I have a feeling that many of us know unconsciously what can be done with a Hacked PC, but it took The Washington Post to illustrate the concepts, categorizing the various badness into six neat categories (click the pic below to see the Post’s graphic in full):

I will admit considering the vulnerabilities of Financial Credentials as a revelation. Aside from the almost-cliche possibility of stolen credit card numbers and bank accounts details is the potential to manipulate stock trades and mutual funds on your non-consented behalf. Overlooking those is understandable, especially since many of us don’t really have the sound long-term financial planning needed to drive such investment-related online activity. That’s a pitfall I hope to remain aware if and when I decide to manage my financial future on the internet.

To be clear though, there are much more practical—and pressing—considerations. As I attempt to maintain the secrecy of my real email address, the crown jewel for any would-be identity theft, I hereby declare: You can pry my Steam collection from my cold, dead hands.

It’s a bit ironic when you ask your readers to “NEVER TAMPER WITH THESE [ADDCO] SIGNS”, right before you provide detailed instructions on how to basically hack said signs and make them print out whatever suits your fancy. (I bet the promise of learning such illicit info also piques your interest) Read more

Apple Core is a company which sells Apple TVs with upgraded hard drives and, until yesterday, a very handy little USB stick called aTV Flash.

The thumb drive was a plug and play solution to hack your Apple TV, bringing a slew of extra features for just $60.00 USD. After restoring your Apple TV to factory defaults, you slip in the aTV. It goes to work and installs all the extra software needed.

Because the process is reversible (just do another factory restore) and it doesn’t involve physically opening the Apple TV, it doesn’t void your warranty.

Here are the features, as listed by MacMerc:

• Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more)
• Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them [ripped VOB files]
• Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files
• Browse the web with a Safari b ased web browser
• Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com
• Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers
• View local weather forecasts
• View RSS Feeds
• Enable SSH access

As you can see, a pretty significant upgrade. Yesterday, however, Apple Core stopped selling the device:

Due to questions arising regarding the fair use of a particular file present on the aTV Flash, and conflicting opinions as to whether or not it falls under the fair use category, we have VOLUNTARILY discontinued offering the aTV Flash at this time.

In our interpretation of the fair use doctrine, our software does not cross any lines, but since this is a grey area issue, we have taken a proactive approach and decided to seek clarifcation directly from the rights holder before we offer the product again. We are working with them to resolve this, and will have updates posted here as they become available.

Interestingly, all of the tools included on the drive are available elsewhere. The aTV just packages them and does the heavy lifting for you.

It’s hard to tell from Apple Core’s statement whether Apple has put pressure on them, or whether the litigious environment in the US made the company jittery (the new version has received a lot of recent publicity).

I imagine the smart thing to do, though, would be to release the software package as a download and let the evil hacking criminal consumers copy it to our own thumb drive

Source: Apple Core, LLC