Friday, August 12, 2011

INDIA IN 2011

2011 has been marked by lows and highs, gains and losses, anguish and exhilaration, despair and triumph. This has been the year that fearless whistle-blowers forced corruption out of the cracks. The year of the Jan Lokpal Bill. The year that terror reminded us of the tenacity we must summon up to fight it. The year that the World Cup came home. In telling pictures, we look at the events that defined 2011 in India.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Anonymous hacker mavericks threaten Facebook

A splinter group of notorious hacker collective Anonymous was fomenting support Wednesday for a plan to "kill" online social networking star Facebook.

A YouTube video labeled as a message from Anonymous claimed that "Operation Facebook" would take place on November 5 to destroy the social network for supposedly abusing the privacy of users.

An Anonymous spokesman told AFP that even heads of the group were uncertain how seriously to take the threat since the loosely-knit organization doesn't have a strict command structure and members mask their identities.

"I found groups of people who say we absolutely are and have a trick up our sleeves," said the spokesman. "I found others that say it isn't us and that this is stupid."

The video displayed a gray image of the Anonymous logo as a digitally masked voice announced a plan to destroy Facebook and called for others to join in the cyber attack.

The video accused Facebook of holding onto the data people post in accounts and of even sharing some of it with law enforcement agencies.

"Join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy," the speaker urged in the video, which has been viewed more than a million times since being posted three weeks ago.

A cadre within Anonymous was evidently trying to rally cyber warriors in a Facebook attack, but the plan did not have the backing of the majority of the group, according to the spokesman.

A message on an "Anonops" account at microblogging service Twitter acknowledged that some members of the group were organizing a Facebook attack but that didn't mean the sentiment was unanimous.

10-yr-old girl discovers security flaw in Apple, Android games ...

10-yr-old girl discovers security flaw in Apple, Android games

A 10 year old hacker left experts amazed with her discovery on the flaw in mobile phones. Read on to know how she cracked the nut.

A 10-year-old hacker has left experts amazed by finding an old-age security flaw in many mobile games.

Going by the handle CyFi, she found that advancing the clock on a tablet or phone could, in many games, open a loophole that can be exploited, reports the BBC.

CyFi discovered the bug after getting bored with the pace of farming games and seeking ways to speed them up.

Many farm-based games force players to wait hours before they can harvest a crop grown from virtual seeds. As a result CyFi, who has not revealed her real name, started fiddling with the clock on her handset to see if she could produce crops more quickly.

While many games detect and block clock-based cheating, CyFi found ways round these security measures. Disconnecting a phone from wi-fi and only advancing a clock by small amounts helped to open up the loophole as it forced the game into a state not tested by its original creators.

CyFi's discovery has since been verified by independent security researchers. The exploit has been found to work in versions of games for both Apple and Android gadgets. The hacker presented her findings at the DefCon hacker conference held in Las Vegas.