: “And this is very illegal! So the following material is for educational use only” [AP].

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August 11th, 2008 Tags: , ,
by Amos Zeeberg (Discover Web Editor) in Technology | 1 Comment » | RSS feed | Trackback >