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Seattle Power Tool Race & Derby

June 29, 2008 by 2 Comments


Yesterday, the Hazard Factory, an industrial arts studio, hosted the 3rd annual Seattle Power Tool Race & Derby. Participants construct a dragster powered by at most two “power tools” to race head to head down a 60 foot plywood channel. The rules are fairly loose and creativity is encouraged just as much as performance. For an example build, [spacematters] posted his machine using a circular saw and inline skate wheels. A Flickr photo pool of the day’s shenanigans is coming together and you can see some of the registered entries on the Hazard Factory’s site.

[photo: Æther]

Botnet Attack Via P2P Software

June 29, 2008 by 7 Comments


P2P networks have long been a legal gray area, used for various spam schemes, illegal filesharing, and lots and lots of adware. Last year, though, the first botnet created by a worm distributed via P2P software surfaced, the work of 19-year-old [Jason Michael Milmont] of Cheyenne, Wyoming, who distributed his Nugache Worm by offering free downloads of the P2P app Limewire with the worm embedded. He later began distributing it using bogus MySpace and Photobucket links shared via chats on AOL Instant Messenger. The strategy proved effective, as the botnet peaked with around 15,000 bots. [Milmont] has plead guilty to the charges against him. Per his plea agreement, he will pay $73,000 in restitution and may serve up to five years in prison.

Bittorrent Admin Convicted By Federal Jury

June 28, 2008 by 3 Comments


[Daniel Dove], administrator of the site EliteTorrents.org, has been convicted of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. Running a bittorrent tracker isn’t in itself illegal, but [Dove] apparently recruited seeders and distributed the initial illegal copies to them from his own server. From the press release, it seems the Justice Department is quite tickled with finally getting a conviction in a P2P case after a jury trial.

[photo: nrkbeta]

Defcon 16 Schedule Finalized

June 28, 2008 by No comments


If you were waiting to finalize you travel plans, now’s the time; Defcon has published the final speaking schedule. The conference starts Friday August 8th in Las Vegas, NV and continues through Sunday with four separate speaking tracks. There’s quite a few talks we’re looking forward to: Silicon guru [Christopher Tarnovsky] from Flylogic will be hosting a breakout session on smartcard security. [Gadi Evron] will talk about the security implications of biological implants in the future. [Thomas Wilhelm] is going to cover building a mobile hacker space and the vehicle related hacks it requires.

OiNK Uploaders’ Bail Extended

June 26, 2008 by 20 Comments


The six people arrested by British authorities for uploading files to the OiNK torrent network, all out on bail, have had the period of their bail extended. Charged with conspiracy to defraud the music industry, the woman and five men as well as OiNK operator [Alan Ellis] have been ordered to report to the police on July 1st, where their bail will be formally extended for another 27 days. According to TorrentFreak, sources close to the case believe that the police are still building their criminal case, which accounts for the bail extensions. They could have civil charges levied against them, but current British Law cannot prosecute individuals for illegal filesharing unless it is done for profit.

MSI Wind Under FCC Review

June 26, 2008 by 12 Comments


Those of us who have been eagerly waiting to get their mitts on an MSI Wind can see some light at the end of the tunnel, as it is currently under review for domestic sale by the FCC. The Wind is MSI’s answer to Asus’s game-changing ultraportable, the Eee PC, and has slightly better specs. It features an Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM. It also has built in bluetooth and webcam. Check out a few shots of the Wind’s internal parts at jkkmobile or grab them all from the FCC’s site.

IronKey USB Key Has Military Grade Encryption

June 26, 2008 by 32 Comments


Plenty of USB storage keys are on the market, but Ironkey is the first to use military level encryption. Sold in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB sizes, the key features a processor called the Cryptochip, which uses Public Key Cryptography ciphers linked to an online account to create encryption keys on the hardware. A Federal Information Processing standard 140-2 compliant true random number generator on the Cryptochip ensure that encryption keys are extremely secure and totally random.

Ironkeys come in different sizes, but there are also three different versions, each with unique features. The basic version has a very James Bond-esque feature to destroy the data on it in case of an emergency. The personal version is loaded with Firefox 3 with various addons that make browsing encrypted and anonymous. The enterprise version is made to order with no specific price on the IronKey site, just a form to order one built to your specifications. All of them support Windows, OS X, and a large amount of Linux distros, and they all come in tamper proof and water resistant cases with a brushed metal finish. We tend to think this level of security is overkill for the average person, but people can’t seem to get with our freewheeling approach to security; remember, we leave our WLAN open.

[via LinuxDevices]