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Posts Tagged “

Hacks

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politics

Clinton site made Obama-friendly by Finnish hacker

Hillary Clinton campaign site VoteHillary.org is vulnerable to a common exploit known as cross-site scripting (XSS), as demonstrated by Finnish security specialist Harry Sintonen. He says he's not particularly interested in American politics, according to Netcraft, which first reported Sintonen's research. He was just inspired by the attack on sites maintained by the Barack Obama campaign to see if Clinton's were also vulnerable to XSS exploits. This may redefine "political hack." But any hope that the electoral system itself might prove so pliable to technological alteration is too audacious to discuss.

3:20 PM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Jackson West
1,482 views, 5 comments

Latest by CGrant: I'm pretty bi-partisan when it comes to hilary and obama, but I must say she deserved it. I'm not hateful and I don't hate her but after hearing about all of the crap (propaganda, even hacking Obama's sites), I find more »

hacks

CNN's self-parodying headlines now available on T-shirts

Is CNN for real? The headlines on its website — "Minced onions force emergency landing" — cause some to wonder if its Atlanta-based producers aren't having a jape at the expense of news junkies. Now, an expansion into selling T-shirts confirms that CNN is laughing at us, not with us. Capitalizing on the trend of mass-personalized e-commerce, CNN.Shirt lets readers pick any recent headline and put it on a T-shirt. As blogger Andy Baio notes, the feature is easily manipulated, allowing users to construct any story they want and get it printed. But why bother making up the news when CNN shows just how much stranger truth is than fiction?

11:20 AM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By Owen Thomas
435 views, 4 comments

Latest by matto: Including linefeeds (%0a) and carriage returns (%0d) seems to produce interesting results. more »

hacks

Twitter users unwittingly sending direct messages

It seems someone has found another security hole in Twitter, as at least two acquaintances are complaining of direct messages being sent from their accounts but not by them. The messages trigger an SMS message and an email notification, but are not logged in either the sender or recipient's direct message archive on Twitter.com. I'm guessing someone's done a simply query-string hack of the form handler, or possibly using SMS to route around Twitter's authentication schemes. Either way, seems like every day is becoming Twitter as someone else day.

7:00 PM on Tue Apr 1 2008
By Jackson West
717 views, 5 comments

Latest by Mr. E.: It's not a query-string hack as that doesn't work. Could be SMS spoofing, but I don't know why anyone would go through the trouble just to send the kind of message depicted in the image. More than likely it is more »

hacks

Captcha codes being broken by hand in Russia

Captcha codes are designed to be unreadable by computers, only by humans, so they can be used to lock spambots out of websites. But Google and Websense have determined, by analyzing traffic patterns, that captcha codes are being cracked nightly — not by machines, but by third-world employees. Brad Stone at the New York Times blogs that one Russian-language set of instructions for captcha-cracking promises a minimum $3 per day for the work.

4:20 PM on Thu Mar 13 2008
By Paul Boutin
1,183 views, 14 comments

diggbait

I'll have what he's having: Specialty cocktails for the tech world

NICK DOUGLAS — Another year and the bubble hasn't popped! Sysadmins and C-level execs alike, you deserve something special, like a drink named after you or your latest achievement. And Yahoos deserve a drink all to themselves. So after the first champagne, order these official cocktails for techies in 2007! More »

5:02 AM on Fri Dec 29 2006
By Nick Douglas
348 views, 3 comments

andrew orlowski

Where are the baiters?

As the Register's Andrew Orlowski flies back to England, it's time to check up on the other trolls of tech — the real journalists, fake journalists, and — ugh — bloggers. More »

1:15 PM on Fri May 26 2006
By Nick Douglas
141 views, Comment

andrew orlowski

Geek out: We'll miss you, Orlowski

Hacks and flacks wished Andrew Orlowski (pictured, the one with his hair on top) farewell last night with a calm happy hour at the Edinburgh Castle Pub. His exit dilutes the pool of Valley journalism, as the Register reporter was a long-time snarker and Google hound (one confident enough to snub Google Press Day). Now, after five years in the Valley, he's headed back to England. More »

12:08 PM on Fri May 26 2006
By Nick Douglas
394 views, 1 comment