Earlier this month a hacker named muslix64 claimed to have cracked the AACS protection used in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs.Muslix64’s hack first surfaced on December 18 on YouTube, showing the decryption of an HD DVD movie, and promising more details soon.
Click the “play” button below to watch the clip:
Muslix64 posted a link to his source code at the Doom9 forum.
According to reports, the software is rough and only supports a handful of HD DVD titles, but it does seem to bypass the AACS protection. The software enables users to “backup” high-def video from HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs to a hard drive. Playback reliably of saved files has not been confirmed.
As a movie collector I am hoping the MPAA will learn that Copy Protection is not working. It is a long shot but maybe the MPAA will look at what customers want, which is not Copy Protection, and offer open media at reasonable prices. This would allow customers to backup purchased media and freely add it to a home theater PC or iPod without cracking the Copy Protection. I know this is a long shot, but I am hopefully. I believe this will not increase piracy and will have a positive effect on profits.
I have read that you need to know security tools if you are going to break into the IT/ Network Security field. I have found this website http://sectools.org/. The site ranks and updates the top 100 network security tools. This site seems like a great place to see what tools are on the rise and which are falling out of popularity.
After reviewing the list I noticed that I used several of the tools. Most of the tools tend to be either free or open source. It is not realistic for me to learn and master all 100 tools. I plan to move down the list one at a time starting at 1 and go to 25. This will allow me to master the popular tools and keep up with changes in the industry.
My Christmas was very good. We got to see all the family and enjoy some excellent food.
I all in all I did not get a lot of presents but I got what I wanted. I was looking to raise some money to pay for some IT security classes. Goal achieved. Class starts January 11th. I got a new wireless keyboard and mouse. I am very glad to have the new keyboard and mouse. My old mouse was having trouble right clicking. I also got a very cool metal piggy bank with wings.
Last night, Decemeber 22nd 2006, my Grandmother passed away. She went in peace. She left behind three daughters, and myself. She was a loving and caring wife, mother and grandmother. She will be greatly missed.
She will rejoin my Grandfather who passed away on October 29th 2006. Both my Grandmother and Grandfather were great people and I am proud to be related to them. I enjoyed growing up with them and staying at their house for the summer.
Thursday night (12/14/06) a big wind storm in the Seattle area caused power outages to nearly 1 million homes. Strong winds blew over a large tree in our neighbors yard that fell across power lines and blocked the road near our house. Our power was out nearly four whole days. Monday (12/18/06) our power came back on.
I read a recent post that detailed how to hack gift cards. The post shocked me how insecure the gift cards are. I hope the release of posts detailing how to hack gift cards will bring about a change in the security of new cards.
You go to a store that has gift cards on display check to see if the serial number is show on the back. Some cards cover the number. If the number is not covered you write down the serial number of the cards. You then check to see if the card has been activated by checking to see if the card is valid via the phone number or internet. Once you find an active card you can then purchase things online with your new gift card.
Gmail is releasing a new feature that allows users to add up to 5 email accounts that Gmail can pull email from. The feature only works with POP3 email accounts but this means you can pull your work email or other personal email into Gmail. You can even create custom from accounts that will allow you to send email from your other email addresses.
Check out the new feature post from Gmail here: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/whatsnew_getmail.html
I have been playing with the TOR (the onion router) network for a while now. I like the anonymity that TOR provides but my problem was always portablity. The download you get from TOR you always had to install TOR, Vidalia, and Privoxy. Once those three are installed you have to set your proxy server settings in your browser to join the network. All of this is not much of a problem if you are on your home computer. But I wanted anonymity on computers that I may not have privileges to install software.
Last week I came across a neat blend of Firefox and TOR. Torpark is a great little app that you can unzip to your desktop or a flash drive and run with out an install process. I installed Torpark on my 1GB flash drive it can take several minutes for it to connect to the TOR routers. Once connected it seems to be a very good solution to my problem. The browsing seems just as fast using the TOR install.
Torpark is built on Firefox 1.5 and it does tend to take a little while to connect to the network. I think if Torparks developers continue to work on this app it will be a great program for portable internet anonymity.
This time Network Security sam has saved the unencrypted level7 password in an obscurely named file saved in this very directory.In other unrelated news, Sam has set up a script that returns the output from the UNIX cal command. Here is the script:Enter the year you wish to view and hit ‘view’.
This is a fun little level it shows how you can inject unix commands into poorly written perl scripts. What Sam has done is created an obscurely name php script that holds an unencrypted password. Sam is showing off his talent by creating a calendar program written in perl. When used correctly the perl script returns a calendar for the year you type in the text box.
Hint: You will need more than one UNIX command to pass this level. Think about how you will enter more than one command and which commands you will need to use to list the files. You will need to change directories and list the files.
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