Month: May 2011

art, Culture, movies, Recreation, Travel

Topanga Days! Music, Fun, and competitive eating.

| be3n

Topanga Days 2011 CrowdsI attended Topanga’s anual fair. There was much excitement, great music, and some phenomenal costumes. We were having such a great time, we hardly noticed that Forest’s beer had been pilfered by Andy Dick. We discovered some great bands (like Afrobeat Down & Clare Means). I even entered the anual Pie Eating Competition. As my first go at competitive eating, i did fairly well, but i have a few pro tips for those interested. First off, don’t sit next to the craziest person in the competition. Don’t wear clothes you care about (not even as a spectator) and watch out for your nose. (I’m still pulling blueberries out of my nose)

Watch the video above or Download below:
Topanga Days 2011 Pie Eating (low)
Topanga Days 2011 Pie Eating (high)

Topanga Days 2011 Pie Eating contestants

me after pie eating contestMe After the Contest

Internet, technology, Web

lulzsec hacks PBS in support of wikileaks.

| be3n

After PBS’s documentary on wikileaks “Wikisecrets” painted alleged cablegate leaker Bradley Manning in a seemingly negative light some hacktivists have set their sights on PBS. A group going by the name “LulzSec” posted some fake news stories and pages on PBS’s site and published database dumps of usernames, passwords, email, and other confidential information here. Though they claim not to be affiliated with Anonymous, the style is certainly similar. They even included a taunting statement, “Hey Anonymous, we heard you were having trouble!” in reference to the recent anonymous split and anonops.net hack. I suspect these are more 4chan hackers, possibly even the ones responsible for the anonops.net hack.

links:
Oficial Lulzsec Statement:
http://pastebin.com/B3gmw5NS
other press:
Huffington Post
IT News

Soapbox, Software, technology, Wisdom

Mac Defender is annoying users trusting enough to type their passwords!

| be3n

A bit of ransom-ware by the name of Mac Defender is exploiting a default setting in safari that will automatically launch any installer package that you download. It still requires the user to go through the steps of installing the software including entering their administrator password. Apparently this hasn’t prevented hundreds of users from installing the bogus software. It seems to do nothing but pop up ads and messages to lure the user to pay $79.99 to remove the infection. Easy, free removal instructions are available here. But let this be a lesson. Don’t type your password if you don’t know why it is asking for it. Don’t install things you didn’t know you downloaded.

Culture, Internet, Soapbox

anonops.net Hacked! Users Unmasked!

| be3n

anonymous doesn't like to be unmaskedyesterday, anonymous’s irc server was hacked and user’s ip addresses and private messages were posted here. Looking at the logs, it is clear to me that many of their users use proxies, VPNs, or some other way to obscure their actual address. It is doubtful that any serious hacktivists were actually unmasked. With rumors of an internal conflict within anonymous ablaze online, it is still unclear who was responsible or when their operations will be back online.

UPDATE:
here was https://sites.google.com/site/lolanonopsdead/ and it’s since offline.

Internet, Software, technology, Web

Vupen broke Google’s Sandbox!

| be3n

After 3 straight years of pwn2own invincibility, someone finally bested all of chrome’s mighty security to downloaded and run code. French security research firm @vupen used two exploits to bypass ASLR, DEP, and leave the sandbox to run a calculator (in this demo). The calculator might be innocuous, but method is quite significant. Impressive work by the good guys.