What are hackers really capable of? Why are they doing this?

[Guest]

This isn't a hating thread even if i wanted to just say that they have no life and it isn't good for what are they doing, so i installed windows 8.1 and on metro i have news, this is what ive got. ill just quote!

 

 

"Imagine driving on the freeway at 60 miles per hour and your car suddenly screeches to a halt, causing a pileup that injures dozens of people. Now imagine you had absolutely nothing to do with the accident because your car was taken over by hackers.

Charlie Miller, a security researcher at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, director of security intelligence at IOActive, a security research company, recently demonstrated car hacks at the DefCon computer security conferences in Las Vegas. The researchers completely disabled a driver’s ability to control a vehicle. No brakes. Distorted steering. All with a click of a button, while the

demos were with hybrid cars, researchers warn that dozens of modern vehicles could be susceptible.

Hackers and security researchers are moving away from simply trying to break into — or protect — people’s e-mail accounts, stealing credit cards and other dirty digital deeds. Now they’re exploring vulnerabilities to break through the high-tech security of homes, cause car accidents or in some extreme cases, kill people who use implanted medical devices.

“Once any single computer in a car is compromised, safety of the vehicle goes out the window,” Mr. Miller said in an e-mail interview. Modern cars typically have 10 to 40 little computers in them.

“Right now, there aren’t a lot of ways for hackers to remotely attack cars: Bluetooth, wireless tire sensors, telematics units,” he added. “But as cars get Internet connections, things will get easier for the attacker.”

Carmakers and the government are aware that our vehicles are vulnerable. In fact, Mr. Miller and Mr. Valasek received a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to research ways carmakers can thwart attacks. The biggest fear is the future: as cars become more computerized — or become fully automated, computers on wheels that drive for you — they’ll become more inviting targets.

But the demonstrations by security experts and hackers weren’t a peek at what’s to come. The researchers hacked a Toyota Prius and Ford Escape, two hybrid cars that are already on the road.

Certainly, hackable cars are a troubling development for people who don’t even like to use cruise control.

Now to add to your paranoia, security researchers warned that our homes are more vulnerable than our cars to attackers. That is, if burglars trade in their lockpicks and crowbars for laptops and Wi-Fi scanners.

Devices like the Lockitron, a Wi-Fi enabled front-door lock that can be used with a smartphone, could open a way for technically skilled thieves to break into your home. That’s not to pick on Lockitron. They just happen to be on the cutting-edge of wireless home security.

“We’ve built Lockitron from the ground up with security in mind,” the company said in a statement, while acknowledging that “anyone claiming their system is ‘unhackable’ is wrong.” At the conferences, security experts lauded the company for the protection it has built into the Lockitron.

Hackers could also turn our televisions and webcams against us, monitoring everything we’re saying and doing.

 

Digital refrigerators could be turned off, allowing food to spoil without your knowledge.

Some hacks could be mere practical jokes, albeit messy ones. Researchers have warned that the Bluetooth-enabled INAX Satis model toilets, which can be controlled via a smartphone app, could easily be hacked to spray water up instead of down. In response to warnings that its toilets could be hacked, INAX said it issued a security update for its toilets this month.

Yes, in the future, you will need to download security updates for your toilet.

And then, there are the usual smartphones fears.

At BlackHat, Kevin McNamee, the director of Kindsight Security Labs, demonstrated how to take over an Android smartphone by injecting code through the game “Angry Birds.” Once he had control of the phone, Mr. McNamee was able to remove photos and personal data from the device without the owner having any clue.

Other researchers took over an iPhone by hacking a power adapter — yes, a little white power cord — to suck passwords and e-mails from a device that ran operating systems earlier than iOS 7.

But some of the most advanced security researchers are thinking about even scarier hacks, of implanted medical devices.

Barnaby Jack, who was perhaps best known for a hack that made an A.T.M. spit out cash, was supposed to demonstrate at Black Hat how implantable medical devices, including a pacemaker, can be hacked to kill someone. But Mr. Jack, who was in his 30s, died shortly before he was to make his presentation, of causes that have yet to be determined. He was often referred to as an “ethical hacker” and hoped to show the pacemaker exploit as a warning to device makers.

So, should we dig holes in our yards, bury our computers and smartphones and never drive our cars again? Some researchers said many of these demonstrations were provocative, but they were more theoretical than any sort of real risk we had to worry about today.

“Sometimes there is a gap between the researcher community and the real world. Researchers bridge this gap often, but it’s not uncommon to see conference talks on exotic technologies that don’t really impact our everyday lives just yet,” said Chris Rohlf, founder of Leaf Security Research, a security consulting company, in an interview. “As technology embeds itself into these everyday devices and other parts of our lives, you will see an increased

focus on their security. Anywhere you find technology you’ll inevitably find hackers.”

 

When these technologies do arrive, I would not count on the companies that are installing computers in our cars, homes and bodies to be able to stop rogue hackers.

 

“We haven’t figured out how to stop attacks against Web browsers in personal computers despite trying for the last 10 years, so there isn’t any reason to think that we can stop attacks against cars or other devices in the near future,” Mr. Miller said. “We should be concerned and start taking action now before something bad happens. I’ll still be using my car and refrigerator in the meantime though.”

 

OOOOkkkkkkkkkk, now this is really scary, if there is a post simmilar to this please redirect me but till then, tell me what do you think about this, i don't know why but this reminds me of CarTube video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JORDANonPC]

Digital refrigerators could be turned off, allowing food to spoil without your knowledge.

 

What does a hacker have to gain from this 

[Vitalius]

*wall of text crits Vitalius for 9999 damage*

*Vitalius faints*

[Guest]

Lol, i know its long but i couldn't somehow pick a link from metro, FUUUUUUUUUU! I mean this is fucking retarted, why would hacker want to hack your toilet, free porn?

[Guest]

Lol, i know its long but i couldn't somehow pick a link from metro, FUUUUUUUUUU! I mean this is fucking retarted, why would hacker want to hack your toilet, free porn?

anal-yzing piss? Now that would be hillarious, we should make this topic about toilets, whoops gotta update it. xD

[NinjaStyle013]

They can do this but only after insane physical mods to the Ecu. The video you're talking about has a guy in the car manually doing the stuff.

It's possible but insanely retarded to even be used as a threat if you wanted to kill someone. Maybe if a certain frequency unlocked your doors at high speed but doing all that work that most drivers could counter act anyways is pointless.

[MzCatieB]

about 90% of the time its some1 getting a email account and clicking (I have forgotten my Password) then utilising the stupidity of people who dont know what the F@#k they are doing and more or less just cheating the system.

vary rarely do you get "Legit" hackers these days who use things like Viruses and coding to hack in to computers and gain pass words.

ALLOT of the time though it is by accident or through sheer boardum and these days things like "DDOS"ing is so easy you dont even need software for it.. its all online for people to use.

 

in this day and age though we do NEED better internet security and with more and more people getting access to the internet WITHOUT any level of base education behind anything IT related its become ever more easy to hack people... THE MOST COMMON PASSWORD on the the PLANET currently is "Password"."Password1","Sex","(Birthday)"

an example of a password that i use is: pReg#tH@t9U*aHen8maz

Along with using individual Email accounts for different things (Proffesional, personal, Forums, chat rooms, family .ext) 

i also virus, malware and spyware scan my computer on boot up to minimise risk.

 

This is an extreme example of internet security but if you think your password isnt good enough just go to this link:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/?length=20&phonetic=onα=on&mixedcase=on&numeric=on&punctuation=on&nosimilar=on&quantity=10&generate=true#password_generator

 

copy and paste the password you choose in to a .txt file with the account information next to it and put it on a USB that you carry with you all the way...

 

its not 100% secure but its ALLOT safer than JUST trusting your email provider to protect you.

[Samdb]

an example of a password that i use is: pReg#tH@t9U*aHen8maz

 

This ^ hashing is the way forward.

[YellowDragon]

If they ever made computer controlled toilets I would try to modify them to just keep on flushing. With hackers its not just if its useful to hack something, sometimes its more of a "because i could attitude" or something that they glean entertainment value from.

 

Kind of like when I set my friends desktop background to "insert some porn image here" and make it so they are unable to change it through admin settings. I get quite a kick out of it. Sometimes its as simple as that.

 

I have a roommate that just like to make fun little viruses and like to test me on how fast I can disable them (the joys of living with other Computer Science majors). One in particular he made closes all windows and suppresses save prompts then proceeds to open 1000 webbrower windows and each one of them load up redtube. then it proceeds to turn your system volume to full whack and proceeds to play a soundbyte saying " im looking at gay porno". Finally it takes any Word document that is in the documents library and alters them to display a porn image. Needless to say its just a prank but he was dying in laughter as I was trying to disable it. We eventually did unleash it on some of the schools network computers, though made the trigger being hitting the start button. Took IT weeks to clean it off all the computers.

 

The point is a hacker can decide to compromise a system for even the simplest of reasons.

[Broseephus]

 

 

The point is a hacker can decide to compromise a system for even the simplest of reasons.

 

Oh, you so clever hacker, does anon scared of you? 

[Vitalius]

about 90% of the time its some1 getting a email account and clicking (I have forgotten my Password) then utilising the stupidity of people who dont know what the F@#k they are doing and more or less just cheating the system.

vary rarely do you get "Legit" hackers these days who use things like Viruses and coding to hack in to computers and gain pass words.

ALLOT of the time though it is by accident or through sheer boardum and these days things like "DDOS"ing is so easy you dont even need software for it.. its all online for people to use.

 

in this day and age though we do NEED better internet security and with more and more people getting access to the internet WITHOUT any level of base education behind anything IT related its become ever more easy to hack people... THE MOST COMMON PASSWORD on the the PLANET currently is "Password"."Password1","Sex","(Birthday)"

an example of a password that i use is: pReg#tH@t9U*aHen8maz

Along with using individual Email accounts for different things (Proffesional, personal, Forums, chat rooms, family .ext) 

i also virus, malware and spyware scan my computer on boot up to minimise risk.

 

This is an extreme example of internet security but if you think your password isnt good enough just go to this link:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/?length=20&phonetic=onα=on&mixedcase=on&numeric=on&punctuation=on&nosimilar=on&quantity=10&generate=true#password_generator

 

copy and paste the password you choose in to a .txt file with the account information next to it and put it on a USB that you carry with you all the way...

 

its not 100% secure but its ALLOT safer than JUST trusting your email provider to protect you.

This ^ hashing is the way forward.

Honestly, this password is just as good: "i like tacos because they are very funny."

:| Just saying. Number of characters > Types of characters

[James_AJ]

Yeah, I was wondering too why/how the hackers do this crap..

Especially the Syrian Electronic "Army"..

I don't know if they brute force, trick or just straight out get past securities but they sure as hell was been able to hack a lot of high-profile stuffs... (I'm guessing they did email trick like Pixxiepayne mentioned)

I mean, if you ain't getting money out of this, why put in the time and effort? (and ruin others' life?)

[YellowDragon]

Oh, you so clever hacker, does anon scared of you? 

I dont consider myself a hacker, Im a simple programmer who knows his way around the windows environment, really not hard to do at all, its very simple creating automated processes like that when all they are doing at the core is pulling on different actions within windows. The net frameworks are very simple to work with and even the most basic of programmers can use them.

 

Im not bragging or trying to be a douche, the term "hacker" is so broad so skewed and so overused that i think it is a stupid term to be honest, Ive had people call me a hacker by simply opening up the command prompt to find a mac address. So I know you can use framework to toy around with windows machines, anyone who write windows programs is considered a hacker by how you view it then. 

[megadarkwood]

Oh HEEEEEELLLL NAH. I aint reading that!

Someone want to summarize it for me?

[qwertywarrior]

its simple

 

1.dont let said devices get connected to the internet

 

2.if  said devices must connect to the internet let it be on two different systems

 example would be the car's ECU would be totally disconnected from lets say the entertainment system

[BgG286]

Researchers have warned that the Bluetooth-enabled INAX Satis model toilets, which can be controlled via a smartphone app, could easily be hacked to spray water up instead of down. In response to warnings that its toilets could be hacked, INAX said it issued a security update for its toilets this month.

Yes, in the future, you will need to download security updates for your toilet.

 

I died when I read this. I just can't get over that last line xD.