HackingTheUniverse

You are browsing the archives of 2009 January.

We can already repair and even augment our bodies with both artificial and transplanted body components. (see Rebuilding Our Bodies) Science and technology are rapidly pushing forward to a point where it will become possible for our bodies to be *mostly* artificial instead of organic.  The articles below offer some of the blueprints for how this [...]

A leyden jar is a device that stores static electricity in a glass jar with some kind of conductor/electrode inside the jar to store the charge and some kind of electrode outside the jar to enable charging and discharge. A simple form of the leyden jar is often constructed with a piece of folded tin [...]

It is becoming possible to genetically engineer viruses to accomplish some kind of healing or rebuilding or even contstruction-like task. A Virus That Rebuilds Damaged Nerves Viruses that mimic supportive nerve tissue may someday help regenerate injured spinal cords. While other tissue-engineering materials must be synthesized and shaped in the lab, genetically engineered viruses have [...]

John the ripper is a password hash cracking tool that is available free for both unix/linux and Windows platforms. It autodetects the type of hash and by default uses a hybrid approach of dictionary and brute force attacks to attempt to crack the hash as quickly and efficiently as possible. It can use a wide [...]

Mid-Atlantic CCDC 2009 – Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition The preliminary elimination rounds of the Mid-Atlantic CCDC were held on Sat 17 Jan and Sat 24 Jan at White Wolf Security in Lancaster, PA. The Red Cell team was larger this year, with about ten members participating, including a few that were at remote locations. Student [...]

NIST expects that the intruders who recently stole information from monster.com will attempt to use that data in other attacks. Federal Employees At Risk Again From Monster.com Compromise – [nist.org] It’s happened once before, hackers breaking in to Monster.com and stealing job hunter’s data. The last time that it happened (August 1997) there was a [...]

Anaximander was a Greek philosopher who studied under Thales and taught Pythagoras. He studied geometry and geography and may have been the first to draw a map of the world. He created a mechanical model of the universe that had Earth at its center. He attempted to explain phenomena such as lightning and thunder by [...]

In space, the dividing line between what is considered to be a habitat and what is considered to be a vehicle will become hazy. Large habitat-like structures can be put into orbits that offer transport from one place to another and from one orbit to another. A habitat placed in an orbit that goes from [...]

The objective of the Kepler space telescope is to search for planetary systems outside of our solar system. It will be placed into a solar orbit that trails Earth, so it can scan distant light sources with no interference, but also easily relay data back to Earth for analysis. Kepler Spacecraft to Hunt Earth-Like Worlds [...]

I’ve been invited to participate in the 2009 Mid-Atlantic CCDC as a member of the Red Cell (attacking team). The mission of the red team is to emulate hackers attacking a business network. The game conditions change a bit from year to year and even from the preliminary rounds to the final rounds (because of [...]