IT News

Anonymous hackers target Australian Intelligence

Hacking group Anonymous claimed to have shut down a computer server belonging to Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, reportedly briefly closing down access to its public web page. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization acknowledged some disruption to its website.

The ASIO website was down for about 30 minutes after the attack and is now operating slowly or not at all. It appears the attack may be ongoing, but ASIO’s technical staff are recovering the situation.

Internet Protocol a unique identity of a Computer

What is Ip Address?
You might have come across this term very often, haven’t you! Every machine on the Internet has a unique identifying number, called an IP Address. A typical IP address looks like this: 216.27.61.137, 921.168.1.6, 59.22.1.1 etc.

What is the use of IP Address?

A student SMS her father, a minute before committed suicide

"I am sorry Papa. I am committing suicide," said a text message from Rekha Singh, second year polytechnic student in electronics stream, to her father Ranjeet, a WCL manager at Kamptee. The 22-year-old Rekha had been afraid to face her father since she had lied to him about her repeated failures. She jumped to her death from the third-floor balcony of her hostel within a minute of sending the SMS.

Fake Syria News Posted from Hacked Reuters blog and Twitter account

On Friday, Reuters blog platform was hacked with false posts and on Saturday, the @ReutersTech account on Twitter was taken over and renamed @TechMe. False tweets were sent before it was taken down.

The first attack came Friday after Syrian hackers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad allegedly gained access to Reuters’ blogging platform, which they used to post a fake interview with rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) leader Riad al-Assad. The interview essentially said the general was withdrawing troops after a battle.

Demonstration of hardware based backdoor called Rakshasa by Researchers

Security researcher Jonathan Brossard created a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor called Rakshasa that replaces a computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and can compromise the operating system at boot time without leaving traces on the hard drive.
In short, firmware is software that is stored in non-volatile memory on a computer chip, and is used to initialise a piece of hardware’s functionality. In a PC, the BIOS is the most common example of firmware but in the case of wireless routers, a whole Linux operating system is stored in firmware.

Simple steps to avoid being phished

Never respond to emails that request personal financial information
Banks or e-commerce companies generally personalise emails, while phishers do not. Phishers often include false but sensational messages ("urgent - your account details may have been stolen") in order to get an immediate reaction.