Defcon

Hacking humans: Building a better you

Do you have a cochlear implant? An intraocular lens in your eye? A prosethetic leg with microservos? You may not realize it, but you're standing on the front line of a new age of medical augmentation, one that's raising a host of complex questions.

Who owns the expensive implant that allows you to hear or see better or the sleek thin blades that let you sprint faster? How are upgrades to your device handled? What happens to you and your device if that company goes out of business? Do the answers change if the procedure is elective rather than life-saving?

No one has easy answers, or even much beyond informed speculation -- certainly not the doctors we spoke to for this article or the medical students who addressed medical augmentation at a Defcon 20 session last month in Las Vegas. But all agree on one thing: A new frontier of medical augmentation isn't just coming sooner than you think. It's already here, as society moves from medically necessary augmentation to elective procedures. Call it human hacking. … Read more

Sexism and the single hacker: Defcon's feminist moment

Defcon isn't your typical tech conference. Happening in the heat of Las Vegas every summer, it attracts throngs of hackers -- 15,000 this year -- who are eager to learn about, and test out, the latest methods of breaking into computer networks, hacking phones, and general slaying of any type of security system imaginable.

Security professionals and researchers give highly technical talks, but the event is known as much for its side-show theatrics, hacking contests, and DJ and booze-filled parties as it is the sessions. Black t-shirts and jeans predominate among the mostly young adults, though many have … Read more

Pwned or paranoid? Phone weirdness at Defcon

Every year at Defcon there are rumors of some network being hacked. It would be unusual if such tales didn't crop up at the world's largest hacker conference. But this year there were reports from a number of credible sources of strange behavior on phones -- reports that had people more paranoid than normal.

Here's what people said they were seeing last weekend, along with some possible explanations for the scenarios:

Voice mail messages that led to unknown numbers instead of to the standard phone number that points to the user's automated voice message recovery system.… Read more

Hexcopter robot takes to the Defcon skies

LAS VEGAS--Parallax is the company that makes the hackable Defcon badges, but it's even better known for another hackable product: its ELEV-8 robotic quadcopter, soon to be expandable to six rotors.

The hexcopter kit adds more lifting power to the ELEV-8, doubling the payload thanks to an extra battery along with the extra rotors. It can now hold most cameras, for remote robotic airborne surveillance. Parallax representatives said that it also makes the ELEV-8 more stable in flight.

Parallax says that the kit is likely to be available around the end of August, and will run you another $200. … Read more

Defcon vending room showcases tech of all ages

LAS VEGAS -- While ninjas inhaled much of the available oxygen in the vendors room, with its truck-based Ninja Tel mobile network, other vendors offered a more esoteric menu of hackables at Defcon this year.

Vendors at the hackers conference came in all sizes. Some signed up hackers to donate their skills to impoverished communities. Others appealed to sartorially minded hackers, with unofficial Defcon 20 T-shirts and other wearables.

In this gallery, CNET showcases three vendors who were offering something interesting or unexpected: Hak5's Darren Kitchen and his penetration-testing tools; Meco proprietor Ira Moser and his collection of antiquated … Read more

Expert: Huawei routers are riddled with vulnerabilities

LAS VEGAS -- A German security researcher says he has uncovered several security holes in routers made by China-based Huawei that are used by many Internet service providers -- vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take control of the devices and snoop on peoples' traffic.

Huawei routers are mostly used in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Because they're cheap, though, they're increasingly turning up in other parts of the world, the German researcher -- Felix Lindner, also known as "FX" -- said in an interview with CNET after his Defcon talk on Sunday.

The problem … Read more

ACLU seeks info on license plate camera surveillance by cops

LAS VEGAS - The American Civil Liberties Union wants to know how police around the country are using automatic license plate readers to track people's movements.

The ACLU today sent requests for information to police departments in 38 states and filed federal Freedom of Information Act requests with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Transportation to try to find out how much the governments use the technology and how much it is paying to expand the program.

Mounted on patrol cars, telephone poles and under bridges, the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) can snap a photograph of every … Read more

Cell phone battery catches fire, burns hacker's tail at Defcon

LAS VEGAS -- A cell phone battery spontaneously caught fire today, burned through a Defcon attendee's back pants pocket, and fell on the floor, creating burn spots on a carpet and leaving a burn-hole in the attendee's chair.

The man, who asked not to be identified, was not harmed but his trousers were ruined. He told CNET that he was sitting in a mid-day session at Defcon when he started to smell something burning and felt some heat underneath him on his seat. He stood up to find that his back left pocket was on fire.

"I … Read more

Hackers build private 'Ninja Tel' phone network at Defcon

Hackers who spent their teen years phone-phreaking -- breaking into telephone networks and making free calls -- have created their own GSM network at Defcon and are using creative and silly apps on highly customized Android phones.

The Ninja hacker group is giving the phones away to people who have contributed to the community, and to their lucky friends. The phones and accompanying lanyards serve as "badges" that provide entrance to the annual Ninja party tonight. (Defcon attendees can also get in by donating blood or signing up to donate bone marrow, or donating money to the Electronic … Read more

Tools boast easy cracking of Microsoft crypto for businesses

Cryptography specialist Moxie Marlinspike released tools at Defcon today for easily cracking passwords in wireless and virtual private networks that use a popular encryption protocol based on an algorithm from Microsoft called MS-CHAPv2, news that will no doubt worry many a network administrator.

The tools crack WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and VPN passwords used by corporations and organizations running networks that are protected by the PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol), which uses MS-CHAPv2 for authentication.

ChapCrack captures the MS-CHAPv2 handshakes, or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) negotiation communications, and converts them to a token that can be submitted to CloudCracker.

It takes … Read more