Hacking, Virus and Tips

How to Prevent Spam emails?

2009-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

As spammers use sophisticated methods for sending spasm, E-mail spam has steadily, even exponentially grown since the early 1990s to several billion messages a day. So it is not easy to prevent spam emails completely. A good practice for preventing spam email is to keep a minimum of three email accounts. One for work related activities. Second one for personal conversations and contacts and third one can be used as a disposable one.

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Webcam Hacker Jailed for 4 Years for Spying on Teenager

2009-06-17T00:18:00.000-07:00

A 47-year-old computer technician has been jailed for four years after he hacked into a teenage girl’s webcam to spy on her.

The unnamed hacker used a Trojan horse virus to access the webcam remotely, which was passed on to the girl’s computer through an infected email.

Once he hacked into the webcam, he took images of her and threatened her with blackmail unless the teenager ‘posed’ indecently for him.

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Brit school, govt websites hacked to sell Viagra, pornography

2009-06-16T00:55:00.000-07:00

Hackers have taken over hundreds of government, school and university websites in Britain, which direct users to pornographic websites, revealed a new research.

The researchers pointed out more than 30 school and university websites' domain names, which have been infected with content that could direct children to illicit content on the net.

The hacked websites, which include primary schools, universities, the Driving Standards Association and various local government websites-such as the Historic Scotland heritage site-have fallen prey to hackers, who exploit loopholes in badly designed software.

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White Hat Hackers

2009-06-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hackers that use their hacking skills for good are referred to as "white hat" hackers. White hat hackers, also known as "ethical hackers," are computer security experts, who specialize in penetration testing, and other testing methodologies, to ensure that a company's information systems are secure. These non-criminal hackers are hired by companies to examine and test the integrity of their systems.

1. Stephen Wozniak

Stephen Wozniak nicknamed Woz, is an American computer engineer who founded Apple Computer. Woz started his hacking making blue boxes, which are devices that bypass telephone switching mechanisms enabling users to make free long distance calls and sold it to his friends.

MyDoom virus: One of the biggest virus attacks that ever reported

2009-06-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

The virus--known as MyDoom, Novarg and as a variant of the Mimail virus by different antivirus companies--arrives in an in-box with one of several different random subject lines, such as "Mail Delivery System," "Test" or "Mail Transaction Failed." The body of the e-mail contains an executable file and a statement such as: "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment."

This is a piece of software which is deposited on a computer's hard drive if the attachment is opened. It listens to commands sent remotely over the net and acts on them. Many of the e-mails look like they have been sent from organizations like charities or educational institutions, to fool recipients into opening it.

Year 2038 Problem

2009-06-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, It is expected to see lots of systems around the world breaking magnificently: satellites falling out of orbit, massive power outages (like the 2003 North American blackout), hospital life support system failures, phone system interruptions, banking errors, etc. One second after this critical second, many of these systems will have wildly inaccurate date settings, producing all kinds of unpredictable consequences. In short, many of the dire predictions for the year 2000 are much more likely to actually occur in the year 2038!

Suicide Hackers: A new threat to the world

2009-06-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

Suicide hackers are the individuals who bring down the critical infrastructure like power water, transport or even air traffic control system and do not worry about facing 30 years in prison for their actions

Australia is preparing for cyber-terrorism attacks from "suicide hackers", who will aim to bring down critical infrastructure for a "cause" and not worry about facing 30 years in jail for their actions.

So far there have been no major acts of cyber terrorism - where hackers take down parts of the critical infrastructure by breaking into power, water, transport or even air traffic control systems - but the subject has been discussed a great deal.

Need More? Visit: http://varthalokam.com/computer/suicide-hackers.html

The Best Hackers of all time

2009-05-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

Jonathan James : The first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking.

At the age of 16, James gained enormous notoriety when he was the first minor to be sent to prison for hacking. He later admitted that he was just having fun and looking around and enjoyed the challenge.

James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, "The software supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space." NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. He was arrested for the crime and he was banned from recreational computer use and was slated to serve a six-month sentence under house arrest with probation. Today James aspires to start a computer security company.

How to recover from Generic Host Problem?

2009-05-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

While you are surfing the internet, you get an error message something like "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Even if you can see the network connection icon in the tray, you cannot surf the internet and every network activity goes to hault.
Error message reporting about faulting netapi32.dll and svchost.exe.

You try to disconnect your Internet because of no activity observed but the Internet icon won’t disappear.

You receive an error message something like "Your PC has recovered from a serious problem" etc.

Again you need to reboot the machine for further surfing.

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International Space Station Hit With a Virus

2009-05-23T04:35:00.001-07:00

NASA confirmed this week that a computer on the International Space Station is infected with a virus. (See “Houston, we have a virus” at The Register.)

The malicious software is called W32.TGammima.AG, and technically it’s a worm. The interesting point, other than how NASA could let this happen, is the way the worm spreads–on USB flash drives.

Malicious software spread by USB flash drives and other removable media takes advantage of a questionable design decision by Microsoft. Windows is very happy to run a program automatically when a USB flash drive is inserted into a PC. How convenient, both for end users and for bad guys.

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Full DOS commands

2009-05-23T01:23:00.000-07:00

ADDUSERS : Add or list users to/from a CSV file

ARP: Address Resolution Protocol

ASSOC: Change file extension associations

ASSOCIAT: One step file association

AT: Schedule a command to run at a later time

ATTRIB: Change file attributes

BOOTCFG: Edit Windows boot settings

BROWSTAT: Get domain, browser and PDC info

CACLS: Change file permissions

CALL: Call one batch program from another

CD: Change Directory - move to a specific Folder

CHANGE: Change Terminal Server Session properties

CHKDSK: Check Disk - check and repair disk problems

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How to Turn Off The System Beeps

2009-05-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Follow the given steps

First click on Start button then type Regedit in Run option.
Then move to the location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound
Here in right side panel, double click on Beep and change its value of 'NO' to 'Yes' (without any quotes).
Now close the registry editor and restart your computer

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How To Make Your System Faster by Increasing Virtual RAM

2009-05-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

1) Right-Click 'My Computer' and then Select 'Properties'.

2) Click on the 'Advanced' tab

3) Under 'Performance', click 'Settings'.

4) Then click the 'Advanced' tab on the button that pops up.

5) Under 'Virtual Memory' at the bottom, click 'Change'.

6) Click the 'Custom Size' button

7) For the initial size type in anywhere from 1000-1500 (in my computer i use 4000), and for the Maximum size type in anywhere from 2000-2500 (I use 6000).

8) Click 'Set', and then exit out of all of the windows.

9)Now, Restart your computer.

10) You now have a faster computer and 1-2GB of Virtual RAM..!

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Clearing out the Master Boot Record (MBR)

2009-05-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

Experimentation is fun. After all, one of the things that makes Linux so interesting to a number of people is the ability to twiddle settings and see what happens - I'll admit that it's a major factor for me. One of the problems with that, though, is that some types of twiddling can lead to serious problems. A bit like sawing off the branch you're sitting on, in fact...

A number of people write to the Answer Gang with a query that goes something like this:

"Dear TAG: I have a stick of dynamite strapped to the CPU, and I'm not afraid to use it. Now that I have your undivided attention: I ran into a problem while trying to reinstall..."

What it turns out to be - after the police, the fire department, and the burly men in the white coats have come and gone - is that they've run into the classic "fried MBR" problem: install Linux, realize that Windows will screw up the boot record, delete the Linux partition, try to install Windows first... OOPS. The Windows setup runs into a problem and stops.

The reason for all of the above is that they forgot to uninstall LILO, which would have written out the original MBR; as it is, the boot code in the MBR is trying to pass control to the Linux kernel - and that's no longer there.

Nothing helps. The undocumented "fdisk/mbr" option that is supposed to write a clean Master Boot Record seems to have no effect; "fdisk" in interactive mode refuses to delete the "Non-DOS" partition; even the detonator fails to explode. What to do, what to do...

By the way, a factor in the first two problems might be the Windows "lock" command - by default, 'raw writes' to disk are disallowed, and "lock c:" 'locks' the drive to allow writing to it. (For the last problem, stick to the bridge-wire type detonators from Dynamit Nobel, and store them

properly. :)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Note: The following advice will completely wipe your Master Boot Record,

which contains all your partition information. DO NOT DO THIS unless you
know that this is exactly the result you want - it will leave your HD in
an unbootable state, in effect bringing it back to "factory-fresh", i.e.,
empty of data and requiring partitioning and formatting.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Linux-based solution

If you can still somehow fire up Linux - say, via Tom's Root-Boot floppy - you can simply invoke "dd", like so:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Yep, that's it. That MBR is gone. Obviously, you have to be root to do this.

DOS-based solution

Boot with a DOS floppy that has "debug" on it; run "debug". At the '-' prompt, "block-fill" a 512-byte chunk of memory with zeroes:

f 9000:0 200 0

Start assembly mode with the 'a' command, and enter the following code:

mov dx,9000

mov es,dx

xor bx,bx

mov cx,0001

mov dx,0080

mov ax,0301

int 13

int 20

Press to exit assembly mode, take a deep breath - and press "g" to execute, then "q" to quit "debug". Your HD is now in a virgin state, and ready for partitioning and installation.

Obviously, you have to be root... oh, oops. Anybody that walks up with a DOS floppy can do this to your system in about a minute, including boot time. Let's see; where was that article about securing your box, again?...

References

The "dd" man page.

DOS-based fix: Original idea and code by Mark Minasi, used for clearing infected/damaged MBRs in a course of his that I used to teach; all code/command modifications mine.

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