Hack Forums
HF News // Edition 243 - Printable Version

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HF News // Edition 243 - Hydra - Jun 9, 2015



[IMG]http://ihydra.net/hfnt/headers/Title243.png[/IMG]

The edition you are currently reading is the 243rd edition of the HF News. To read any older editions of the HF News, please go here.



[img]http://ihydra.net/hfnt/headers/Headlines.png[/img]

New MyCode
There have been exciting new improvements to Hack Forums' MyCode today as buttons are now available for the three main crypto-currencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Omnicoin. Furthermore, the Skype MyCode tag has been updated since Skype apparently discontinued status support. A chat can now be started with the username tied to the button, however, the crypto-currency buttons are not yet functional. >>Source 1 >>Source 2

Rumors Put to Rest
On occasion, a rumor surfaces that either the Hack Forums user database or the Witza orders database have been breached/dumped. Omniscient has decided to directly address these fictitious claims in a thread, explaining how often people believe a previous 1 of 2 dumps is the most recent database and reassures the intricate security measures in place to prevent and alert any attempts to compromise Hack Forums or its users. >>Source

OMC Exclusives Market Closed
In just over one year, the Omnicoin Exclusives Market has only managed to accumulate seven pages of content and so has been shut down due to its little success in the marketplace. Existing threads will either be moved or junked. >>Source



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User News
  • xadamxk hit 2,000 reputation points.
  • Gаry hit 10,000 posts.

Bans*
  • bloodhawkbh was banned for harassing members.
  • G-Eazyy was banned for reputation abuse.
  • Infiny was banned for reputation abuse.
  • $afe was banned for proxy selling.

Vacations
Closures

Repfucks
Awards
  • iHydra received the Diamond award.


* - As of the Monday prior to release.



[img]http://ihydra.net/hfnt/headers/NotableThreads243.png[/img]

Announcement Threads

---BTC, LTC, OMC MyCode - Omniscient
---New MyCode have been added to Hack Forums, specifically three new ones. You can now add a neat button-like bar with your OMC, LTC, or BTC address in it. Those who have the proper applications, extensions, or software can click it and do an action with it. Read the original thread for more information on how to use it.

---Skype MyCode - Omniscient
---For a while now, the old Skype MyCode did not work properly as Skype/Microsoft had stopped supporting the Skype embed API. Omniscient has now updated the Skype MyCode to just show the member's Skype ID as they input it.

---Section Closed - Omniscient
---The OMC Exclusives Market subforum has come to an end. Omniscient has closed the subforum due to not having the success he had hoped for. It will remain closed until he decides to either junk or move the content.

---Sales Tag Change - Omniscient
---Sales tags now cost $10 OMC for 15 days and can now be purchased for any thread, in any section. This will most likely increase the amount of sales tags used on the forum and allows for stickied threads to have a sales tag.

Informational Threads

---HF Hacked Rumors - Omniscient
---Hack Forums has been hacked only twice in the many years running and till now there has been rumors that Hack Forums has been hacked or a database has been leaked containing user information and what not. Omniscient is notifying us that all these so-called hacks are rumors and there are security measures set up to attempt preventing such things.

---Gauth Notice - Omniscient
---A reminder for those who have not yet activated their two-factor authorization feature. You will continue to get a notice shown on Hack Forums until it has been activated. If your account is lost or stolen, it will get closed unless you have 2FA activated. This applies to Ub3r members only.

Entertaining Threads

---I've repped HackForums in the dopest way possible!! - theRealShooKon3 (VIP Forum)
---Check it out if you're L33t or Ub3r because this thread is flaming hot. theRealShooKon3 is spitting bars in his freestyle rap live stream/video. This will be a nice video to get your day going, and maybe even give you the opportunity to hop onto his Twitch stream when he's live streaming a rap session.

Contests and Giveaways

---50.000 Twitter Followers Contest [Everyone | Just Post] - Regulus
---Do you need Twitter followers? Regulus has your back - all you have to do is post a number in his thread and you can win 50,000 Twitter followers. Choose wisely!

---Giving away 100k OMC to someone. Last one to post when I close thread wins. - musique
---Win 100,000 OMC just by being the last person to post in musique's thread. Good luck!



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HF News // Edition 243 - Hydra - Jun 9, 2015



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Submit Moment Articles
Our new Moment section is for you, type up an article and submit it to me so you can get it on HF News. Read more in the moment section below(4th Post).

HF News Delay
Apologies for the delay of HF News Edition 243. Came home to Hack Forums being down so was unable to publish the news and came home late tonight(Tuesday). That's all for this week's memo, enjoy reading the rest of the edition.



HF News // Edition 243 - Hydra - Jun 9, 2015



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Child's Toy Opens Garage Doors
A previously popular handheld child's electronic toy by Mattel called "IM-Me" was hacked by notorious security researcher Samy Kamkar, most famous for the Myspace Samy Worm. Kamkar's goal was to utilize the Texas Instruments CC-1110 Sub-GHz Radio Frequency transmitter chip built into the device. He first reverse-engineered the garage door signals with a Software-defined Radio, and realized that he could duplicate these signals with the handheld toy. After that, he loaded his custom firmware onto the device via easily accessible I/O pins and a GoodFET hardware hacking device. Once it was on, he coded a program that used the mathematical concept of the De Bruijn Sequence to send every possible 12-bit combination to the garage door's transceiver and, hopefully, unlock/open the door. As Kamkar states, it is unfortunately the case that doors vulnerable to such a primitive attack are still sold, and even manufactured, to this day, despite having been demonstrated to be vulnerable over 30 years ago.

Utility Company Database 'Vulnerability'
In some, or even many, cases of computer hacking, we find that the attack carried out did not utilize some advanced exploit or technical attack vector, but rather highlights and exploits an error in the logic of the programmer who had written the code. In a recent story of an unnamed utility company, a user attempted to pay his account balance via the online web interface. He had 'accidentally' changed his account number on the verification stage, and to his surprise, it displayed a completely different account's information, including their address, name, and phone number. With about 20 lines of PHP code, he had developed a proof of concept that was capable of exhausting the entirety of the utility company's user database. The researcher, a man writing for Atxsec, made it very clear that he, in no way, condones this attack, and that he performed it on his own equipment purely for research purposes. However, highlighting these vulnerabilities could prove to be invaluable to many other companies whose security has still not met up with the rest of us in the 21st century.

ThePirateBay Co-Founder Released from Prison
In the past few years, the controversial media/torrent sharing website ThePirateBay has been continually chased by several departments from an array of countries and governments. The two brains behind much of the operation, the founder, Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata), and the co-founder, Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), were arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced to jail time for their participation in the site. Having provided billions of dollars worth in "illegally" shared media, it is safe to say that Neij, who needed only serve a 10-month sentence, got off with little more than a warning. Unfortunately, Anakata is still behind bars, and has been since his arrest in Cambodia in 2012. Gottfrid received a longer 3.5 year sentence.



[img]http://ihydra.net/hfnt/headers/SecurityNews.png[/img]

Researchers Open a Garage Door with a kids toy in 10 seconds
Security researcher Samy Kamkar has come up with a way to open almost any garage door that uses a fixed code and he's set it up on a $12 children's toy. The attack that Kamkar crafted, referred to as OpenSesame, has reduced the amount of time that it takes to guess a garage door's password from a few minutes to a could seconds. Typically, commercial garage keypads use 12 dip switches, which are binary, and provide 4,096 different combinations. This small of amount of possible combinations leaves these keypads open to brute-force attacks. “Now in a common garage and clicker, we’re going to be using an 8-12 bit code, and we see a single click sends the same code 5 times, and we see each ‘bit’ takes 2ms to send, with a 2ms wait period per bit after the entire code is sent. So a single 12-bit combination takes (12 bits 2ms transmit 2ms wait * 5 times = 240ms),” said Kamkar in a post discussing his new attack. With the most simple brute-force attack it would take 29 minutes, said Kamkar. Karmar began reducing the time to about six minutes by eliminating the retransmission of each code. Karmar discovered that most garage openers use a technique known as a bit shift register. This causes the opener to receive a 12-bit code, test the code, and if it's wrong, the opener will shift out one bit and pill in one but of the next code transmitted. “So the garage actually tests: 011111100000 (incorrect) (chops off the first bit, then pulls in the next bit) 111111000000 (correct!) Meaning we sent 13 bits to test two 12-bit codes instead of sending a full 24 bits. Incredible!" Karmar used an algorithm known as the De Brujin sequence to automate the process and then Kamkar loaded it on to a discontinued toy called the Mattle IM-ME, thus creating this device. >>Source

Unity Web Player Zero-Day Disclosed
Some detail has been revealed about a zero-day vulnerability in the Unity Web Player browser plugin. This vulnerability can allow an attacker to use a victim's credentials to read messages or use their account for other online services. The partial disclosure was made after almost six months of bug report submissions from a Finnish researcher Jouko PYnnonen to Unity that are yet to be answered. Pynnonen said Unity today acknowledged the bugs reports and says it's working on a patch as well as improving their response to security concerns. Unity develops the Unity Web Plater alongside a game engine that's used to develop games on Windows, OS X, consoles, and mobile platforms. Despite its presence, Google recently decided to disable the NPAPI in Chrome, an API notorious for crashes and security concerns. This removal mitigates the vulnerability to a large extent. Fortunately, the Unity Web player is off by default. To exploit this vulnerability, one would have to lure the victim to an attacker's site hosting a malicious Unity app. Pynnonen explains that the vulnerability allows the malicious Unity App to bypass cross-domain policies that are supposed to prevent accessing the local filesystem or other outside sites. Pynnonen urges Unity users to be careful when using the Unity player. >>Source

The US Office of Personal Management Hack May Have Disclosed Security Clearence Data
Nearly a day after an unnamed White House employee said that the OPM data breach was linked to China, a security company has linked the instructions to enormous breaches earlier this year in Anthem and Premera Blue Cross. A D.C. think tank tweeted that the hackers made off with security clearance going to 1982. The OPM handles government employment records as well as security clearance applications. If this data has in fact been breached, the identities and personal information of undercover operators and others linked to top secret work could be exposed. In the beginning, it was believed that the attack only gained access to the personnel databases which included SSNs and other personally identifiable information. While this data is an unfortunate leak, it's nothing in comparison to clearance application data. “The major difference between criminal and espionage campaigns is that criminals are all about monetizing commodity data where espionage actors are after esoteric information; diplomatic or political documents, intelligence, intellectual property,” John Hultquist or iSight partners, who connected the OPM hack to the Anthem breach, said. “Stuff that will give them a competitive advantage." The government is expecting to alert as many as four million people of this data breach. The Washington Post said that the attackers used a zero-day during the attack, but did not specify further. >>Source



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Fallout 4 Official Trailer
The Fallout 4 official teaser trailer was released on June 3, 2015, to much fanfare from gamers worldwide. It has been announced that the world premiere for the game will take place at the E3 showcase on June 14. While an official Fallout 4 website has now been released, it currently contains very little on the side of information of the game. The games director, Todd Howard, had this to say about the release: “We know what this game means to everyone,” said Todd Howard, “The time and technology have allowed us to be more ambitious than ever. We’ve never been more excited about a game, and we can’t wait to share it.” The game has been confirmed for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.>>Source

I am Bread Planned for a Playstation 4 Release
The weird and wonderful toast simulator I am Bread is now officially receiving a release on the Playstation 4. This comes from an announcement from designer Luke Williams in the Official Playstation Blog. A date for the game has not been announced, but it will contain new content that isn’t currently present on the Steam version of the game. "You'll find we've added a whole host of game modes that see you taking control of a new type of bread, each with their own variation of the controls and completely new goals and challenges," Williams wrote. "Become a baguette as you smash your way around the various levels, trying to cause as much destruction as possible; or become a bagel, and roll your way around a series of race courses in record time. To top it all off, you'll find a whole host of challenging Trophies to try and earn with all your bready companions." The game is also coming to iOS.>>Source

Amazon Games Heading Ambitious Project
For the past year Amazon Game Studios has been building its presence, but so far it has only released games on mobile and its own flagship Amazon Fire TV. However, through a job posting seen on Gamasutra, a new PC game from the studio is currently in the works. It’s apparent that Amazon Game Studios has large plans for this game, describing it as "an ambitious new PC game project using the latest technology." The current developers on the game hail from games such as Splinter Cell and Far Cry. The team also includes developers who have worked on World of Warcraft, BioShock, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Dota 2, Halo, Infamous, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and The Last of Us.>>Source



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Google Chrome to 'Intelligently' Block Auto-playing Flash Ads
If there's one thing more universally loathed than interstitial ads—you know, those full screen ads that cover the interface of their host application—it's auto-playing Flash ads, especially if they contain audio. If you don't already have an ad-blocker installed, then you might want to consider getting the upcoming version of Chrome. Google has announced today that it's been working with Adobe to introduce an update to Chrome that will "intelligently pause content that aren't central to the webpage."

Writing on the official Google Chrome Blog, Google's Tommi Li explains that this new feature is all about battery life: Flash animations still consume a large amount of CPU time, which in turn slurps down some of your laptop's vital lithium juice. By "intelligently" pausing any Flash elements that aren't central to the surfing experience—which is essentially a euphemism for "ads"—mobile users may experience a non-negligible boost in battery life. >>Source

Android 5.0 Lollipop’s Battery Issues Are Mostly Google’s Fault, Not Samsung
Samsung might have made a mistake putting rather small batteries inside the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, but it seems part of the battery issues users are facing – on both existing devices and the new S6 devices – are because of issues on Android 5.0 itself.

Apparently, on Lollipop apps are continuing to keep the mobile data connection active after they are finished with their transaction, instead of closing the connection as was the case on KitKat. Indeed, on our Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, we have noticed that some apps sometimes report high “mobile data active” time, even though they don’t always come up at the top in Android’s battery stats. Even the Xperia Z3, which is one of the most battery-efficient smartphones on the market today, is giving its users reduced usage times after getting updated to Android 5.0.2, and so are users of the OnePlus One, another device that had great battery life on Android 4.4. >>Source

Consumers Continue to Share Their Data, But Not Happily
Americans might use loyalty cards for discounts, or surf the Web through a store's free WiFi, but that doesn't mean that they want information about themselves compiled for marketing purposes. At least, that's the implication of a new study done by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. The study, based on a survey of around 1,500 people, reportedly found that most people aren't comfortable with data mining by marketers.

More than half of the respondents (55%) disagreed or strongly disagreed that “it’s O.K. if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me”, while around 70% said it wasn't fair for stores with free WiFi to monitor shoppers' online activities, and 91% said companies shouldn't collect data about shoppers in exchange for discounts without telling them, according to a write-up of the survey in The New York Times. >>Source



[img]http://ihydra.net/hfnt/headers/WorldNews.png[/img]

FIFA Scandal
Many of this weeks paper columns have been dedicated to the scandal of FIFA being corrupt - this has been somewhat known for quite a time and hints were given out but after the last few weeks it has been confirmed with many higher ranking officials being arrested due to corruption. The biggest news now is that both Russia and Qatar who had both won the rights to host the next two World Cups in 2018 and 2022 respectively may now lose this right if any bribery has been found within the voting process. This is a massive loss for both countries who have invested so much in the creation of new stadiums and work forces and the revenue produced by the World Cup is massive and gets bigger and bigger each year. Both countries have denied any wrongdoing but if found guilty they may face prosecution and large fines.
>>Source

Saudi Give Blogger 1,000 Lashes
A Blogger which was sentenced to 1,000 lashes has been convicted by Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court and the punishment has been upheld despite a worldwide outcry. Raif Badawi was arrested for "insulting Islam through electronic channels" and although his wife is currently in Canada they could not get the sentenced overhauled, even with the aid of many charities and right groups. Badawi ran the Liberal Saudi Network, which encouraged online debate on religious and political issues. Badawi received his first 50 lashes in January but so far the other lashes have been postponed, presumably waiting for this decision by the court but a medical document was recently found saying he was not fit for this sort of punishment.
>>Source

Malaysia's Fatal Earthquake
On Friday Malaysia received an earthquake on Mount Kinabalu which killed 16 people. Many of those named deceased were Singaporean school pupils on a visit to the mountain and currently 6 more remain missing. During Singapore's Southeast Asian Games venue all flags will be flown at half-mast and there will be a minute of silence to show respect for those deceased. The earthquake sent rocks crashing down the mountain which was the main reason for the deaths. "Our hearts go out to their families, and to the TKPS community" Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a statement also declaring 8 June a national day of remembrance.
>>Source

       

HF News // Edition 243 - Hydra - Jun 9, 2015



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Every week - assuming we get enough submissions - the HF News will feature the best submitted battlestation.
Send iHydra a message by clicking here and including an imgur link of your battlestation!

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Writing Articles for HFNT
Members of Hack Forums can now submit their own articles to HF News. Articles can be about anything: music, op-eds, conspiracy, sports, tech, etc. Below the rules, you will find the format you must use for your articles. You may not customize any part of it to your likings including any visual effects(color, font, etc.). You will write your articles and then submit your article by visiting Pastebin and pasting your entire article with the subject and MyCode/BBCode. Give it a name, make it unlisted, and hit submit. Under the name you gave it, there is a link to a raw paste which you will have to copy and send to iHydra using this link. That's all you have to do. I will reply back approving or denying the submission. If an article is submitted on or before Friday, it will be in the edition coming up. If it is after Friday, it will be added in the next edition.

If you have any questions, contact iHydra or post in this edition for support.

Rules
  1. Must be written in complete sentences with proper grammar;
  2. Subject title should not be too long, I may rename it if need-be;
  3. No image, video, or soundcloud MyCode. Links only;
  4. Must be at least one paragraph long with at least five sentences total and no longer than three paragraphs containing a total of 450 words;
  5. No inappropriate language and/or content;
  6. Articles cannot copy the format of Site News, Group News, Notable Threads, User news, and Opinion Central;
  7. No flaming, drama, or offensive wording towards any HF members. Rants are allowed though as long as they don't break any other rule;
  8. I have the right to not publish it without disclosing a reason to you or to anyone else.
Format
Code
[b][color=white]SUBJECT_TITLE[/color][/b] - By [i][url=YOUR_PROFILE_URL][color=lightgrey]USERNAME[/color][/url][/i]
YOUR_ARTICLE_HERE



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* - Roger Waters - Jun 9, 2015

Nice job this week, looking forward to the next one!

* - bοxxy - Jun 9, 2015

I enjoyed reading, just kidding tl;dr.
Why wasn't Gary's ban reason listed?

* - Autocorrect - Jun 9, 2015

Insert generic comment on news quality here.

* - Vobe - Jun 9, 2015

I enjoyed reading this a lot.

Keep up the good work.

* - Matt Bomer™ - Jun 9, 2015

Another amazing edition of HF news!
Rivalry did an amazing work.

* - Server97 - Jun 9, 2015

nice edition, first time ive ever posted on front page
umg
umg

* - Fox™ - Jun 9, 2015

Whoop! Can't wait to work on the next one.

* - Αlien - Jun 10, 2015

Interesting addition of crypto payments ad bar of sorts. Abuse already rampant?

* - Happeh - Jun 10, 2015

Good issue again everyone.

* - Charlemagne - Jun 10, 2015

Great edition as always guys!

* - Black Shadow - Jun 10, 2015

At last I have been waiting for this edition,its a good read every week.