Tag Archive for: hackers

How Hackers Held People’s Genitals Hostage

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Imagine sitting there one day, minding your own business, wearing your Internet-connected chastity belt as you always do, when a message arrives from a hacker. The message tells you that your chastity belt or cage is locked so that you can’t access your genitals and that your only recourse would be to pay 0.02 Bitcoin, which is around $750.

That would constitute a bad day. After all, your genitals aren’t like your social media accounts. At least, they shouldn’t be. You can always delete your social media accounts should they become compromised. But your genitals? Deleting them may be a bit more complicated.

Well, recently Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai described for VICE such ransomware attempts. Apparently, hackers took advantage of a security hole in Cellmates. In this case, Cellmates weren’t prison roommates or cellphones serving as mates. Rather, these Cellmates were Internet of Things chastity cages made by Qiui, a company based in China. Hackers exploited existing holes to try to control these chastity cages and lock them remotely. Victims would then get wonderful messages like, “Your rock is mine now,” except the word wasn’t “rock” and instead was a word that rhymed with “rock” and referred to male genitalia (but could also have meant “rooster.”) If the chastity belt or cage wearers did not pay the demanded ransom, they and their genitals could have been stuck in the cage indefinitely or at least until they visited a doctor, a hardware store, or someone with a real space laser.

The following tweet from The Guardian showed a picture of the Cellmate device:

Hmmm, it sort of looks like an electric shaver or a microphone but shouldn’t be confused for either. Singing karaoke into a chastity belt may bring some interesting looks and is not going to make your rendition of Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart” sound better. As the Tweet thread indicated, there is some debate over…

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How the United States Lost to Hackers

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There’s a reason we believed the fallacy that offense could keep us safe: The offense was a bloody masterpiece.

Starting in 2007, the United States, with Israel, pulled off an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility that destroyed roughly a fifth of Iran’s centrifuges. That attack, known as Stuxnet, spread using seven holes, known as “zero days,” in Microsoft and Siemens industrial software. (Only one had been previously disclosed, but never patched). Short term, Stuxnet was a resounding success. It set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back years and kept the Israelis from bombing Natanz and triggering World War III. In the long term, it showed allies and adversaries what they were missing and changed the digital world order.

In the decade that followed, an arms race was born.

N.S.A. analysts left the agency to start cyber arms factories, like Vulnerability Research Labs, in Virginia, which sold click-and-shoot tools to American agencies and our closest Five Eyes English-speaking allies. One contractor, Immunity Inc., founded by a former N.S.A. analyst, embarked on a slippier slope. First, employees say, Immunity trained consultants like Booz Allen, then defense contractor Raytheon, then the Dutch and the Norwegian governments. But soon the Turkish army came knocking.

Companies like CyberPoint took it further, stationing themselves overseas, sharing the tools and tradecraft the U.A.E. would eventually turn on its own people. In Europe, purveyors of the Pentagon’s spyware, like Hacking Team, started trading those same tools to Russia, then Sudan, which used them to ruthless effect.

As the market expanded outside the N.S.A.’s direct control, the agency’s focus stayed on offense. The N.S.A. knew the same vulnerabilities it was finding and exploiting elsewhere would, one day, blow back on Americans. Its answer to this dilemma was to boil American exceptionalism down to an acronym — NOBUS — which stands for “Nobody But Us.” If the agency found a vulnerability it believed only it could exploit, it hoarded it.

This strategy was part of what Gen. Paul Nakasone, the current N.S.A. director — and George Washington and the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu before him…

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Hackers are locking dicks in chastity cages, and it’s got security experts worried – Hack

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Imagine your phone buzzing. It’s a whatsapp from a number you don’t know.

Ok, weird, probably a scammer, but you take a look.

It’s a stranger, demanding one thousand dollars in bitcoin to release your dick from a hardened steel cage.

It sounds like something out of Black Mirror, but it is very real.

And it is prompting some in the adult industry to call for better safety standards from manufacturers, arguing they are putting people’s bodies at risk.

Want to lock your penis in a cage? There’s an app for that.

Chastity cages are not super mainstream sex toys, but they are pretty common in the BDSM community.

They largely do what they promise – lock your penis in a cage, to prevent you masturbating, having sex, or even getting a full erection.

Like a lot of other sex toys, they are going online.

The ‘Cellmate’ does not rely on an old-fashioned padlock and key, but rather uses an electronic key – meaning the wearer can hand control to anyone, anywhere, through an app.

It recently attracted attention after it was revealed hackers were able to gain access to people’s devices through the app, and lock them.

They were contacting users, and demanding a ransom of around A$1000 in bitcoin.

Terrifyingly, the device doesn’t have any kind of emergency release mechanism. Which led to reports of some people trying to use bolt cutters to get it off.

But thankfully, it seems a lot of the people hacked were not wearing the device at the time it was hacked and locked.

The manufacturer, Qiui, published a video demonstrating how to unlock the device with a screwdriver.

The company told Hack that they’ve updated the security features in version 3.0 of the app.

‘I like to be the boss in the bedroom, not the hacker’

Internet-connected sex toys are not new. In fact, they are really popular – and a global pandemic has helped them boom.

They range from simple toys like vibrators that can be remotely controlled online, to more intense toys like the Cellmate.

With many…

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Concern over hackers, data leakage on internet

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News Highlights: Concern over hackers, data leakage on internet.

PETALING JAYA: The government, companies and individuals have been advised to play their respective roles in ensuring the security of their online presence.

Fong Choong-Fook, chief executive officer of cybersecurity testing firm LGMS Group, told the sun that legislation such as the Data Protection Act 2010 has failed to provide a high level of security in cyberspace.

For example, he noted that insurance agents continue to have access to telephone numbers of Internet users that they can call to market their products. He attributed this to poor enforcement of the law.

Fong responded to a report that a group of hacker activists, calling themselves Anonymous Malaysia, has resurfaced with a new threat to attack government websites and online assets.

The group, which used the hashtag # OpsWakeUp21, recently released two videos on their social media accounts to say that this was a wake-up call for the government. It claimed that data from government websites can now be easily leaked due to the low level of security.

It also claimed that in 2017, the government failed to address data leaks from 46 million mobile number accounts.

This prompted the National Security Council and the National Cyber ​​Security Agency to issue a warning to government agencies to tighten security measures on official data.

Fong said the hackers’ claim is “somewhat unfounded” as there is no evidence that government data has been stolen and sold to third parties.

Nevertheless, he said the government could do better by strictly enforcing the law and punishing offenders.

He also warned that while the group’s threat of a “massive” cyber attack has yet to occur, such attacks are “ongoing.”

“They happen while we speak.”

Fong said companies should stop treating cyber-breaches as an IT problem, but a threat to their businesses.

“Individuals have to be careful with their passwords. Do not use unknown or unknown Wi-Fi connections for transactions. “

Criminologist Shankar Durairaja said the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic that led to a financial crisis and an unstable political situation in the country has left government agencies vulnerable…

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