If a Nintendo Entertainment System and a recording studio mixing board had a baby, it would look a lot like Ming Mecca, which is very likely the weirdest piece of new video game hardware announced this year. Or maybe any year. This trailer teases a new console/game creation tool that uses discrete analog inputs to…
The 1970s Version of 4Chan Relied on Telephones for Their Pranks
Journalist and hacker historian Phil Lapsley has just published an incredible book about the early days of phone phreaking, Exploding the Phone. In the late 1960s and early 70s, people like Steve Wozniak were running around doing things to telephones that today people would do to the internet. We've got a great…
A totally rad satire of computer hacker movies — in space!
CodeHackerz has everything you want from a hacker movie: crazy slo-mo scenes in blue light of two guys hacking, an asteroid headed straight for Earth (which can only be stopped by hacking), jokes about ARM processors and the Android OS, and random pictures of Bill Gates looking sexy.
An anthropologist explains how hackers are changing the definition of…
Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, by E. Gabriella Coleman, dives into the ocean of software hacking: its culture, personalities, and craft. But it's also a legal history of hacking (modifying code) and cracking (illegally modifying code). Working an anthropologist, she haunted cons, chat rooms, and …
I can't stop watching these private feeds from insecure webcams
Over a year ago, computer security experts revealed that a popular webcam manufactured by TRENDnet wasn't exactly secure. Because these cams are controlled via the web, it's relatively easy to track down their IP addresses and peek through them. Though TRENDnet released a patch that was supposed to fix the problem,…
Your Biggest Genetic Secrets Can Now Be Hacked, Stolen, and Used for…
Few things in this world are more personal than your DNA. For this reason, databases like the Human Genome Project have always respected the privacy of their participants. By separating individuals' identities from their donated DNA samples, researchers have upheld a standard of "genomic anonymity." Those days are now…
Aaron Swartz Died Innocent — Here Is the Evidence
I did not know Aaron Swartz, unless you count having copies of a person's entire digital life on your forensics server as knowing him. I did once meet his father, an intelligent and dedicated man who was clearly pouring his life into defending his son. My deepest condolences go out to him and the rest of Aaron's…
The Eleven Elite Rules of Movies About Computer Hacking
Skyfall's high tech storyline was just the latest Hollywood attempt to explore the crazy world of computer hacking. Though they often fail
Just how inaccurate were the hacking scenes in Skyfall?
Skyfall, the latest Bond flick, wasn't just a fun movie — it also featured the only Bond villain who used evil cyberhacking as the main weapon in his arsenal. Of course movie hacking is rarely accurate (except for that shining moment when Trinity used nmap in The Matrix Reloaded), but it's still fun to pick apart…
Video of real-time cyber-attack alert system looks like your favorite…
If you miss those great 1990s movies in which cyberspace runs amok, you'll get a kick out of this video of a real-life system for monitoring cyber-attacks. The new DAEDALUS (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet And Livenet Unified Security) cyber-alert system has been in the making for several years, but now the…
