Hackers Crack London Tube's Ticketing System

Dutch security researchers rode the London Underground free for a day after easily using an ordinary laptop to clone the "smartcards" commuters use to pay fares, a hack that highlights a serious security flaw because similar cards provide access to thousands of government offices, hospitals and schools.

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Deep packet inspection under assault over privacy concerns

A Canadian law clinic has asked the country's Privacy Commissioner to take a closer look at the deep packet inspection being used by Bell Canada and others. While the technology also raises net neutrality concerns, in this case the issue is privacy.

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Security Flaw Turns Gmail into Open-Relay Server

A newfound flaw in Google's Gmail allows would-be spammers to treat the service as an open-relay server. Compounding the issue is the fact that services such as Hotmail and Yahoo "trust" Gmail. This may facilitate e-mail delivery, but it also makes it easier for spammers to reach their intended targets.

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The Internet as a Walled Garden?

Now it seems the only question is whether the government will be able to turn the net into a controllable, monitorable and trackable pre-internet AOL-type service or whether the chaotic net will live on as just another frontier for the military-industrial complex to start an arm's race and rake in billions of government dollars.

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Can you hear me now? Yes, yes I can. (GSM hacked for cheap)

The 64-bit encryption method used by GSM networks (AT&T/TMobile/etc), known as A5/1 has been theoretically crackable for 10 years now, but it was very expensive to do so. At Black Hat D.C. 2008 however, a $1,000 solution was unveiled that claims to crack it in 30 minutes, or for $100,000 it can be cracked in 30 seconds.

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Make Sure You Know When Someone Hacks Your Email

If someone has cracked your email password, it may not be apparent to you. A snooper can easily read an email then mark it as unread again. So the best thing to do would be to set up an “electronic tripwire” so if someone breaks into your account, you’ll know about it.

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How Internet Censorship Works

One of the early nicknames for the Internet was the "information superhighway" because it was supposed to provide the average person with fast access to a practically limitless amount of data. For many users, that's exactly what accessing the Internet is like. For others, it's as if the information superhighway has some major roadblocks in the form

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Is it time to consider PDF a threat?

The 8.12 patch for Adobe Reader that Adobe released last week fixed a number of security holes—but not before malware capable of exploiting them had been on the market for weeks. The end result is tough questions on whether it is time to consider PDF a security threat.

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Confessions of a Caller-ID spoofer

He spoofed the HR director's work phone number, then the number of that guy's boss, before moving up to a vice president, and finally, the CEO. Says he had no choice. He also says "this thing that I did is bad and should be outlawed." He even spoofed a White House number. Fascinating full interview.

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Huge Leak: Database of 8,700+ stolen cooperate FTP accounts

The stolen credentials belong to companies from around the world and include more than 2500 North American companies, some of which are the world's top 100 domains, according to security company Finjan. The ISP hosting the db has been notified but they still have not removed it. Finjan says companies can email them to check if their info was stolen

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