How to Hack the RFID Passport Chip

As we are probably all aware, everyone will need a U.S passport by January of 2008 if they plan to leave the borders of the United States in any direction. For those who don’t know how to obtain a passport you can check out an article earlier published on this site: How to Get a United States Passport. Read more

How to Get A United States Passport

Very soon every United States Citizen crossing the Canadian or Mexican border will need a valid United States Passport. If you are traveling by air, you will need this documentation beginning January 23, 2007. If crossing by land or sea (including Ferries) you will need to have a valid US passport as early as January 2008. Read more

9/11 + 5

Five years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, families of some of the nearly 3,000 victims gathered Monday at Ground Zero for a solemn ceremony.

The commemoration included four moments of silence. Two for the times that hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers (which Dracut’s own John Ogonowski piloted flight 11) and two for when the burning towers collapsed into mountains of rubble, killing thousands of people working there and first responders who were trying to rescue them. Including my friend Ray Rocha.

An estimated 2,973 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Memorials were also held in Washington and Pennsylvania.

After the wreath-laying ceremony, the president and first lady attended a service at Trinity Church near Ground Zero. Read more

GPS tracking allows authorities to keep closer tabs on offenders

GPS Ankle Bracelet Plugged into a phone outlet in Joe Magno’s ranch home on Rock Avenue in Hudson is a black box.
And strapped around the former high school teacher’s ankle is a rubber and metal bracelet. If he so much as steps outside for fresh air, dunks the bracelet or tries to cut it off, the radio connection between the two is broken, an alarm rings in a field monitoring office staffed 24 hours a day in government center in Boston.
Magno is one of more than 600 people in the state assigned a radio frequency electronic monitoring bracelet. The 65-year-old is awaiting trial on charges he raped a male student at Maynard High School and is back in Middlesex Superior Court tomorrow for a pre-trial conference.
With more bracelets in use nearly every year, are they working? Are more people destined to be fitted with the newest GPS bracelets, now reserved for about 100 sex offenders?

Of 8,300 people who have been strapped with the bracelet, only 8 percent, about 700, have tried to break it off, according to Deputy Commissioner of Probation Paul Lucci. One of them was Hudson wedding photographer Gary Tobin, who cut off his bracelet and fled to New Hampshire while awaiting trial on charges he robbed a pizzeria with a machete in 2004. Read more

9/11 Video To Be Released Today

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that Department of Defense will release a videotape to Judicial Watch at 1:00 p.m. this afternoon that allegedly shows American Airlines Flight 77 striking the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The Department of Defense is releasing the videotape in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request and related lawsuit.

Physical Security for Your Home

Physical security is very important to a home owner. Your home is one of your most important possessions since this is where you and your loved ones reside.

Once you know that your home is safe from intruders, you can rest assured that your material and personal possessions as well as your loved ones, are secured.

There are several parts of your home that you need to secure by using electronic devices: Read more

Windows Defender released today. Replaces Microsoft Antispyware

Windows Defender (formally Microsoft Antispyware) Beta 2 has been released. Get it here Downloaded, installed, scanned with it, first impressions are it looks a lot nicer, cleaner simpler interface.

Windows Defender needs Automatic Update service running to get definition updates, and downloads them directly through the network connection for Generic Host Process for Win32 Services. Not sure if I like that. It scans a lot slower, especially when scanning archives. It took forever to get through my Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2 program folders. Those game installs are loaded with huge archive folders for maps. Only 8.4 gigs on this drive and it took 23 minutes to scan with a full system scan, spending like 22 and a half minutes on just this drive. It went through my other drive with nothing but 9.5 gigs of mp3 files very quickly. Read more

Protect Yourself on the Internet

The Internet has changed so much in the last few years. I can remember not to long ago when a person could safely chart his course through the Internet safely and easily, but now the Internet has changed for the worse for the uninformed user. Today, the Internet is full of spy ware, Internet hijackers, dialers and online stalkers. So what can we do to curve the possibilities of being overtaken with these nasty Internet bugs?

The first thing and most important is never ever open an email attachment sent from an unknown address. These types of attachments can deliver nasty things like spy ware, email viruses, and other things, which are not good for our computers. Read more

I Know Who You’re Talking to on Your Cell Phone

Your Cell Phones records can be purchased from a website for only $50 such as BestPeopleSearch.com

A U.S. congressman said Friday that federal agencies were looking into whether telephone companies were sufficiently protecting consumers’ records amid concerns that Internet sites were selling cellphone call information.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told him the agency was investigating whether phone companies were adequately protecting consumer records. He said in a statement “the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission were coordinating efforts to combat this rising fraud.”

In November, Markey asked the FTC and the FCC to investigate what he said was a violation of private consumer information and to take steps to protect consumers. Read more

Now I know how to Uninstall Internet Explorer 6

Before you uninstall Internet Explorer 6, quit all running programs. After you uninstall Internet Explorer 6, you cannot uninstall the previous version of Internet Explorer that remains on the computer. If you uninstall Internet Explorer 6, visit one of the following Microsoft Web sites to download any security updates that are needed for the version of Internet Explorer that remains on the computer:

• http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/security/default.asp
• http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

How to Uninstall Internet Explorer 6
Use the following steps to uninstall Internet Explorer 6 from a computer that is running Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, or Windows Me.

NOTE: You must have administrative privileges to install and uninstall Internet Explorer 6 in Windows NT and Windows 2000. This includes having administrative privileges the first time you start your computer after you install or uninstall Internet Explorer 6.

Read more

How to find people online with Intelius

“It’s perceived as easy even though it isn’t,” says Marcus Zillman, long-time Internet consultant and author of Internet Sources, eCurrent Awareness Resources, and Internet miniguides for professionals.

“If you really want to take your time, you probably can pull down as much information for free as with the fee-based services,” says the Florida-based Mr. Zillman.

First, he suggests creating a free e-mail address that does not contain personal information such as your name or date of birth. That can be set up with Yahoo, juno, netzero, hotmail, toast, msn, and others.

He recommends using the public library and asking for a librarian skilled at Internet searches.

Mr. Zillman’s site has a free streaming video segment about finding people on the Internet. (To find the correct page, go to yahoo.com and type: Marcus Zillman finding people).

He lists dozens of resources and sites, indicating which are free. He also recommends articles found at http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/search-engines/ and http://www.virtualchase.com/articles/background_checks.html.

Dozens of companies charge for information but the results may not turn out to be what you wanted. Among them: identitycrawler.com, publicbackgroundchecks.
com, locateamerica.com, and usa-people-search.com.

Before you pay for a search:
Read more

How to crack a computer password

Password Cracking Goals, Techniques and Relative Merits and Cracking Times of Different Techniques

Password crackers are primarily after (root or administrative account passwords) when they crack passwords. Their tools are password cracking programs that use password dictionaries. The feature lists of common password cracking programs or tools are discussed. Also listed are the suggested standard dictionary transformations for Crack, the best known tool for cracking passwords. How long it takes to crack passwords and the primary factors affecting password cracking times are covered. Why password dictionary attacks dramatically lower brute force password cracking times is discussed.

• Goals of the Cracker
• Password Cracking Programs’ Feature List
• Password Cracking Program Examples
• How Long Does It Take to Crack Passwords?
• Table of Times to Crack Passwords
• Brute Force, Dictionary Comparison

Goals of the Cracker

The goal of the cracker is to obtain the root account password on UNIX systems and administrator accounts on Windows NT and 2000 systems. With some UNIX security setups, the passwords for users in the wheel, security, or root group may have significant value. Since the cracker presumably already has some degree of access to the target machine (cracking can only be performed when the attacker already possess the password hashes), it’s not likely that unprivileged accounts will be of much value to the intruder but the techniques for obtaining passwords are the same regardless of the target account.

The intruder is likely to need only one password for an account with suitable privileges. Additional accounts may be of some value in preserving access but not likely to make much practical difference in obtaining access to the system at the desired privilege level.
Read more

Howard Stern got Hacked!

Howard Stern’s radio satelite was hit with a virus this morning causing the show to switch to ESPN radio for a few seconds and then to some spanish radio show for a few minutes. In the middle of Howard Stern interviewing Willie Nelson producer Gary dell’abate came in and told Stern that they lost their satelite feed for a few minutes and things are back to normal.

Could a virus do all this?

A new Windows worm has been hitting unpatched Windows 2000 computers en masse - and causing blushes at several media organisations along the way. The basic effect is not damaging, but irritating: it forces the computer to repeatedly shut down and reboot.

Associated Press - which was itself struck by the worm - is saying the following:

“A computer worm unleashed over the weekend infected more computers on Tuesday running Microsoft operating systems, with Windows 2000 users most seriously affected. The Zotob worm and several variations of it, known as Rbot.cbq, SDBot.bzh and Zotob.d, infected computers at companies such as CNN, The Associated Press [and] The New York Times.”

CNN announced live on air that its systems had succumbed to the worm.

“The prime distinguisher of this outbreak is that some of the world’s most trusted media has been hit,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “In the case of CNN, millions of viewers were able to witness the damaging affects of the worm live on air.”

Millions and Millions are Affected by Spyware

A new Pew Internet Project report shows that about 93 million American internet users (68% of them) have had computer trouble in the past year that is consistent with problems caused spyware and viruses, though 60% of those who had problems were not sure where the problem originated.

Some 25% of internet users have seen new programs on their computers that they did not install or new icons on their desktop that seemed to come out of nowhere. One in five internet users (18%) have had their homepage inexplicably changed.

The report, written by PIP’s Associate Director Susannah Fox, says that those who have broadband connections at home and those who range far and wide online are among those most vulnerable to spyware. Some of the most risky online behaviors that seem to attract spyware are downloading peer-to-peer services and swapping files over them, visiting adult Web sites, and playing online games.
Read more

Build your own Intrusion Detection System

Homegrown Intrusion Detection

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Tivo hack to download Netflix movies

Netflix and TiVo are in late-stage talks on a partnership that would let subscribers use the Internet to download Netflix movies directly into their TiVo box.

While the companies are close to striking a deal, making the service available to subscribers is still months away, according to sources. Read more