by GothNinja | Oct 7, 2011 | Hacks, Holiday, Geek
Today is “Ada Lovelace Day“.
It is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.
Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do.
I decided to take part in helping to promote the achievements of women in fields they do not normally get the credit the deserve in. Deciding to take part was easy, its the actual doing something about it that’s hard. I have spent the last four hours trying to decide who to write about.
Its easy to say “I was not influenced or inspired by particular woman to the point I can post about it“, Yet the more I consider it, the more stupid that statement is. Part of my job entails writing Programs, Scripts, etc. And The first computer Programmer was a lady, and a Lady lady at that. Lady Ada Lovelace (Who today’s named after.)
So who to pick? I then considered maybe using a Character from TV/Film that’s a role model showing you can be cool, feminine, and geeky. Only I could not decide on one of them, either. I have decided to face the fact that I’m useless.
So Instead I will just Raise a pint, and tip my hat to a lost community. “Female Hackers”
Raven Alder, a network administrator at Maryland-based company Intermedia, was utterly boggled by an unexpected question at a hacker convention where she’d just presented a paper. “A reporter asked me how it felt to be the world’s first female hacker,” she recalled. “What the hell?” she spluttered in response. She knew of many other women hackers at the conference, and she was certainly not the first. But the reporter’s question revealed the dilemma facing most women hackers today.
EvilGrrl, a member of the notorious GhettoHackers crew (who won Capture the Flag three years running at Defcon), has noticed this “not existing” problem too. “At conferences, lots of people assume I’m somebody’s girlfriend,” she said, laughing. “I usually just reply that I’m a GhettoHacker and no, I’m not a girlfriend.”
So lets all the Men take a step back, and take today to acknowledge our Female counterparts.
Any in the North Wales area let me know, I’ll get you a pint (or drink of choice)
NOTE: The Title of the Post is a quote from the Character “Acid Burn” from the film Hackers. I’ve never really considered it before, But she really is a poor example of Women in Technology. Looking back on the film, she was the only female in the hacking community shown. I believe in the clips at the end, where the worlds hackers unite, there’s possibly a female hacker shown. Amongst the main group and extended community she is the only one, The other female characters are mothers, or Bimbos. So I appologise, its just that I like the Character, Like the Quote, and Like the Young Angelina Jolie.
by CodeNinja | Jul 14, 2011 | Hacks, Media
Unless you have been living in a small cave half way up an inhospitable mounting for the last month you would have heard of the News of the World (NotW) Phone Hacking Scandal. It’s especially bad if you live in the UK.
If you are that cave dwelling hermit let me say “How the frak are you reading this post? Did you follow the article on reading blogs on kindles? How have you got internet access? inquiring minds want to know!” *relax* I mean to say, that this scandal is about slime masquerading as reports who accessed a vast (possible 4,000) number of people’s (Celebrity’s, Sports Stars, Politicians, Victims of Crime) answer phone messages. Now there was such an amount of this going on that the paper has closed down after 168years in print.
I have no intention of writing about the incident itself, or any of the fallout, or anything directly in relation to this case. That has been covered in depth all over the Internet & Surviving media. What I would like to address is the term thrown about “Phone Hacking Scandal“. Why must everyone insist on calling it Hacking?
*NOTE: Phone Hacking is referred to as Phreaking
No where in any of the reports is any activity mentioned that even faintly falls into the category of “Hacking” under any definition. Even if you take the original definition of Hacking, as in using some piece of technology or item in a way that was different to the intended use. Or knowing or wanting to learn about the inner working of different things, you still can not fit the term “Hacker” or “Hacking” to what the NotW reporters actually did.
What they did was to access peoples voicemail’s. Yes this is wrong, its an intrusion of privacy, it’s probably illegal as “unauthorised to personal communication” but it is not Hacking. They phoned up the voicemail number, and using the Victims phone number, and the generic default pin number accessed they voice mail system in the way it was intended to, in the way we all access it, they just did it without the Victims permission.
Surely it should be called “illegal phone tapping” or “illegal access to mail” or by whatever legal term it is for the crime they committed. The media like using the term Hacker to scare the public about these faceless super-criminals with secret abilities that let them to do almost anything. I think its time to stop the mass-hysteria and excessive incorrect use of this term.
We do not call someone who sticks a plaster on a small graze a Doctor, We do not call the small child playing with a plastic gun in the street a terrorist, and we should not call someone who phones up a publicised phone number and follows the instructions the recorded message tells them a Hacker.
Come on Media People, Your reputation is tarnished over this NotW incident, don’t make it worse by not doing your homework, and just falling into your old scaremongering ways.
The Three Ninjas saying a few words about the misappropriation of the term “Hacker“. To quote Randal from Clerks II. “I’m taking it back”
by CodeNinja | May 30, 2011 | Geek, Kindle, Hacks, Blog
We here at the Ninja Temple love nothing more than finding new ways to use Technology, Or Ways to use it in a different manner to that which it was intended. We also like finding legal ways of doing things for free, that would normally cost money.
So what was the first thing we did when we got our hands on one of Amazons Kindles? We decided it would be nice if we could read our favorite Blogs & News sites directly off the Kindle in weekly digests. Unfortunately Amazon charges for this service, Which is OK I guess since some of the money can go to the Bloggers who write the sites.
No we do not want to cost fellow Bloggers Money, BUT if you think about it, you can use the Kindle’s web browser to read free Blogs for Free, so If you could get it sent directly to your device for free, its only really saving you time.
So heres the procedure we followed to get Weekly Digests of our Favorite blogs sent directly to the Kindle. (NOTE: If you really enjoy someones Blog consider supporting it with some comments, or some other way to show your thanks)
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by CodeNinja | Mar 24, 2011 | Tablet, Hacks
The latest toy useful tool at the Ninja Temple is a nice little 7inch Android tablet. Now, being new to the Android OS, it was not long before the question was raised. “Is it as easy to Root a ‘Droid as it is to Jailbreak an iPhone?”
It was not long after this question was asked that we put life & limb on the line (well we risked bricking the new toy tool) to find out the answer. For those of you interested its Stupidly easy.
This is a walk-through of how we rooted out 7inch scroll tablet (and unlike the iPhone Walk-through no beer was involved).
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by CodeNinja | Sep 9, 2010 | Hacks, Media
Once again the Media forces miss appropriate the word “Hacker”. This time in an article posted on the IT based site The Register, the article is titled “UK hacker fined for personnel database mischief” and the full article can be read here.
Now this could be fair I guess, lets see what the guy did. According to the article he “gained unauthorised access to staff contracts containing salary details and emailed this to around 400 workers at his ex-employer” Now, I can see why gaining unauthorised access to digital information could be associated to Hacking, Only lets read some more.
How did he manage to bypass the companies security and gain access? When he was sacked he stole his bosses laptop, and emailed out information he found on there. Yes. That’s right! The Mad 1337 h4x0r skillz this guy used was 1)theft of a object, 2)The ability to send an email. Wow.
The title should be X-employees fined for theft and breaking the Data Protection Act. Only the Media likes its word Hacker.
by GothNinja | Aug 16, 2010 | Writing, Hacks
A fair while ago I found a document on my machine that was in a folder with short stories, poems, notes, and book ideas. Now I only had the faintest idea of what the document could be, but when I tried to open it to read I was prompted for a password to open the file.
Password? Password? SHIT!
So I typed in my usual selection of passwords……….. NOTHING
So I typed in every password I have used since 1994……….. NOTHING
This got me determined to read whatever was protected on the document. So I tried everything I could think of that I may have used as a password……….. NOTHING
At this point I decided “Frak This” and downloaded a password cracker, kicked it off on brute force mode and left it run. After a couple of weeks of running 24/7 it had reached the maximum digit number it could get too with no luck. Shit I must use good passwords when I’m in the right frame of mind.
At this point I gave up, Until I would re-find the document and try a different password cracker that guaranteed to break the open password on documents, only to leave it running for several weeks only for it to fail AGAIN.
Well I re-found the document two weeks ago, and was about to try yet another password finder when I had an epiphany. It was an old word document written while I was in UNI. so even if it had been updated there was no way it was last saved on anything later than Office 2000. Which means the file itself would only be encrypted with a weak 40-bit encryption. So where as trying to brute-force my actual password would take months if not years of 24/7 constant running, breaking the encryption key itself and simply removing the encryption would take less than a fortnight of testing keys.
Sometimes thinking outside the box is the way forward. I now have an unencrypted copy of the document thanks to a bit of software called GuaWord (and I only needed to use the freeware version, which is why it took 12 days to decrypt)
