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Phreaking

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a subculture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, like equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term "phreak" is derived from the words "phone" and "freak". It may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. "Phreak", "phreaker", or "phone phreak" are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking. Additionally, it is often associated with computer hacking. This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with H standing for Hacking and P standing for Phreaking). information on this site is for educational purposes only! Wyretap Network ©2007 - 2010

Disclaimer: The information on this site is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to encourage or teach you to break the law, that's what TV is for, albeit in a very flawed manner. The owner(s) of this website will not be held liable for anything you choose to do with the information contained on this site. If you want to learn how to rape, murder, loot, and commit acts of terror on a monumental scale, well, you won't find it here. Instead, tune-in to your nightly news and take a lesson from your 'elected' 'leaders'.

Social engineering techniques and terms

All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases.[1] These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create attack techniques, some of which are listed here:
Pretexting
Pretexting is the act of creating and using an invented scenario (the pretext) to persuade a targeted victim to release information or perform an action and is typically done over the telephone. It is more than a simple lie as it most often involves some prior research or set up and the use of pieces of known information (e.g. for impersonation: date of birth, Social Security Number, last bill amount) to establish legitimacy in the mind of the target. [2]
This technique is often used to trick a business into disclosing customer information, and is used by private investigators to obtain telephone records, utility records, banking records and other information directly from junior company service representatives. The information can then be used to establish even greater legitimacy under tougher questioning with a manager (e.g., to make account changes, get specific balances, etc).
As most U.S. companies still authenticate a client by asking only for a Social Security Number, date of birth, or mother's maiden name, the method is effective in many situations and will likely continue to be a security problem in the future.
Pretexting can also be used to impersonate co-workers, police, bank, tax authorities, or insurance investigators — or any other individual who could have perceived authority or right-to-know in the mind of the targeted victim. The pretexter must simply prepare answers to questions that might be asked by the victim. In some cases all that is needed is a voice that sounds authoritative, an earnest tone, and an ability to think on one's feet.
Phishing
Main article: Phishing
Phishing is a technique of fraudulently obtaining private information. Typically, the phisher sends an e-mail that appears to come from a legitimate business—a bank, or credit card company—requesting "verification" of information and warning of some dire consequence if it is not provided. The e-mail usually contains a link to a fraudulent web page that seems legitimate—with company logos and content—and has a form requesting everything from a home address to an ATM card's PIN.
For example, 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless a link provided was clicked to update a credit card (information that the genuine eBay already had). Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site resemble a legitimate organization's site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were being contacted by eBay and subsequently, were going to eBay’s site to update their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who already had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately, who might respond.
IVR or phone phishing
This technique uses a rogue Interactive voice response (IVR) system to recreate a legitimate sounding copy of a bank or other institution's IVR system. The victim is prompted (typically via a phishing e-mail) to call in to the "bank" via a (ideally toll free) number provided in order to "verify" information. A typical system will reject log-ins continually, ensuring the victim enters PINs or passwords multiple times, often disclosing several different passwords. More advanced systems transfer the victim to the attacker posing as a customer service agent for further questioning.
One could even record the typical commands ("Press one to change your password, press two to speak to customer service" ...) and play back the direction manually in real time, giving the appearance of being an IVR without the expense.
The technical name for phone phishing, is vishing.
Baiting
Baiting is like the real-world Trojan Horse that uses physical media and relies on the curiosity or greed of the victim.[3]
In this attack, the attacker leaves a malware infected floppy disk, CD ROM, or USB flash drive in a location sure to be found (bathroom, elevator, sidewalk, parking lot), gives it a legitimate looking and curiosity-piquing label, and simply waits for the victim to use the device.
For example, an attacker might create a disk featuring a corporate logo, readily available off the target's web site, and write "Executive Salary Summary Q2 2009" on the front. The attacker would then leave the disk on the floor of an elevator or somewhere in the lobby of the targeted company. An unknowing employee might find it and subsequently insert the disk into a computer to satisfy their curiosity, or a good samaritan might find it and turn it in to the company.
In either case as a consequence of merely inserting the disk into a computer to see the contents, the user would unknowingly install malware on it, likely giving an attacker unfettered access to the victim's PC and perhaps, the targeted company's internal computer network.
Unless computer controls block the infection, PCs set to "auto-run" inserted media may be compromised as soon as a rogue disk is inserted.
Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo means something for something:
An attacker calls random numbers at a company claiming to be calling back from technical support. Eventually they will hit someone with a legitimate problem, grateful that someone is calling back to help them. The attacker will "help" solve the problem and in the process have the user type commands that give the attacker access or launch malware.
In a 2003 information security survey, 90% of office workers gave researchers what they claimed was their password in answer to a survey question in exchange for a cheap pen.[4] Similar surveys in later years obtained similar results using chocolates and other cheap lures, although they made no attempt to validate the passwords.[5]
Other types
Common confidence tricksters or fraudsters also could be considered "social engineers" in the wider sense, in that they deliberately deceive and manipulate people, exploiting human weaknesses to obtain personal benefit. They may, for example, use social engineering techniques as part of an IT fraud.
The latest type of social engineering techniques include spoofing or hacking IDs of people having popular e-mail IDs such as Yahoo!, GMail, Hotmail, etc. Among the many motivations for deception are:
Phishing credit-card account numbers and their passwords.
Hacking private e-mails and chat histories, and manipulating them by using common editing techniques before using them to extort money and creating distrust among individuals.
Hacking websites of companies or organizations and destroying their reputation.

The Real ID Coming Soon!!!

The Real ID Coming Soon!!!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Stem Cells Restore Sight in Mouse Model of Retinitis Pigmentosa

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — An international research team led by Columbia University Medical Center successfully used mouse embryonic stem cells to replace diseased retinal cells and restore sight in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa. This strategy could potentially become a new treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of blindness that affects approximately one in 3,000 to 4,000 people, or 1.5 million people worldwide.


The study appears online ahead of print in the journal Transplantation (March 27, 2010 print issue).

Specialized retinal cells called the retinal pigment epithelium maintain vision. Retinitis pigmentosa results from the death of retinal cells on the periphery of the retina, leading to "tunnel vision," where the field of vision is narrowed considerably and everything outside the "tunnel" appears blurred or wavy.

"This research is promising because we successfully turned stem cells into retinal cells, and these retinal cells restored vision in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa," said Stephen Tsang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of ophthalmology, pathology and cell biology, Columbia University Medical Center, and lead author of the paper. "The transplanted cells not only looked like retinal cells, but they functioned like them, too."

In Dr. Tsang's study, sight was restored in one-fourth of the mice that received the stem cells. However, complications of benign tumors and retinal detachments were seen in some of the mice, so Dr. Tsang and colleagues will optimize techniques to decrease the incidence of these complications in human embryonic stem cells before testing in human patients can begin.

"Once the complication issues are addressed, we believe this technique could become a new therapeutic approach for not only retinitis pigmentosa, but age-related macular degeneration, Stargardt disease, and other forms of retinal disease that also feature loss of retinal cells," said Dr. Tsang.

In age-related macular degeneration, retinal cells in the center of the retina degenerate and cause the center part of vision to become blurry or wavy. In 2010, macular degeneration is prevalent in nine million Americans and its incidence is expected to double by 2020. It is estimated that 30 percent of the population will have some form of macular degeneration by the time they reach the age of 75.

Replacement of damaged retinal cells in patients with macular degeneration is currently offered in some hospitals, but the therapy is limited by a shortage of donor retinal pigment epithelium cells. By using stem cells and turning them into retinal pigment epithelium cells, the supply is virtually unlimited.

Similar approaches to macular degeneration have demonstrated efficacy in other rodent models, but since these models are of rare, unique pathophysiologies of retinal degeneration, they may not be generalizable to most human forms of retinal degeneration, e.g., age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa or Stargardt disease.

"It's a good thing that more models are being tried, as this shows there may be real potential for stem cells to treat different causes of the loss of retinal pigment epithelium in humans," said Dr. Tsang.

Methods

The research methods used in this study were developed by Columbia researchers, past and present, including:

  • Dr. Peter Gouras (ophthalmology) pioneered retinal cell transplantation where stem cells are placed underneath the retina. Co-authors on this paper, Drs. Nan-Kai Wang (a former retinal fellow now at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the Chang Gung University College of Medicine and National Taiwan University in Taiwan) and Joaquin Tosi (ophthalmology) used this technique to place transplanted stem cells underneath the retina.
  • Dr. Gouras also developed many of the non-invasive methods used to assess neuronal function in mouse visual system, such as electroretinography, which measures the retina's response to light.
  • The strategies for embryonic stem cell use were developed at Columbia by Dr. Elizabeth J. Robertson (now at Oxford). In collaboration with Dr. Pamela L. Schwartzberg (now at the National Institutes of Health), and Dr. Stephen P. Goff (biochemistry, molecular biophysics and microbiology), Dr. Robertson combined embryonic stem cells with homologous recombination to achieve gene targeting, producing the first gene-targeted mice.
  • The techniques employed to engineer stem cells were developed at Columbia by Drs. Goff and Virginia E. Papaioannou (genetics).
  • Co-author Dr. Victor Chyuan-Sheng Lin (pathology) tapped Dr. Martin Chalfie's (biological sciences) Nobel Prize winning work on green fluorescent protein, to turn the stem cells used in this research yellow, enabling the team to use imaging to see them non-invasively in the mice.
  • Dr. Takayuki Nagasaki (ophthalmology) developed an advanced imaging technique, known as fundus autofluorescence imaging, which enabled the researchers to examine the mouse eye using non-invasive methods.

"I am fortunate that this diverse expertise exists at the same university -- Columbia is one of the few places in the world where this research could be conducted," said Dr. Tsang. "And our multidisciplinary approach to basic science research is unique."

This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Research to Prevent Blindness, New York, NY, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Dennis W. Jahnigen Career Development Scholars Award Program of American Geriatics Society, the Schneeweiss Stargardt Fund, and Professor Gertrude Neumark Rothschild.

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Adapted from materials provided by Columbia University Medical Center.
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