Gizmodo: hacked

Hacked Public Bicycle Kiosk Shows Porn Movie, Extra Benefits of Public Transport

Jesus Diaz — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:00:00 EDT

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.This is a computer kiosk used to control public bicycle lending. But as you can see in the image, the touchscreen is not displaying the software used for this task, but a porn movie at full screen.

It happened in the city of Zamora, Spain—where else—this weekend. For more than one hour, the movie played—in the words of one of the witness, Francisco Guarido, a baffled city official—"with unsuspected sharpness" to mixed reactions in a crowd that kept getting bigger and bigger by the minute.

Many people laughed, like the policewoman who came first alerted by the official. In fact, she couldn't stop her laughter as she alerted the police station via radio. More people and police agents kept congregating, many laughing, some enjoying with eyes glued to the screen, some scandalized but also with eyes glued to the screen, others reprimanding the city official who was there. Two old women shouted at Guarido, blaming him for the indecent show.

After an hour of public moaning, jiggling, and skirting—yes, I love my country. I hate it most of the time, but others I love it—the police agents ended the show by taping two paper sheets to the screen. Later, the company responsible for the public kiosk turned off the movie. The city official said that the security of the computer system used for this task was "fragile." He really meant "crap." [El Mundo—In Spanish]

Deconstructed DSi Reveals Beefier Processor Might Be Draining Battery Life

Jack Loftus — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:30:00 EST

When the DSi specs were first revealed in front of the Nintendo money vault this past October, we noticed the battery life of the DS line went from "pretty awesome" to "WTF?" The brighter, larger screens were initially blamed for the 1-6 hour drop, but a field stripped DSi we discovered today hints the drain might be due to a beefier processor and speakers housed within.

The beefing up arrives, apparently, because of Nintendo's multimedia plans concerning the portable—mainly the new sound, video and photo manipulation features.

"The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range," Bunnie says, adding that Linux could have a field day playing around on this system. Hackers, get going! [Bunnie's Blog via MAKE]

iPhone App Store Games Hacked - All Apps Hackable

Jason Chen — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:44:24 EDT

Apple's Fairplay DRM, which protects all the applications you download from iTunes, has been hacked. The method for hacking this has actually been around for a while, but has been recently applied to Super Monkey Ball and distributed into the wild. To do this, you'll need a jailbroken iPhone and SSH installed (to transfer the game and to fiddle with permissions). The theory is a bit techy and complex, but the execution isn't too insane if you know your way around XCode and the command line.

The next step, of course, is to get some sort of repository for hacked apps going. iPhone developers who are still pissed about the NDA might be receptive to people paying for their app on the iTunes store, but getting TIMELY updates from another source (or direct from themselves). This way users can bypass that week-long waitlist for revisions we're currently seeing in the App Store. [iPhone hacking via haklabs via Macnn]

Sawed-Off USB Flash Drives Going on Sale

Sean Fallon — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:15:00 EDT

The sawed-off USB flash drive concept actually hit back in April, but that version was a DIY project. It was a simple hack, but if making an effort does not appeal to you, designer Windell Oskay has teamed up with Fred to produce "Hacked!" a 2GB production version of the flash drive. A price has not been determined, but it should hit the shelves soon. [Fred via Likecool]

Hacked Region-Free Blu-ray Players For Sale

Mark Wilson — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:10:00 EDT

While Sony was smart enough to make PS3 games region-free, they still insisted on putting those pesky regional restrictions on Blu-ray discs. Now Blu-ray Mods is selling a modified player that can run all of the world's Blu-ray films and still accept firmware updates. A turnkey hacked Panasonic DMP-BD30, their system runs a steep $781. That's about $300 over list. But if you've got a soldering iron and a bit of patience, the kit alone only costs $108. Whatabargain! [Blu-ray Mods via Engadget]

Apple Stores Voiding Warranty on Hacked iPhones?

Jason Chen — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:28:26 EDT

We're unsure if this is a policy or a one-time incident, but Jason O'Grady from ZDNet is reporting that an Apple store refused to service a hacked and unlocked (for T-Mobile) iPhone, saying the warranty was voided and blacklisting "the phone against future service, or return."

Although Jason's colleague eventually got Apple to take the iPhone back for a return, they did charge him a 10% restocking fee even though the phone was under two weeks old. We'll try and find out whether this is a company-wide policy or just a store manager shooting off the cuff, but to play it safe, wipe out your iPhone and put the AT&T SIM back in when you take yours in for a service or a return. [ZDNET]

Toy Radar Gun Hacked and Made into the Real Thing

AddyDugdale — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:20:09 EDT

The thing you see on the top of the camcorder was once a $25 Hot Wheels toy radar gun: Not any more, it ain't. Using a plastic drink bottle and an Altoids tin, among other things, it's been turned into a full-on radar gun. "Even cops don't have one of these," says KipKay, the brains behind this, excitedly. How-to video is after the jump.

Radar Gun Hacked!
How fast was that voiceover? Someone should give him a ticket. [Instructables and Metacafe]

It took less than a month for hackers to...

Jason Chen — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:46:53 EDT

It took less than a month for hackers to break open the PSP Slim firmware and release a custom version that's Homebrew friendly. [DCEmu]

Wii Internet Channel Exploit Found, Homebrew to Come?

Jason Chen — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:20:05 EDT

We don't have a lot of details, but some "hackers" have found an exploit in the Wii Internet Channel's Flash player implementation. What does this mean to you? Well, if they take this exploit all the way to the end, it means you can possibly run unsigned, home-brew code on the Wii.

Whether this means Wii games or retro games, or possibly both, is still uncertain. But if hackers create game emulators, such as NES, SNES or MAME, there'd be no reason for gamers to pay $5 each for virtual console games when they can just download a ROM and play the game in its original glory. [Computer and Video Games via T3]

image credit

Harry Potter Hacked?

Jason Chen — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:56:38 EDT

It's very unlikely, but someone claims to have hacked into the publishing house that distributes the Harry Potter books (Bloomsbury) and obtained the final manuscript of the soon-to-arrive 7th book. This man (kid) supposedly got into the computers of the publisher by sending a link to a browser exploit through email and having the publisher click on it.

Don't click if you don't want potential spoilers.

– Jason Chen

Harry Potter 0day [Seclists via The Inquirer]

Confirmed: Apple TV Has No Backdoors

Jason Chen — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:00:47 EDT

Remember that rumor about Apple locking out hacked Apple TVs? Well, their official word is that no, they don't do that.

Apple's just said they did not put a backdoor into the Apple TV and whatever you do with your box is your own business. Just don't come around with a broken Apple TV box running Ubuntu Linux and expect them to fix it for you.

The official word from Apple: "We are not doing anything proactively at thist time, but if users hack their systems, they're voiding the warranty."– Jason Chen

Super Bowl Dolphins Stadium Site Hacked, Spreading Malware

Jason Chen — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:15:47 EST

Super Bowl fans who are looking up info on the Dolphin Stadium site from a Windows machine may want to make sure they're using Firefox instead of IE. Apparently the site's been hacked and is hosting two known Windows Security flaws.

If you're running an unpatched Windows machine, your computer will connect to some server in China to download a trojan, which gives some very nerdy dudes complete access to your machine. So those of you who want to fetch info from dolphinstadium.com, make sure you've got the latest patches or are running a Mac/Linux machine. Either that or your wife's going to be pretty peeved when she finds some actual dolphin porn on your computer. Poor Flipper. – Jason Chen

Super Bowl stadium site hacked, seeded with exploits [ZDNet]

HD DVD's AACS Protection Cracked?

Louis Ramirez — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 09:23:00 EST

They told us it was bullet-proof, unbreakable. Yet in a mere eight days, a hacker by the name of Muslix64 has managed to single-handedly break the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the standard that Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, and others developed to protect HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Or has he? The BackupHDDVD software Muslix64 posted on a Doom 9 forum thread lets you decrypt Full Metal Jacket, Van Helsing, and a few other popular HD DVD titles, but there's still no way of telling how he managed to get a hold of the decryption keys. Only time will tell if Muslix64 is the DVD Jon of the next-gen optical discs. – Louis Ramirez

Doom 9 Forum

PSP Hacked To Play Any PlayStation 1 Game

Jason Chen — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 17:40:04 EST

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PSP fans who purchased the console to play original PSP games can finally get what they've paid and waited two years for. Thanks to both Sony's official PSP emulator and some ingenious hackers, you can now run any PS1 game on your PSP. PAL (non US) games are kinda glitchy, but that should be fixed soon. – Jason Chen

PSP Dark_AleX releases 3.02 OE-B- Run ANY PSX Game at Full Speed on your PSP [PSPNews via Kotaku]

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