When Windows stores a password, it is done so by hashing the password in an LM hash and putting it in the Windows SAM file. In the scary moment that you lose your password, but don't want to pay some geek to have full root access to your computer, you need to recover it using Ophcrack. Ophcrack doesn't remove the password, or bypass it, it cracks the password hash using rainbow tables.
Welcome to another Community Byte announcement! For the past few Community Bytes, we coded an IRC bot, and hacked it. Then, we created a web-based login bruteforcer! This week we are going to start something a bit different. We are going to start going through the missions at HackThisSite one-by-one each week, starting with the basic missions.
Social networks like Facebook and Google+ are great for staying connected with family, friends and coworkers—even fans. But sharing and communicating with practically anyone in the digital realm has alienated us from most of the flesh-and-blood beings we see everyday—our neighbors. How well do you know your neighbors?
Welcome to part two in a series about steganography, the art of hiding things in plain sight. We are practicing steganography because it can be a useful skill if you don't have access to encryption software, or need a quick solution to make sure the sender and recipient are the only ones who are able to read your message.
Last weekend the 2011 World Scrabble Championship was held at the Hilton Hotel in Warsaw, Poland. There were 106 players competing from 44 countries for the $20,000 first place prize and title of World Scrabble Champion.
PayPal has, all in all, been great for allowing Web 2.0 economy to grow. For most entities, it's the best way to send money between two people on the internet.
The Humble Indie Bundle has become like an unpredictable little gamer Christmas. It helps indie developers get their games exposure, helps gamers get cheap DRM-free games via the most user-friendly online purchasing process ever, and helps the world at large by raising money for Child's Play and EFF.
I've been unreasonably excited about Dungeon Defenders (NOT DUNGEON DEFENDER!) for almost a year. Playing it at PAX did nothing to damper that enthusiasm. I had a chance this week to speak with co-founder/development director Jeremy Stieglitz and marketing diretor Philip Asher from Gainesville, Florida based developer Trendy Entertainment to find out a little more about the game, and how it came together.
Behavioral ad targeting companies are diving deeper into the realms of your subconscious with a new approach to serving adverts to you online—and they're using your television.
Crysis 2 is the current standard for high-quality graphics in video games. No other game looks so smooth, so colorful, so... ultra-real. German developer Crytek has built their reputation on PC game technology to the limit, and the CryENGINE 3 graphics engine they used to make Crysis 2 might be the most powerful tool for creating 3D video game graphics on Earth. As of yesterday, it's also free for anyone, yourself included, to download from Crytek's website here.
Children under the age of 13 possess insight that can blow the minds of their elders, but not the wherewithal to make important life choices for themselves. This is exactly why there are strict rules against marketing cigarettes to them. In 2000, a law went into effect called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that institutes similar consumer protections for our youth's online identities, prohibiting companies from soliciting personal information from children under 13 years of age ...
You may not do it in public, and you might not admit to it among your friends, but you do it. We all do it... sing. We sing when we're alone in our cars, at home when no one's listening, and when we've had a little too much to drink and don't care anymore, all inhibitions aside. We love to croon and belt out lyrics to our favorite songs because it makes us feel good, no matter how good or how awful we are, or how well we know the words. Well... now you can at least be proud of one of those th...
Mozilla is scheduled to release their updated Firefox browser on Tuesday, bringing the popular web browser up to version 6. Lately, the Mozilla team has been releasing newer versions of Firefox without a slew of new features, focusing on fixing bugs and getting the improved product out as quickly as possible, in order to compete more rapidly with other browsers like Google Chrome.
Gone are the good old days of McNally Maps and Thomas Guides. When you have something as powerful as Google Maps, why bother with anything else? Plus, you can have way more fun with Google's version compared to its paper counterparts. You can find cool things, create a fake chase sequence, and even prank the whole world into thinking you're dead. I imagine the only enjoying thing you can do with those paper maps is make paper airplanes, maybe some decoupage.
Public Radio Exchange (PRX) has teamed up with music intelligence company The Echo Nest to bring us music lovers Bandito, an easy way to find out what's going on with our favorite artists. Their new mobile app uses the existing iTunes library on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to find your most-played bands and singers, serving up the latest news from around the web on them.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is one of those things that nearly everybody loves. But if your craving is strong and you want to make it yourself, think again – the Colonel’s not keen on parting with his top secret recipe. According to KFC’s official site, “one company blends a formulation that represents part of the recipe while another spice company blends the remainder. As a final safeguard, a computer processing system is used to standardize the blending of the products to ensure neither company ...
Localizing a game is a task many do not fully understand. Not only do localizers have to translate the games they work on into a different language, but they have to translate it into a different culture as well. Oftentimes art assets, plot elements, and menu systems are changed to suit regional sensitivities. Japanese media tends to have their common drunkard characters removed or censored in American versions, for example.
There's a lot of talk going around about Google's new social network and how it's heavily influenced by Facebook, but truth be told, how could they build Google+ without taking a note
The relationship between developers and publishers in the video game industry has always been awkward. Many great game developers such as Bizzare Creations, Clover Studio, and Bullfrog Productions have been disbanded due to corporate shenanigans involving their publishers and owners. The indie game movement has risen largely as a response to this.
Most of the oddest games in the world are free web games. They may not always be well made, but low budgets (and consequently low risk) allow them to be as weird as they fancy. That's a big part of why they are so interesting. Prime examples such as Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story and Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars have graced these pages previously, and both are great games. But the quality of the games hasn't stopped mysterious Glorious Trainwrecks user snapman (else...
No matter if you've used one or not, you've got to admit that 3D printers are pretty darn awesome, especially the self-replicating ones that extrude molten plastic and the shoebox-sized versions that use mesmerizing stereolithography to build tiny objects layer by layer. But what's even cooler? A solar-powered printer that uses the sun's energy to melt sand and make 3D objects out of glass.
Got a knack for speeding? Like running red lights? Believe or not, the police have better things to be doing than pulling you over, like catching real criminals. That's why more and more cameras are popping up at known speeding zones and on street corners—so the cops can clean up the streets, compared to just ticketing them.
They've been at it for a few years now, but the crazy group of amateur rocket scientists who call themselves Copenhagen Suborbitals have triumphed over adversity, successfully launching their DIY rocket nearly 2 miles into the sky last Friday. The privately funded, non-profit aims to one day send human beings into suborbital space on the cheap, without the need of government budgets and administration.
The Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T.) has provided three different energetic and passionate methods for voicing support for Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist and activist who has been detained without known reason by the Chinese government since March 31st.
Earlier this month, game developer David Braben and his Rasberry Pi nonprofit foundation revealed a $25 USB PC. The computer can connect to an HDMI monitor on one end, and a USB peripheral on the other (such as a keyboard or a USB hub). You can use the USB hub to connect multiple items, such as a keyboard, mouse, printer, USB ethernet/wireless, creating a fully functional computer.
For most street artists, it takes a considerable amount of time to paint large art installments on the walls of urban structures. The more time it takes, the better chance there is of getting caught, since nearly all of the rogue artwork is slapped on the sides of city and privately owned buildings.
By now, many of you may have heard about iPhone tracking and recording your location data, but is there anything else being extracted from cell phones without our knowledge? If you're a Michigan state resident, the answer is an alarming "maybe".
Understandably, the tragedy in Japan has substantially risen the level of worldwide radiation-related hysteria. So much so, as an alternative to stampeding health food stores for iodine tablets, crafty individuals and organizations are hacking together personal radiation detectors. Rather than relying on the government, the creation and modification of handheld Geiger counters provides a self-sufficient solution to today's questions regarding radiation. Profiled below, three admirable organiz...
What's the next best thing to being an official scientist? Being a non-official one. A new website called Science for Citizens helps you find the science experiment of your dreams, hook up with the scientists involved, and actually take part in the experiment itself. Here are some examples of what you can do:
When you look up the word free in the dictionary, you'll find a lot of definitions, but in the days of digital dependency and a falling economy, free only means one thing—expensive stuff for nothing. And if you own a Windows computer, one of the best sites to get free software from is Giveaway of the Day.
With the globally rampant use of such social networking platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, the issue of privacy has become a prevalent concern for many. And for good reason—there's the violation of Facebook employing user names in ads, the Etsy slip-up, and of course, the everyman act of recklessly sharing too much information via common social media outlets: a night of drinking results in morning after embarrassment, or worst case scenario, sloppy Facebook posts and tweets resul...
NASA just released this beautiful image of what's leftover from a supernova explosion. The red cloud is expanding cosmic debris, the blue is a blast wave of electrons, and the stripes at the edge tell of a high energy burst of x-rays that may be bound for earth. This image was enhanced—Photoshopped—so that scientists can have an easier time interpreting the picture and so that the public can have an easier time appreciating the beauty of nature.
Youtube.com is one of the most visited websites in the world, and has been for years now. Ever since it's creation in 2005 people have been making videos for every purpose, including the infamous "How to Boil Water" video. But how can one make money from posting videos on Youtube? Well, it all comes back to Google Adsense. Yes, I know, nowadays it's hard to make money on the internet without using Google Adsense here and there, but Youtube is a great medium to attract people to ads that gener...
Warning If you don't trust that these steps are safe or that they won't work, than have your computer/laptop backed up so you can restore it if necessary.
Your best friend's on Yahoo!, your daughter's on AIM, and now your co-worker wants to connect with you over Windows Live. Before you know it, your desktop is overflowing with buddy lists and message windows. Mismatched alert sounds are dinging and buzzing incessantly. Your computer has become a disorganized, stressful place to be.
Type: Digital, Theme Theme: Kid of the Year
Hello readers again! Sorry about the long wait (scary computer problems). Today I am going to talk to you about security problems on Wizard101. I have recently encountered many security flaws on Wizard101, including hacking, frauding and other crazy things. Wizard101 is the target for many online predators, many of who are fully-grown adults aged 60 or 70. Here is the link to an article I found about it: Wizard101 Internet Predators
Type: Digital and traditional photography Theme: Wildlife
Type: Digital and traditional photography Theme: Wildlife
This past Sunday, a group called Gnosis launched a massive hacker attack on Gawker media, one of the web's most popular blog networks (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin and Fleshbot). 1.3 million registered users' passwords were compromised, and 188,279 of them were decoded and made public. The biggest takeaway? Many Gawker denizens use downright dumb passwords. (Guess they didn't see their own Lifehacker's story on avoiding such a thing.)
