Directory Denial

Some time back I must have submitted by blog to an Internet directory. Today I received a message that I had been denied. It has been so long that I have forgotten that I requested that I be added. They did not specify exactly what was preventing me from being added to the directory. I don't really mind.

Here were some of the reasons that one might not get added to this "elite" directory: You don't have your own domain. You blog on a free site. Blah blah blah. I am not going to even state the name of the directory that rejected me. Why give them any fame? I am just going to keep on hacking, and keep on writing.

Perhaps I should email these schlubs back, telling them I don't need no stinking link in their directory. I'm already a champion. Or I could gain access to their root. Muhahaha.

Windows Sleep and Hibernate

I like to keep my computer on all the time. However I want the lights to go off at night so it does not bother anyone. I could shut the thing down. But it takes a long time to boot up. Windows provides the options of both Sleep and Hibernate. But what the heck do these things mean?

Let's start with sleep. This has been called suspend or standby before. The state of the computer is kept in memory. So it does draw some power during the sleep. The good thing is that the transition back on (the resume) is fast. Hibernate writes the computer state to disk. Then it goes to a state that draws no power. The state is written to file "hiberfile.sys", whose size depends on the amount of RAM you have. The hibernate state is slower to resume than sleep, but faster than a whole boot up.

Attacks From the Sky

I have been busy lately with my new Advanced Java college class. However I saw something today that caught my eye. There have been some trials of some futuristic unmanned robots which fly around and jack into your wireless network.

Yeah. Before you knew your neighbor could "share" you wireless network. There could also have been a driveby where some hacker listens in on your wireless network activity. Now the spin is that a drone can fly around and listen in on everybody's wireless network traffic.

This is novel because it brings up images of mini-drone aircraft flying around. But the defense against the drone is no different than the defense against your neighbor. Lock down your wireless networking using security. Know also that whatever you send over the air is liable to be compromised.

COBOL ON COGS

I clicked over to a link from Reddit that got me to COBOL ON COGS. The screen colors were so dim I needed to highlight the text just to see the damn page. Don't you hate when web developers do that? Then I thought this was some COBOL revival site.

I did get a LOL from the "(c) DATE OVERFLOW" at the bottom of the community page. Didn't anybody test test this thing? Then I figured that COBOL was not meant to work past the year 2000 or something. Finally I figured out that this was a prank. They got me. Turns out this was released one April Fools day.

Heheh. Maybe I should code up a lulz like that.

LulzSec Strikes Again

Previously the LulzSec hacker group announced that they were disbanding. Some think that authorities were getting too close to their identity. Others speculated that they ran out of the easy hacks. Well that all came to an end. The LulzSec has struck again.

Team Lulz hacked The Sun newspaper. They redirected the Sun's web page to their own Twitter account. Mischevious. It seems a little less hard core than their past exploits. Maybe this is just one of the team. Or perhaps it is the work of some other LulzSec wannabes.

Anonymous Busts Booz Allen

I just saw an announcement from the group known as Anonymous. They infiltrated government contractor Booz Allen. Their main score was 90,000 email addresses and passwords. Anonymous claims these email accounts belong to military personnel.

Anonymous found a Booz Allen server that had no security on it. They proceeded to install a shell program that got down to business. In addition to the emails, they found tons of source code which they deemed worthless. LOL.

This is touted as a score since Booz Allen does defense contracts and homeland security contracts. One would think such a company runs a tight ship. Anonymous says they sunk the battleship, finding its defenses lacking. No matter what you think about their tactics, you got to give them props for their byline:

We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We are AntiSec

Bitcoinage

I read a fantastic story about a guy who claims his computer got hacked. No big deal, right? Well he claims that the hacking resulted in somebody stealing his bitcoins. There were a lot of them. The total value amounted to $500,000. The owner blames Microsoft Windows for the theft.

There was a lot of discussion in the Bitcoin community about this claim. How could they stop the selling of so much Bitcoin? What would be the effect on the Bitcoin market? Is this story for real? Some people doubted the facts. Things sounded a bit fishy. I myself thought that it could be true. I never did find out any proof about the alleged theft. Other commenters wanted some proof.

Move forward and we find that there was a run on the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It caused a crash. Tons of bitcoins were put on the market for sale. This drove the value of a bitcoin from $17 to a penny. The exchange declared that it was going to roll back the transactions. Some who profited from the drop publicly groaned. The exchange justified this by stating that the crash came as a result of a theft. Once again the call was made for details and proof of the theft.

Finally I see a public announcement from the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It appears an admin account was compromised. The person assigned themselves a large amount of bitoins. Then they went to town trying to sell them all. They got away with 2000 bitcoins. The exchange said they would eat this loss and that security has been improved. However the exchange seems to have backed away from the story about somebody's personal bitcoin wallet with tons of bitcoins being stolen.

I recall one guy who heard the initial story about a computer being hacked and tons of bitcoins being stolen. He postulated that maybe nobody's wallet was stolen, and that the exchange had an account that was hacked. Bamm. Right on target. Perhaps this person had insider info. Whatever the case, I find it odd how the story has changed from the exchange. I am glad I don't have any money in Bitcoins.