I remember seeing a programme many years ago about Kevin Mitnick a hacker who after being caught was ordered to jail and not allowed near phone equipment as he posed a major threat. What could a man in prison hope to hack with only (alledged) his voice to hack modems, plus also equipment of the eighties. Plus now a days technology how easy is it to hack, I mean in a legal sense if possible.

It is traditional that script writers have an unlimited supply of ignorance about the subject of their plot lines. This is traditionally evened out by the equal level of ignorance of the viewing public.
What is believable is the paranoia of people involved in security, who will ignore any form of provable logic, partly to appear suitably cautious, and mostly to eansure continued employment by guarding against non-existant threats.

profound, that is Malcolm, profound....

I loved the film WARGAMES, but It wasn't overly believable, people will fear what they don't understand, and that makes a great movie!

Wargames was great. There is a wargames 2 out also now.


Some computer hacking myths Im aware are --
-hackers can make your computer exploded; there are a number of different ways they can do this so called. In the old days, one might of been able to shut off the CPU fan softwarely, for example, causing the CPU to smoke and burn out. CRT monitors could be damanged by having them output a frequency that damaged them-- most newer CRTs have protection from such incorect settings and damage.

-hackers can cause your speakers to play a certain sound that can remote control your computer (which is true in some cases), and in some cases cause physical harm to you or your computer. brown noise?

-hackers can talk to you thru your computer, despite not having speakers plugged in. This is true in different ways, as the interal PC speaker can be controlled into working as a crude WAV speaker-- not just beeps. Its also possible to make sound thru varying of the HDD spindle, and whatever else.

-hackers are able to read streaming data like the matrix. -- this is actually sorta true, as any experienced coder can glance at software code and have an idea what it does.

-non hacker related myth, people are dumb enough to use their CD rom drive as a coffee holder.

-you can(or could) make free phones at a payphone by simple sounds, beeps, or reciever taps. true - but not really any more today

- you can get money out of a public phone thats outside by plugging the holes on it during winter, and filling the coin slot with water. when the water freezes, it expands, blowing up the coin stash.

- you can use a cell phone as an open-scanner thingy.

-hackers can hack into a school's sprinkler system and control it. same with elevators.

-No magnets near my PC
-Radiation from PC monitor will cause cancer
-Cookies from sites track every move (among affiliate sites -- yes)
-Always ’stop’ a USB device before unplugging (ha)
-Switching off power without shutting down damages the PC
-Emptying recycle bin ensures permanent deletion
-If you have antivirus you can click anything


I personally like the one from long ago, where if you put a gun powder paste (alcohol/gunpowder) on a floppy disc (inside floppy part) let it dry, and then put it into a disk drive -- it would explode.


Problem with most of these myths, is that they are from long ago, and not quite valid anymore. Phreaking is great, but its hardly used anymore like it was. 'blue box, red box, black box, grey box... etc' Cell phone hacking is pretty cool, but other than the Hackers 2 examples, there arent many myths.

there is a pile of modern myths, like cookies and stuff, but its not really mythbusters suitable really.

Just see DieHard4 for prime examples of movie madness! even a CCTV in a obscure lift was connected to the network!

most CCTV's in scummy apartment blocks ain't connected to anything!

"non hacker related myth, people are dumb enough to use their CD rom drive as a coffee holder. "
hehehe i did that once, it was my CD-RW drive though, i have a DVD-RW too, i wouldn't be dumb enough to mess with that one though.

ha just noticed this above..

quote:

- you can get money out of a public phone thats outside by plugging the holes on it during winter, and filling the coin slot with water. when the water freezes, it expands, blowing up the coin stash.

How long would that take!
plugging holes is bad enough, but then you got to pour water down a coin slot? it takes long enough to fill my iron! and then you have to wait till it freezes, and worst still you have to melt it again to get at the coins!
anyone who tried that would have far too much time on their hands! and the phone box would have to be so isolated that no one would use it anyhow!

quote:

-Always ’stop’ a USB device before unplugging (ha)
-Switching off power without shutting down damages the PC

both of the above are best practice methods.

Stopping (safely remove hardware) USB devices applies more to disk drives that are not optimised for quick removal, data may have not been written to the disk and will cause data corruption / loss is you unplug the drive before it (windows) had cleared it's cache..

turning off a PC while the disk drive is writing is an extremely good way to corrupt the file system / data on a disk drive, this is why folk buy UPS power backup systems to help protect against a power outage and give time to shut a system down properly. there are also registry corruption issues where software had only had time to change some of the KEYS and you get serious problems as a result..

Hi Jim
On the old UK payphones one way delinquent kids got extra pocket money was to block the reject chute. Rejected coins were caused to back up. Mini-mafiosi would return to the scene of the crime, unblock, and enjoy the cascade of small change. Design changes over the past twenty years have rendered this method impractical.

Here some guy hacked into the computers of a few people and somehow managed to "record" the details of their bank accounts, by remotely "looking" at what got punched in on the keyboard. Passwords could be retrieved this way also. So later this guy could get into the mentioned accounts and transfer money to his own.

However, the guy got caught and was jailed.

Banks also initiated stricter regulations and ways on how to manage our online banking, especially when logging into accounts. We no longer punch passwords in on the keyboard, but rather use the mouse to click on the "keyboard" on screen.

yeah malcolm, times were harder back then, and 10p was worth a lot! you did what you had to!

PS I often find it worth while to push the REFUND button on coin operated machines, you often find money drops out, especial in the kind you find in mens (and now womens, not that I go in!) toilets!