posted Jul 26th 2009 5:12pm by
Zach Banks
filed under:
cellphones hacks,
handhelds hacks,
news
The silicon hacker behind the Chumby, [bunnie huang], was browsing through the Mobile Phone Megamarket in Shenzhen, China and stumbled upon an unusual repair book. It turns out the book had the schematics to hundreds of Nokia phones. It’s hard to tell if they are legitimate, but the amount of information makes them seem so. [bunnie] claims that the book is a learning experience because it shows how some sub-circuits are implemented. Also, it can be a good reference for sourcing parts. Since Nokia buys millions of each component, the supply of parts they use are stable. There are also editions for other brands, such as Motorola and Samsung.
posted Oct 22nd 2008 5:18pm by
Kimberly Lau
filed under:
news
There’s no doubt that software piracy is rampant in China. Microsoft attempted to remedy the problem with its new version of Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program, which will turn the screen black every hour if the system fails the validation test. Previous versions just notified the user that they were using pirated software. You can imagine this didn’t go over too well with the Chinese, who were outraged by the inconvenience and more than one even accused Microsoft of hacking into their computers. A genuine, unpirated version of Windows costs over 1000 RMB, which is more than most Chinese make in a month. Contrast that with the 5 RMB (less than one US dollar) for the pirated version, and you’ve got a no-brainer.
[via MetaFilter]
posted Aug 3rd 2008 7:00pm by
Kimberly Lau
filed under:
news,
security hacks
[Zach Honig] is a photographer in Beijing covering the Olympics. In light of recent allegations of the
Chinese government installing monitoring software and hardware in foreign-owned hotels, the necessity of protecting one’s information has become vital and urgent, especially for journalists and photographers.
[Honig] provides some suggestions for circumventing the infamous
Great Firewall of China; surfing the internet through a secure
VPN connection and using a proxy such as
PHProxy will allow users to visit websites that have been banned within China. Such simple tricks could mean the difference between not being able to find necessary information, and the ability to surf the internet freely and openly.
[via Digg]
posted Jun 25th 2008 12:45am by
Eliot Phillips
filed under:
news,
security hacks
StopBadware.org has released their May 2008 Infected Sites Report(PDF). They took their current list of 213K active badware websites and resolved the IP addresses. These addresses were used to determine the network block owner and country. The results could be skewed to networks Google scans more often, but they should give a decent overall picture. China hosts 52% of all the badware sites while the U.S. has 21%. There weren’t any other countries maintaining over 4% of the total. They also calculated the number of infected sites per capita, which China also led. Last year’s report resulted in several AS block maintainers cleaning up to the point that they don’t even make the top 250 this year.
