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Prevent hacks to preserve your business’s valuable reputation

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A password manager like Dashlane can keep you from losing your business's good reputation.
A password manager like Dashlane can keep you from losing your business's good reputation.
Photo: Dashlane

This business cybersecurity post is brought to you by Dashlane.

The hard work you put into building your business and managing your business’s reputation should not be compromised by an avoidable hack.

Cyberattacks on businesses and other entities may seem inevitable, but many are avoidable. Given the importance of reputation — which amounts to everything anyone and everyone thinks or feels about your operation — preventing cybersecurity breaches is crucial to defending the overall perception of your business’s trustworthiness to consumers, clients and investors.

Implementing use of a password manager like Dashlane for you and your employees, whether they work remotely or onsite, is among the easiest and most effective ways to protect your business’s reputation, explains J.D. Sherman, CEO of Dashlane. Its web and mobile app simplifies password management for people and businesses.

Teen ‘mastermind’ gets arrested for massive Twitter attack

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If hackers dump your personal data onto the dark web, you need to know about it. Dashlane Dark Web Monitoring can sound the alarm.
Rather than state-sponsored hackers, the Twitter hacker is someone too young to vote.
Photo: sebastiaan stam/Pexels CC

In mid July, a hacker gained access to Apple’s Twitter account, along with those other corporations, high-profile politicians, and celebrities. At the time, there was speculation it was done by Russian hackers. Or perhaps they were Chinese. Some pointed fingers at international criminal gangs.

Nope. Turns out it was a 17-year-old kid from Tampa.

Hacker who shared Apple employee details on Twitter avoids jail

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Hacker's lawyer argued that they had been enticed by Apple's bug bounty.
Photo: Clint Patterson

An Australian hacker who pleaded guilty to accessing confidential employee information from Apple and sharing it on Twitter has avoided a jail sentence.

24-year-old Abe Crannaford’s lawyer had argued that, by offering a bug bounty for hackers able to find weaknesses in its software, Apple encourages people to dig into its products to find weaknesses. However, the magistrate did not entirely accept the argument.

YouTuber is giddy giving tour of iPhone battery factory

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A lot of moving parts in this Strange Parts episode at an iPhone battery factory.
Screenshot: Strange Parts/YouTube

Watching an iPhone battery being made might sound interesting. But Scotty Allen was left over the moon after his tour of the Pisen factories in China that makes after-market lithium polymer batteries.

Allen’s exuberance is routinely felt in videos for his YouTube channel Strange Parts. Each component of an electronic device brings the joy of discovery to Allen, known for having built an iPhone from scratch by shopping for parts in the components markets of Shenzhen, China.

Alleged hacker tried to sell details of 319 million iCloud users for bitcoin

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Hacker who tried to extort Apple for $100k is spared prison
21-year-old Kerem Albayrak allegedly tried to hold up Apple for cyber-cash.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

An alleged hacker who reportedly threatened to sell the personal details of 319 million iCloud users is having his day in court. 21-year-old IT analyst Kerem Albayrak supposedly filmed himself accessing people’s accounts and posted footage showing this online.

He then asked Apple to pay him $174,000 worth of Bitcoin and $1,100 in iTunes vouchers to avoid doing anything with the accounts.

Hacker hacks iPhone hacking company’s secret hacks

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They say turnabout is fair play, but iPhone users are caught in the middle when iOS hacking tools are stolen.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Israel’s NSO Group makes a business of hacking iPhones and Android devices.  In a reversal of roles, it was hacked by one of its own employees and valuable intellectual property was stolen.

While its tempting to lean back an enjoy this company’s discomfiture, the stolen property was NSO’s phone hacking tools, which were then offered on the dark web.

‘Trustjacking’ is the dangerous new iPhone hack you’ve never heard of

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What’s on your wish list for a future iPhone?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

You might want to think twice before plugging your iPhone into a friends laptop for a quick charge.

Security researchers have discovered an all-new type of iOS hack called “trustjacking” that uses one of a little-known WiFi feature to access a device’s data, even when the targeted device isn’t in the same location anymore.

There’s a serious security flaw in Wi-Fi and we’re all at risk

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KRACK Wi-Fi attack
Beware the KRACK attack.
Photo: Mathy Vanhoef

A major security flaw has been discovered in Wi-Fi and we’re all at risk.

Researchers discovered the weakness in WPA2, the protocol that secures all modern Wi-Fi networks. Any modern device with a wireless connection could be open to a KRACK attack that would expose information like credit card numbers, passwords, messages and more.

What to do if you were affected by the massive Equifax hack

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143 million customers in the U.S. may have been impacted by the attack.
Photo: Colin / Wikimedia Commons

Credit report giant Equifax confirms a “cybersecurity incident” may have compromised the data of 143 million U.S. customers.

Criminals gained access to Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, credit card numbers and more between mid-May and July of this year. It’s one of the biggest and most worrisome data breaches in history.

Here’s what to do if you’re one of the customers affected.

Hack exposes millions of Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo logins

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And some hackers want less than $1 for them.
Photo: Jay Wennington/Unsplash

The usernames and passwords for over 270 million hacked email accounts are being traded on Russia’s black market.

One security expert warns that while most of them are Mail.ru accounts for Russia’s most popular email service, tens of millions of them belong to Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo Mail users.

Facebook coughs up $10,000 for 10-year-old Instagram hacker

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It pays to uncover Facebook flaws.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Instagram Android
It pays to uncover Facebook flaws. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

A 10-year-old with insane hacking skills just scored a $10,000 payout from Facebook for uncovering a serious flaw in Instagram.

The Helsinki-based boy, who can’t even open a Facebook account for another three years, found he was able to alter code on Instagram’s servers to delete comments posted by any account.

Malware uses Apple’s FairPlay DRM to attack iOS users

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hack
143 million customers in the U.S. may have been impacted by the attack.
Photo: Colin / Wikimedia Commons

Researchers have just discovered a new malware threat for iOS devices that uses Apple’s own FairPlay DRM system as a delivery vector.

Dubbed “AceDeciever” by the researchers, the malware in question can technically infect any type of iOS device, jailbroken or not, if a user downloads a third-party app.

Pay what you want to learn comprehensive coding for the web [Deals]

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A key to being a successful coder is having as broad a knowledge base as possible — the more you know, the better you code. With all the languages, platforms, and frameworks in the web development world these days it can be hard to know where to start, but with the Pay What You Want Web Hacker Bundle deal at Cult of Mac you can get a ground-up tour of the most in-demand tools and techniques any modern coder needs.

This iPad Can Boot Between iOS 5, iOS 6, And iOS 7 At Will [Video]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yW4n17lhc

Hate iOS 7’s visual aesthetic, but have apps that require iOS 7 to function? You should do what famed jailbreaker winocm did — hack his iPad 2 so it triple boots between iOS 5.1, iOS 6.1.3 and iOS 7.0.6!

Well, okay. You got us. The elite skills necessary to hack your iPad to dual boot operating systems is beyond the ability of most of us mortals, and it’s unlikely winocm will ever make this process friendly for the everyman. Still, wouldn’t you love if your iPad could do this?

Source: YouTube

Get A Three-Year Digital Subscription To Hacker Monthly For The Price Of One [Deals]

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Paper is quickly becoming a thing of the past, so we’re offering you a three-year digital subscription to Hacker Monthly that you can enjoy on any device you want (PDF, MOBI, EPUB format), DRM-free for the price of just one year. Plus, you get access to all current and past issues immediately after your purchase.

And you’ll get all this for only $29.

Security Researcher Claims His Findings Were Behind Apple’s Dev Center Closure

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Apple’s Dev Center mysteriously went down for several days last week, and the Cupertino company revealed over the weekend that “an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers.” The site was closed immediately so that the potential for further threats could be eliminated.

It looked like Apple’s website had been hacked by someone trying to obtain our personal data, but according to one security researcher, it was his discovery of 13 bugs in the system which prompted the company to take action.

Hacker Who Stole 114K Emails From AT&T iPad Owners Appeals Conviction

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Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer

Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, one of the hackers responsible for exploiting a security flaw in AT&T’s website to steal over 110,000 email addresses from iPad subscribers, has appealed the 41-month sentence that was handed to him back in March.

Auernheimer still maintains he did not violate any laws when he accessed AT&T’s servers, and notes that all of the information he obtained was already available to the public on the Internet.

Hacker Builds Retina PC Using An iPad Display

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You don’t necessarily have to spend $1,200+ on a new MacBook Pro to get a computer with a Retina display. Providing you’re happy to pull apart your iPad and you know what you’re doing with a soldering iron, you can build your a Retina display for your PC.

That’s what Polish hacker Andrzej did.

Hacker Demonstrates Ability To Remotely Hijack An Airplane Using A Smartphone

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You can get some pretty cool gadgets that can be remote controlled by your smartphones and tablets, such as helicopters, cars, and even tanks. But who wants one of those when you can control the real think?

At the Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam this week, Hugo Teso, a pilot turned IT technician, demonstrated the ability to remotely hijack an airplane using a smartphone and a radio transmitter.

Jailbreak Brings Mac OS (And Hope) To Microsoft Surface RT Tablet

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If you’re a Mac user who picked up a Microsoft Surface RT tablet out of curiosity when they went on sale last October, and you’re yet to find a use for it, then don’t despair. Earlier this week it was revealed that it’s possible to jailbreak the device and install desktop apps that are designed for ARM processors — something Microsoft doesn’t officially support.

One developer has taken advantage of the exploit to run an early version of Apple’s Mac OS operating system inside a emulator.

Developer Uses Siri To Control Phillips Hue Lights

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Check this video out – it’s a developer who’s used a Siri development plugin to control his Phillips Hue IP-controllable light bulbs. While the video is short, the guy who did it, Brandon Evans, has posted the code and instructions needed to make it happen on your own iPad, assuming you know what he’s talking about.

Evan has this to say about the project:

The Philips Hue hardware was first intriguing to me because they explicitly mention that it’s a ZigBee certified product on the packaging and labels. ZigBee is a wireless technology that is different from WiFi in a few important ways: Low power, equivalent range and intended for light data mesh networks. It’s popular with DIY hardware makers (think Arduinos) for this reason, as well as that it’s much cheaper than WiFi modules. It seems like it may be the wireless standards of choice for consumer home automation systems that are coming to market. As an example, the Nest thermostat was also found to have ZigBee hardware inside, although it isn’t supported in software yet. Because of all this I wanted to see exactly what hardware Philips was using, and if it would be possible to replicate the Hue system.

Looks like a great first step to using off-the-shelf technology to control home systems. Bravo, Mr. Evans!

Source: Brandon Evans
Via: Loop Insight

The History Of Jailbreaking [Feature]

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Back in 2007, Steve Jobs used a famous quote from ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky to summarize Apple’s commitment to innovation: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” That’s long been true for Apple and products like the iPhone and iPad. But for more than four years, jailbeaking has pushed the boundaries of iOS even farther.

If Apple skates to where the puck is going to be, then jailbreakers have usually already been there and left. The hackers and tinkerers that find security loopholes in Apple’s software are some of the most brilliant, innovative minds in the tech world.

We’ll be covering JailbreakCon 2012 this weekend in San Francisco, the world’s first convention dedicated solely to the jailbreak community. What better way to get ready for the future of jailbreaking than to examine the past? Let’s start from the beginning: