Apple’s latest iPhone software update turns iPhones that have been “unlocked” into very expensive paperweights, according to users. Yesterday’s iPhone 1.1.1 update breaks phones that have been hacked so that they work on mobile networks other than AT&T, the only US carrier Apple has allowed iPhones to work with. In recent months, a number of tools have been developed which allow iPhone users to break free of the AT&T-only restriction, but Apple has said that it would fight any attempts to unlock the iPhone.
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VoIP telco Engin has introduced an $0 VoIP adaptor for customers prepared to take a 12 month contract. However, the basic monthly fee is $9.95 a month and does not include any call value, so you’re effectively paying for the VoIP adaptor over the course of the 12 months. The free VoIP adaptor is an Engin-locked Linksys SPA 3102. You can also buy one from a retailer and get $100 cash-back once you’ve been with Engin for three months.
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Accounts on Google Inc.’s Gmail can be easily hacked, allowing any past — and future e-mail messages — to be forwarded to the attacker’s own in-box, a vulnerability researcher said Tuesday. Dubbed a “cross-site request forgery” (CSRF), the Gmail bug was disclosed Tuesday by Petko Petkov, a U.K.-based Web vulnerability penetration tester who has made a name for himself of late. In the past two weeks, Petkov has publicly posted information about critical, zero-day bugs in Apple Inc.’s QuickTime, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player and Adobe Systems Inc.’s Portable Document Format (PDF).
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WASHINGTON (AP) â A government video shows the potential destruction caused by hackers seizing control of a crucial part of the U.S. electrical grid: an industrial turbine spinning wildly out of control until it becomes a smoking hulk and power shuts down. The video, produced for the Homeland Security Department and obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday, was marked “Official Use Only.” It shows commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
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iPhone hackers have some new tools now, thanks to HD Moore, one of the developers of the Metasploit hacking software. On Tuesday, Mooreannouncedthat he was supporting the iPhone within his Metasploit framework and released software that would allow hackers to run “shellcode” command prompts on Apple’s mobile device. By integrating the iPhone into Metasploit, it will now be a little easier for hackers to gain access to someone else’s iPhone, but they will also need a few other tools to succeed. First, they will need to create working exploit code, which takes advantage of bugs in Apple’s software, to trick the device into running the shellcode. They will also need to create more sophisticated “payload” applications that can do things like remotely connect with the hacker. “It’s a first step,” Moore said of his hack.
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A government video shows the potential destruction caused by hackers seizing control of a crucial part of the U.S. electrical grid: an industrial turbine spinning wildly out of control until it becomes a smoking hulk and power shuts down. The video, produced for the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, was marked “Official Use Only.” It shows commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
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Just one in ten UK businesses are fully PCI DSS compliant, despite the looming 30 September deadline for some organisations. According to a survey by the Logic Group, six per cent of companies have not started the compliance process or are not even planning to. This could be due to a lack of information about the updated requirements. More than half of those surveyed said that they did not get enough support from banks and international card schemes.
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Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems are all inherently flawed due to the nature of their architecture, according to a leading security researcher.
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China has been the target of a big increase in cyberattacks in recent years and faces more of a threat from hackers than any country in the West, a military researcher said on Saturday. Beijing has hotly denied recent reports in Western media that Chinese hackers penetrated systems in the Pentagon and in the chancellery and key ministries of German leader Angela Merkel. Computers in Britain’s Foreign Office have also been hit, according to The Guardian newspaper.
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Security experts are voicing their doubts about suggestions that China tried to hack New Zealand government IT systems, saying it is technically very difficult to identify the point of origin of such attacks. Peter Benson, chief executive of Auckland-based consultancy Security-assessment.com, says he is not convinced, and is more concerned about attacks against the New Zealand economy than the government.
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