The Edge of I-Hacked

Update: We have a winner - that did not take long at all- Congratulations to “raptorjesus”.

One lucky person will get this sweet pick thanks to Defense Devices.
Its made of a lightweight shell (red) and can pick anything you throw at it.

TELL ME HOW IS IT FREE???? Well here are the rules.
*Make sure lock picks are not illegal in your area and you are a trained professional =-)*

Here is how the game works

Start by going to

http://www.defensedevices.com/ihacked.html

Once you are there find the CompuServe product and open that in the plain of all text.
(HINT) Meta DATA and Graphics Interchange Format

You will find 2 words within the meta data.
(HINT)You will need to drop the bang and the inc

Take those 2 words and head over to www.gmail.com

Use the 2 words with no space and perform a password recovery.
(the user name is 14 characters long)

(HINT) If you can figure out the password you can bypass the steps below - the password is made up of 4 words from the front page of www.i-hacked.com - good luck =)

Follow the password hint and crack the file –
(HINT)The user name might help you as a password down the road.

First one to finish wins =)

You didn’t win? Don’t worry we gave some nice I-Hacked.com shirts to Defense Devices and got you 5% off your order.
Click here if you did not notice the deal.

Open to USA residents only =-(

from GamecubeLinux Wiki

And last but not least, we have finally run natively Linux on the Nintendo Wii through Team Tweezers’ twilight-hack (http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=Twilight_Hack). We have released a small usbgecko-enabled Proof of Concept (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gc-linux/wii-linux-PoC-0.1.tgz) mini-distro to prove it. Did I say have fun?

from slorker.com

SurveillanceSaver is a screensaver which shows live images of over 400 network surveillance cameras worldwide. Yep, when your computer is idle you’ll get to see a live feed of what’s going on in other parts of the world. It’s quite fascinating because of the voyeuristic element involved but also surreal because it compresses time-space.

Something is happening right at the moment elsewhere and you are a witness to it. It is real but since it’s only an image, you tend to question its verity a little more than what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I can’t bear to look away from the screen because I’m always expecting something to happen just that moment, maybe a car accident or a cute girl would enter into the frame.

It’s these thoughts that make this screensaver (and surveillance) quite an intriguing process.

Download Links

You can download the OS X version of the screensaver at this link.

The windows version can be found here. Since I’m running a Windows setup, I installed the screensaver for a test and it works. Everytime the screensaver runs, it shows a different image. It cycles through the cameras so you can actually sit down at your desk and look at multiple cities/locations at once.

I really like that fact that city, location and longitude/latitude is included in the bottom of the screensaver. Now if there was only some easy way to record while the screensaver is running..

It’s definitely a lot more interesting than the usual screensavers, I’ll have to say.

Here are some examples of images you’ll see through the cameras:

from Forsaken_angel24 @ NerfHaven

This modification was done in honor of my original Longshots anniversary. It was created 1 year ago this month. Still functions like a dream. I decided another Longshot was in order but this time with a more FUNctional integration.

Well how do I put this? I was going through a thrift store one day and I saw this toy chainsaw that had a moving belt. I thought “That’s not a Nerf gun” and disregarded it quickly.

2 months later I was introduced to Gears of war for the Xbox360.
I grew very fond of the Lancer. I didn’t really want to use any other guns.
Automatic with a chainsaw. I love it.

One day while I was playing Co-op with my little buddy Gabriel I put the game on pause and told him I was going to make a Lancer. He asked how and I didn’t exactly know. All I knew was the seed was placed deep within my brain that I needed to make one.

That seed grew into an idea. I then found that same make of toy chainsaw over at ToysRus.
I was eyeballing it and realized it could be done.
I then brought it home. After taking it out of its package I realized this was going to be harder than I thought.

from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Way back, one of our readers begged for an iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his iPhone to “call home” regularly in case of loss or, let’s be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It’s a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy of Google Maps.

Still, how to get the location report to a place you can get it… but nobody else can… and without receiving a zillion SMSes? For this part of the puzzle, enter Twitter. Twitter dev Britt Selvitelle helped walk me through the setup for a private account that allows your iPhone to phone home but keeps the location data relatively secure.

To do this, create a new Twitter account just for your iPhone (it will need its own unique email address, separate from your main account, so have one handy). Open the Settings panel, and look for the “Protect My Updates” checkbox. It’s towards the bottom of the page, just above the Save button. Check this and click Save. With protected updates, only the Twitter users you approve will see the updates for this iPhone-only account (just you? you spouse? spouse, kids, and “special friends?” Up to you).

After creating your phone’s Twitter account, you’re ready to set up your iPhone to tweet in on a regular basis. Here’s how.

After spending a few days at Shmoocon, I have officially claimed the title Badge Hacker or maybe ConSocial. The talks were very educating and ranged from “almost hacking your own company” to “0wn1ng a business man every which way”. It was great to see that what is being exposed is actually being used to make change. Deviant of http://deviating.net/lockpicking/topics.html spoke out that companies such as Master Lock are making changes to their locks after exposing how easy it is to bump a lock.

I meet up with Johnny Long and we chatted about his new book and how 100% of his proceeds will be going to Africa. We hooked him up with some i-hacked.com swag for his new foundation hackers for charity. I did meet up with Muts from offensive-security who did show off some of his bad ass BackTrack skills. I must thank him for his time and the swag. If you want Back Track training offensive-security is the place to go.

Later that night I met up with the pod cast crew of hak5. After many “non-alcoholic” (yeah right) drinks I talked everyone into crashing “katsucon”. For those like my self that have no idea what the hell I am talking about, it’s a con for animation. To make a long evil story short – we got in, we partied like rock stars and we were amazed at the huge arcade that they had. Props to the DJ of katsucon who mixed in samples of Anonymous. Check back soon for the video of the CON.

Photos

from heise Security UK

A new generation of inexpensive disk drive enclosures using hardware encryption and RFID keys do not fulfil the promises of their publicity. The adverts claim 128-bit AES hardware encryption, but they don’t tell us how it is used.

The specifications of the 2.5in. Easy Nova Data Box PRO-25UE RFID hard drive case by German vendor Drecom sound promising: hardware data encryption with 128-bit AES, access control via an RFID chip compact enough to carry around on your key ring and optional 160GB or 250GB hard disk capacity. Swiping the RFID chip along the case causes the integrated Innmax IM7206 crypto controller to reveal the drive as a USB 2.0 mass storage compatible device to the attached computer. This works under Linux and Mac OS X as well as Windows. There’s no need for special drivers.

Look a little closer, and things don’t look so good. Heise online’s sister publication c’t magazine has discovered that the encryption offered by this product was weak, and erroneously advertised as including “128-bit AES hardware data encryption”. c’t has since spoken with the manufacturers involved and can confirm that the encryption weakness discovered probably affects numerous similar products.

Great walk-though of breaking weak-encryption.. Def worth a read!

from Engadget

Well, what do you know. What was $79 just a few minutes ago is now just $49. Making room for something new are we Apple? Still no change to iPod touch and iPhone pricing but we’ll keep an eye out.

Update: Apple store offline. Picture of all the discounted shuffles after the break.

Update 2: Store back online with new 2GB shuffle for just $69 — available later this month.

Go ahead Try It

Looks like Yahoo! has removed piratebay from its search results… yea! censored internet!

**UPDATE: Looks like they fixed it —

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For those that have not heard, there is an ebay strike happening - This was the info being passed around the yahoo groups, I did not write it, but it is very informative of the changes ebay is making and why everyone is upset. Its important to know about the strike if you are listing and ending your auctions in the next two weeks you will not get good bids due to this strike. I’ve heard this strike can go on till the end of Feb… the change - as a “fee reduction”. However, if you read the fine print you’ll find that they are slyly raising Final Value Fees (the fee the seller pays when the item sells at auction) by as much as 66%. The percentage of increase differs by seller because all sellers sell items with different values and the Final Value Fee is based on the dollar amount of the item. So we save a nickel to list an item, but pay 33% more after the auction is over. This first part of the changes, while quite disgusting, IS bearable.

Second, they are removing the ability for sellers to leave feedback for buyers. Now, Ebay has always been successful on the basis of both buyer and seller being able to rate each other based on the success of a single transaction. They are removing this for sellers. This is very scary for the seller population because as sellers, we already are held hostage by what we call “Feedback Extortionist Buyers”. These are
the buyers that buy something in an auction and then send an email that says:

“You send me the item free or I will leave you a negative and ruin
your Ebay reputation!”.

While people like this are quite rare they do exist. I’ve got over 792 transactions and I’ve come across 4 difficult
buyers who no matter what I couldn’t please them. I managed to scrape by without a negative because they were booted from Ebay, but the point of the matter is that while most buyers are wonderful, these psycho types of buyers DO exist. Now with this new feedback system, ONE rogue buyer (and even my selling competition) could ruin my reputation very easily. Even if I provided a 100% perfect transaction and the item was received the very same day and all was perfect with the world, that one person could ruin me if they wanted to. All they would need to do is buy 5 or 10 items from me and leave five feedbacks separately - because each and every negative will count against the seller. This would mean the end of my store and my business on Ebay over one rogue buyer. Why? Read the next section.

Third, as if one and two weren’t bad enough, if a seller has below a 95% satisfaction rating on Ebay, Ebay will not display your auctions in the search engine. For example, if I sell 20 items one month and 1 of them has a neutral or negative left for it by a buyer (deserved or not), I can no longer list auctions on Ebay and have them be seen in the search engine. Yes, thats right. I can list, Ebay will take my money, but all of my auctions will be on page 857 of the listing and never be seen by any buyers. So once I get one negative, it is virtually impossible to recover from that by selling additional items because none of my items will be seen to be purchased by another buyer later. It’s a no win situation for a seller.

Fourth, as if all of this wasn’t the most horrific thing you’ve ever heard, they’re making changes to Pay Pal - which is the method most people use to accept payment over Ebay. From now on, if you have less than 100 feedback and you sell an item Pay Pal will not give you your money for 21 (TWENTY ONE!) days. Yes, you read that right. Say, Susie sells a 50 dollar item and the buyer pays through Pay Pal. Susie is then forced to ship the item FREE without any payment. After 21 days has passed, THEN Pay Pal will forward Susie her money. This folks is just horrible. Do you know anywhere else on the planet where you can demand that someone selling you an item give you the item FREE and ship it to you FREE while you hold on to your money for 21 entire
days? I sure don’t. On top of this “under 100 feedback” thing, again if I have less than a 95% rating or get one negative or get one neutral - again - Pay Pal will hold my money for 21 days. Imagine how must interest Pay Pal and Ebay will accumulate on billions of dollars being held in 21 day increments - yet another disgusting way for them to squeeze MORE money out of the system.

Fifth, they instituted “Seller Rewards”. Essentially, if you meet certain criteria as a seller you can earn 15% credit on your account. The catch is that you have to sell 1,000 dollars or more on your account every month and have to have a 4.8 rating on all your “stars”. I feel that these guidelines are impossible to reach and that they were designed to be impossible to reach on purpose so that Ebay, yet again, would not have to actually pay out the discounts. To give you an example of how hard these are to reach, out of Ebay’s top 500 Powersellers (the crop on Ebay and make lilke $100,000 a month on Ebay) only SEVEN qualify for the 15% discount. SEVEN.

And finally, when all these changes were announced, the Ebay sellers went ballistic. The response from Ebay management? We were told that our complaints and anger and frustration and tears were - and I quote - “NOISE!”. Yes, we are nothing but “noise” to the Ebay management, yet they are making million dollar salaries off of us.

I know I am so mad, myself. I have 100% positive feedback and I’ve completed almost 800 transactions. I’m not a bad seller and I bend over backwards to make a buyer happy. I have a very good record. But ALL THAT HARD WORK and ONE rogue person could ruin it for me. Or even someone who competes against me can very easily get a new nickname, buy stuff from me, leave negs - and take my listings right out the search engine!!). It’s not fair at all. Not to mention, if somehow I do screw up or get a rogue buyer, Pay Pal won’t even let me have my
money for 21 days. When you do this type of work full time, that is a terrifying thought.

So I’m here to beg you guys, if possible, and even if you don’t understand all the ins and outs of Ebay and what a seller has to go through to sell on Ebay - PLEASE RESPECT THE STRIKE we are organizing. Please don’t buy or sell on Ebay from Feb 18th through Feb 25th. Please tell your friends and family members to do the same. We know that not everyone can respect it - some people make ends meet by selling on Ebay. But for those of you who can, us sellers would very much appreciate it if you could respect the strike on those days.

Also - if you are an Ebay seller - and you are angry like the rest of us, CNN and FORBES is quite interested in how we feel. Quite a few people, including myself have flocked to CNN MONEY to get their attention. So far, the comments and anger and speaking out are actually working - the media is starting to pay attention and Ebay has
stepped up their marketing tactics. We feel that they’re getting a little worried over all the outrage.

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