How to "hack" an iPhone in two easy steps

Just days after its release, the iPhone is already being “hacked” so that it doesn’t need to be connected to AT&T’s phone network, and it’s so easy, anyone can do it.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s iPhone guru Eric Sadun reports that by simply removing an iPhone’s SIM card, and replacing it with an inactive SIM card, you’ll have a “sixth-generation iPod” that allows you to access email and web via Wi-Fi, though obviously you won’t be able to make calls.

This “hack” still works even if you don’t have an inactive SIM card to replace the original card with, though Sadun says the iPhone “complains”. Sadun’s advice is to “Buy the iPhone using prepaid, activate, cancel, enjoy.”

However, before you follow Sadun’s advice, there are a couple of issues you should be aware of.

Buying a prepaid iPhone is not straight forward, since both Apple and AT&T really are pushing consumers onto two-year plans. Pre-paid iPhones are only available to people with bad credit histories (though Sadun offers a fix for this as well).

Also, there’s some talk that each time the iPhone’s system software is updated it’ll do a check to see whether the iPhone is actually activated as a phone.

Update: Hacker Jon Lech Johansen claims to have developed an iPhone activation server program. Warning - meddle with iPhone activation at your own risk.

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Cyber criminals find new victims on Facebook and MySpace

Cyber crime has been in existence for as long as the Internet existed. Basically, as soon as people see a new way of conning people, they latch on to it. But, because most of us are used to the threat from phishing emails, and respond accordingly, binning the attempted con immediately, criminals are looking elsewhere for their victims.

There cannot be an Internet-connected person left alive who hasn’t received some form of scam, normally via an email asking for your bank details or trying to persuade you to click on a bogus website. Luckily, most people are now educated and aware enough not to fall for such scams.

This has lead cyber criminals to look elsewhere for their potential targets, and social networks such as Facebook seem to be the new platform for their virtual mugging attempts. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the experience of Karina Wells, who found herself almost fooled by a request from a friend.

On Friday, Wells received a message from a friend on Facebook asking her for $500. This friend was supposedly stranded in Nigeria and needed the money to buy a ticket home. After several messages back and forth, Wells realized not all was as it seems because her friend was using Americanisms such as cellphone rather than mobile.

Realizing she was dealing with someone who had hijacked her friend’s account and was phishing for money and her bank details, she obtained all the details she could about the scammer before passing their details on to Facebook and the authorities.

Wells’ friend likely had his account hacked or inadvertently revealed his login details by way of a computer virus, but once the account was compromised it allowed the scammer to use personal details against the victims friends in an attempt at gaining their trust and persuading them to hand over money.

And Facebook can be used by scammers in other ways too. A simple and seemingly innocuous message can be sent to a list of friends containing a link or video which when clicked on takes the user to a dodgy website. And Facebook isn’t alone, with MySpace users absolutely bombarded with spam emails and phishing attempts.

Criminals, including those of the cyber variety, will always try and stay one step ahead of the law and law-abiding citizens knowledge of criminal activity. With less and less of us being caught out by email, and spam catching software becoming more intelligent, those nice Nigerian con artists have migrated to social networks. I wonder how many friends they have?

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Underground internet black market flourishes

Symantec has recently released a document titled Report On The Underground Economy, detailing a global marketplace facilitating the trade in stolen goods and offering fraudulent services. Symantec estimates that the total values of goods and services offered in this online community is in the millions of dollars, much of it offered by individuals.

The Symantec STAR team, a global contingent of security engineers, threat analysts, and researchers, gathered the data for the report during the one-year period between July 2007 and June 2008. The STAR (Security Technology and Response) team is responsible for providing all of the context which underlies Symantec’s security offerings worldwide.

The data was gathered by surveying the servers that support the underground economy. The Star team determined that the value of all the goods and services offered in the underground Internet economy was approximately $276 million during the reporting period, based on the prices of offered items.

The variety of items on offer was astonishing, but there were some categories that stand out from the rest based on the quantities offered. The largest of these is credit card information, which accounted for over 30 percent of the total on-offer value. Based upon the credit limits of the cards for which information is available, the overall value of this card information was over $5 billion. There are so many numbers available that they are sold in bulk, with bonus information offered on large quantity purchases.

The second largest category is in a similar vein: stolen financial account information, primarily simple consumer bank account data. This information comprised about 20 percent of the underground goods available, and was worth approximately $1.7 billion over the year covered by the report. According to the report, it is possible for thieves to draw the cash out of one of these compromised accounts in as little as fifteen minutes.

It is astonishing that so much obviously illegal information is available so openly. How is it possible for these individuals and groups to operate so openly and still avoid detection and how can we stop them? Stephen Trilling, vice president of Symantec STAR, answers this way: “As evidenced by the report on the underground economy, today’s cybercriminals are thriving off of information they are gathering without permission from consumers and businesses. As these individuals and groups continue to devise new tools and techniques to defraud legitimate users around the globe, protection and mitigation against such attacks must become an international priority.”

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http://tech.blorge.com/

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