Hack - SlashGear

‘hack’ Stories

Siri hacked to work on iPhone 3GS

Rue Liu, Nov 7th 2011 Discuss [8]

We've previously seen Apple's much raved about Siri intelligent assistant feature hacked to work on an iPhone 4, but now developers have managed to hack the feature to work on an old iPhone 3GS. The hack comes from developers Grant Paul and Steve Troughton-Smith, while a video demoing the hack was posted by Ryan Petrich. Read The Full Story

Anonymous #OpCartel ends over fears of death and violence

Shane McGlaun, Nov 7th 2011 Discuss [8]

I don't think any of us though there was a redeeming quality about Anonymous and the way they hack credit card information and other personal details about people and then offered it up publically. Not too long ago, the hacker collective took on a project that had some redeeming qualities in an effort to out pedophiles online that were looking at child porn online. Read The Full Story

Anonymous ramps Pedophile campaign with IP honeypot

Chris Davies, Nov 3rd 2011 Discuss [3]

Hack collective Anonymous has ramped up its anti-pedophile campaign, reportedly tricking those attempting to browse clandestine sites hosting child pornography into accessing a service that would identify their IP address and, subsequently, identify and location. According to a statement attributed to the loosely-banded group, a custom Firefox button was developed and links placed to it - along with a fake Tor update message - on the "Hard Candy" and "Lolita City" sites offering the illegal content. Those who clicked it "would then be forwarded to our special forensics server and log the incoming IP and destination." Read The Full Story

Nitro hack steals R&D and defense secrets

Chris Davies, Nov 1st 2011 Discuss [1]

Hackers used email scams distributing a notorious malware tool to steal research & development secrets from chemical manufacturers, defense companies and other targets in a huge industrial espionage attack dubbed Nitro, it has been revealed. Poison Ivy, a Windows-based trojan which allows covert remote access to infected PCs, was distributed among firms between April and September this year, according to a new paper [pdf link] from security firm Symantec, with 29 chemical sector companies and a further 19 - primarily in defense - in other sectors targeted. Read The Full Story

USPS Promotes physical mail, warns against evil Internet

Chris Burns, Oct 31st 2011 Discuss [12]

This week the United States Postal Office has decided to go with a commercial made to warn against the many dangers of using the Internet for daily communication. In a move that's sure to have the masses seeing this commercial on the Internet saying "this can't be real," the USPS brings a message that clearly states that they're trying to win back customers who've moved to much more environmentally friendly means of sending letters. But hey, who are we to put such a move down, there's nothing more classic in this country than the pony express! Read The Full Story

PoisonIvy RAT used to hack chemical firms by man in China

Chris Burns, Oct 31st 2011 Discuss [0]

The nation of China has been getting a bad rap in these last couple of weeks due to more than one allegation of the country's government hacking sensitive equipment internationally - today it appears that a single man inside the country might extend that press with an unrelated cyber attach of chemical firms in the USA, Bangladesh, and the UK. As China has emphatically denied any hacking on the part of the government in any way at all for the last incident, so too must it made clear here before misinformation is spread: the suspect is a man living in China whose computer system apparently used for the attacks was traced to the United States. Read The Full Story

Siri iPhone 4 hack gets Apple server support

Chris Davies, Oct 30th 2011 Discuss [68]

Apple disappointed many iPhone 4 owners with the news that Siri, the digital personal assistant technology, would only be available on the new iPhone 4S, and efforts quickly began to hack Siri onto the older smartphone. Developer Steve Troughton-Smith got the local app running with no problems, but faced Apple’s servers refusing to play ball with anything but the newest iPhone. Now, with the judicious application of some validation tokens from an iPhone 4S, it’s possible to get Siri on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch up and running, even without official support from Apple itself.

Read The Full Story

US Satellites hacked by Chinese Military says Congressional Commission

Chris Burns, Oct 27th 2011 Discuss [4]

While it might seem rather terrifying to think about anyone being able to hack into satellites thousands of miles away hanging precariously above our collective heads, it was back in 2007 and 2008 that this reported incident actually took place. It's just today though that the report has surfaced via Bloomberg who state that a congressional commission annual report (to be released next month) has outlined the interference which took place two times, once in 2007, and another inside 2008. China has reportedly denied any involvement. Read The Full Story

Anonymous takes on child pornographers

Chris Davies, Oct 24th 2011 Discuss [22]

Hack collective Anonymous has turned its attention to child pornography, claiming to have brought down a webhost alleged to be hosting more than forty sites on which the illegal content was offered. According to the loosely-affiliated group's statement, Freedom Hosting was challenged by evidence of the pornography stored on its servers but refused to delete it; Anonymous then "infiltrated the shared hosting server of Freedom Hosting and shutdown services to all clients." Read The Full Story

iPad 2 Smart Cover unlock hack identified

Chris Davies, Oct 21st 2011 Discuss [5]

A security flaw allowing unofficial access to certain iPad 2 apps, even when the tablet is PIN-locked, has been identified, using Apple's own Smart Cover to bypass the protection. The loophole, spotted by Apfeltalk, relies on Apple's Smart Cover unlocking system, which wakes the iPad 2 when opened: when the right combination of button presses and other steps are followed, that can also leave the tablet open to partial use. Read The Full Story

iOS 5 beta expires today: b7b redsn0w saves your data

Chris Davies, Oct 21st 2011 Discuss [2]

iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users running the iOS 5 beta may find their devices not playing ball, with the preview copy of the recently released Apple platform expiring today. Although Apple targets its iOS betas at developers looking to get their apps up to speed with upcoming software changes, the low cost of entry to developer accounts has seen many regular users jump at the chance for early access as well; those same users may be left holding less-than-useful devices today, when the beta expires. Thankfully there's an unofficial tool to allow user data to be extracted. Read The Full Story

iPhone 4 Siri hack suggests Apple not hardware behind 4S exclusivity

Chris Davies, Oct 15th 2011 Discuss [22]

An unofficial port of the iPhone 4S' Siri voice recognition system to the iPhone 4 has been revealed, though it's unclear whether Apple will ever enable the speech control tech for the older handset. Currently the port - the handiwork of developer Steve Troughton-Smith and 9 to 5 Mac - is capable of loading the Siri interface and controls; however, since Apple's server-side processes are integral to Siri's interaction with the iPhone hardware, right now any spoken commands won't be followed. Read The Full Story