hackers

Nerd on Nerd Cyber-Violence

Hackers attack LHC network. Is computer geeks/physicists the new Jets/Sharks?

Last Wednesday, after years of construction and months of planning, the Large Hadron Collider, which you just might have heard about, turned on its proton beam for the first time. At the same time, a team of Greek hackers was planning to break through the security of the world’s largest experiments. First reported by the British newspaper the Telegraph, the attack targeted a project website, defacing the website with a long message in Greek.

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An Uncrackable Lock

A quantum cryptographic chip using light particles to encrypt data during electronic transfer could throw off hackers for good

Imagine an encrypted data chip so secure that even the greatest hackers in history would find impossible to crack. That chip is very much a reality thanks to the combined efforts of Siemens, Austrian Research Centers (ARC) and Graz University of Technology who have teamed up to create the first quantum cryptology chip for commercial use to ensure securer electronic communication.

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Defend Your Data

Upcoming ways to foil hackers and catch computer thieves

Identity theft used to involve someone rifling through your garbage. But now more than half a million laptops—full of tax returns and love letters—are stolen every year, estimates computer insurer Safeware. And even if your computer never leaves your sight, hackers can weasel into it over the Internet. Here are three technologies that will safeguard your digital data, whether it's on an office desktop or a stolen laptop.

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Anatomy of a Hack

After video site Revision3 was attacked and brought down over the weekend, a little digging revealed a surprising perpetrator

Over the long weekend, the servers of the Internet TV site Revision3.com were brought down by what is called a "denial-of-service" attack (DoS)—one of the most common methods used to disrupt the operations of a Web site or server by flooding it with an overload of simultaneous connections. These attacks are not uncommon, but in a fascinating blog post written by Revision3's CEO Jim Louderback today, he reveals that the source of this particular attack was not a pimply basement hacker with a grudge, but a major anti-piracy organization called MediaDefender whose clients include all the major entertainment companies and the RIAA. The hitch? Revision3 is a perfectly legitimate business that does not deal in pirated content.

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