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The Official Reason AT&T Blocked 4Chan

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:09:22 +0000

Fresh from the Mouth of AT&T, who like his Lord of the Rings counterpart, wears creepy masks at inappropriate times is AT&T’s official reason they blocked 4chan. It was, as suspected, blamed on a DDoS attack from that IP address:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact to our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

I’m sure that won’t stop the 4chan retaliation. [AT&T]

Why Did AT&T Block 4Chan?

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:59:54 +0000

It’s indisputable at this point that AT&T blocked 4chan—what’s 4chan, you ask?—the cesspool that has spawned some of the internet’s greatest memes, like LOLCATs. We hear it’s because of a massive DDoS attack emanating from that IP address.

Whatever the reason, the fact that AT&T won’t officially comment on the matter, which virtually confirms that they were taking some action against 4chan earlier today. If there wasn’t a valid security reason for blocking access to the site, then AT&T’s actions are deeply troubling.

Access has since been restored, but expect the reprisal from 4chan—like planting the story that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson died outside his house—to continue. 4chan’s Moot says AT&T has yet to contact them. [4chan, TechCrunch]

Hacker Claims IPhone 3GS Encryption Is Dangerously Easy To Crack

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Noted iPhone security destroyer Jonathan Zdziarski has cracked the iPhone 3GS encryption security, which is to be expected, but the ease and speed with which he did it is worrisome. Zdziarski claims the iPhone 3GS is thus “useless” to businesses.

The iPhone certainly isn’t as ubiquitous for corporate use as BlackBerry or even Windows Mobile, but that’s starting to change, and Zdziarski is very concerned that the iPhone 3GS’s security puts sensitive data at unnecessary risk. He claims that with easily-available software, anybody can break into an iPhone 3GS and start extracting data within two minutes, and access everything on the phone within 45. After reading this, we could see why companies might just be reluctant to trade their BlackBerrys in for a shiny new iPhone 3GS. [Wired]

iPhone Push May Be Sending AIM Messages To Random People

Jesus Diaz — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:57:00 +0000

According to developer Till Schadde, random people may be receiving your AIM messages if you have a jailbroken or unlocked iPhone. In fact, anyone with a jailbroken iPhone may be getting it, according to his testing:

Just found a HUGE #security #hole w/ push & AIM. Someone got my sent messages and wrote back. DO NOT send confidential AIM msg to #iPhone

#iPhone #push #security #hole:my msg was received by an hacked iPhone w/ push service hack; msg seems to be broadcasted to all hacked phones

Take extreme caution when sending AIM msg to people w/ hacked iPhones. Push service broadcasts your msg to strangers. Pls RT

@martinhering there seems to be a brand new hack that reactivates push with the effect that received msg are broadcasted to strangers

Here’s a screenshot the random receiver of my msgs sent me back http://twitpic.com/b3bct I used iChat on a Mac #iPhone #push #security #hole

The problem seems a result from a hack to avoid Apple’s jailbroken/unlocked iPhone push blockade, so if you haven’t used any of this, keep sending your kinky messages to your mistress or master as usual. Otherwise, zip it. [Twitter via ]

Build Your Own Electronic Post-it Note

Sean Fallon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:30:46 +0000

Post-it notes are one of those archaic products that still manage to stick around, literally, in our offices and homes. With this hack, you can transform the beloved Post-it into a very 21st century digital note system. To leave a note, all you need to do is write it out with your finger on the trackpad. The message will show up on the LCD, which can be erased with a push of a button. It’s not the easiest hack in the world, but for only $175 it’s not the most expensive either. Plus, with a nice enclosure, it could be very functional. [PopSci]

iPhone 1.1.3 Jailbreak Has Issues With GPS, Official SDK?

Jason Chen — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:06:00 +0000

It seems the first iPhone 1.1.3 jailbreak by Nate True we all rushed to install is throwing a handful of problems, some of which are fixable and some of which leave us wishing we had waited a little bit. Here’s what we know so far from personal experience and what we’ve read on the Internet.

• Google Maps Faux GPS has problems working unless you install Navizon.

• Cannot change EDGE Settings. Jesus’s EDGE is now nonfunctional because he can’t enter in the custom settings for his provider. This is not a big deal for people actually on AT&T or one of the three official providers in Europe, but for people who’ve SIM unlocked and are wandering about on other networks, it’s a huge deal.

• The jailbreak may break official third party apps from the SDK? We don’t know if this will be the case, but iPhone Atlas claims that the method Nate used to jailbreak disables “Nikita,” which is a component in the iPhone that installs signed software. Signed software, in the iPhone’s case, would be official third party apps that are signed by Apple to make sure they don’t corrupt or kill your device. If this is broken and unfixable, then jailbreakers may be unable to get in on the SDK action in February.

The official iPhone Dev Team jailbreak was released yesterday, but we haven’t had any experience with this yet.

What have you heard? Drop a note in the comments detailing the problems you’ve had with the jailbreak or just 1.1.3 in general.

Wii Officially Hacked?

Jason Chen — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:40:58 +0000

Wii modchips have been around since the start of the year in one form or another, but some folks at the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress just demoed a new Wii hack that lets them have full access to the console, including all the hardware. By using a custom serial interface, they were able to grab access to the encryption and decryption keys during runtime by doing memory dumps. Don’t worry about the details if you’re not sure what’s going on, just know that you’re going to be able to run even better homebrew and “backup” Wii games in the near future. [Nintendo Scene via WiiNintendo]

PS3 Rock Band Drums Work with Garage Band

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:41:14 +0000

Reader Bill Pendry has discovered that you can easily get your PlayStation 3 Rock Band’s drums to work perfectly with Garage Band, the music composition software that comes with every Mac. The “hack” just requires GamePad Companion, a $US15 shareware program that will map the input from the drums into keystrokes. Since Garage Band can use the keyboard to play MIDI instruments, it will work right away. We just wish Bill’s friend tried to pull out some crazy Buddy Rich for his video:

[Bill Pendry, Gamepad Companion]

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Keyboards Cracked for Coworker Espionage

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:00:11 +0000

The crackers at Dreamlab have busted open the wireless encryption on Microsoft’s Optical Desktops 1000 and 2000, as well as any others using the same simplistic scheme: There’s only about 256 possible encryption keys, making it like pie to crack after sniffing a few tens of keystrokes. So easy, in their demo they nail three keyboards at once.

If you don’t wanna deal with the hack-speak, the bottom line is that a remotely enterprising and nosy co-worker could whip up a wireless keylogger to spy on the whole office. Then again, what office springs for wireless keyboards for everybody? [Remote-Exploit.org via Hackaday]

Hack a Neuros to Play Nice With TiVo: $3500 and Simultaneous Mobile Recording Will Be Your Reward

Sean Fallon — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:21 +0000

This isn’t the first time someone has offered a bounty to hack the Linux-based Neuros OSD, but if successful, this hack could have some very interesting implications. The goal is to get the Neuros to piggyback on the TiVo’s recording schedule and make MPEG-4 recordings that can be simultaneously transferred onto a portable device like a laptop or an iPhone. There are two segments to the bounty, with a cash reward that totals $US3500. It sounds pretty cool, but whether it can be done is up to you. [DVRupgrade]