Google Maps Search

Google Maps Search

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!!!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Breakthrough Reveals Blood Vessel Cells Are Key to Growing Unlimited Amounts of Adult Stem Cells

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2010) — In a leap toward making stem cell therapy widely available, researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that endothelial cells, the most basic building blocks of the vascular system, produce growth factors that can grow copious amounts of adult stem cells and their progeny over the course of weeks. Until now, adult stem cell cultures would die within four or five days despite best efforts to grow them.


"This is groundbreaking research with potential application for regeneration of organs and inhibition of cancer cell growth," said Dr. Antonio M. Gotto Jr., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University.

This new finding sets forth the innovative concept that blood vessels are not just passive conduits for delivery of oxygen and nutrients, but are also programmed to maintain and proliferate stem cells and their mature forms in adult organs. Using a novel approach to harness the potential of endothelial cells by "co-culturing" them with stem cells, the researchers discovered the means to manufacture an unlimited supply of blood-related stem cells that may eventually ensure that anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant can get one.

The vascular-cell model established in this study could also be used to grow abundant functional stem cells from other organs such as the brain, heart, skin and lungs. An article detailing these findings appears in the March 5 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell.

In adult organs, there are few naturally occurring stem cells, so using them for organ regeneration is impractical. Until now, strategies to expand cultures of adult stem cells, which invariably used animal-based growth factors, serum, and genetically manipulated feeder cells, have only been marginally successful. This study, which employs endothelial cells to propagate stem cells without added growth factors and serum, will likely revolutionize the use of adult stem cells for organ regeneration, as well as decipher the complex physiology of the adult stem cells.

"This study will have a major impact on the treatment of any blood-related disorder that requires a stem cell transplant," says the study's senior author, Dr. Shahin Rafii, the Arthur B. Belfer Professor in Genetic Medicine, co-director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, at Weill Cornell Medical College. Currently, stem cells derived from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood are used to treat patients who require bone marrow transplants. Most stem cell transplants are successful, but because of the shortage of genetically matched bone marrow and umbilical cord blood cells, many patients cannot benefit from the procedure.

"Over the last few decades, substantial funding has been spent to develop platforms to expand adult stem cell cultures, but these efforts have never been able to coax an authentic adult stem cell to self-renew beyond a few days," continues Dr. Rafii. "Most stem cells, even in the presence of multiple growth factors, serum, and support from generic non-endothelial stromal cells, die after a few days. Now, employing our endothelial stem cell co-cultures, we can propagate bona fide adult stem cells in the absence of external factors and serum beyond 21 days with an expansion index of more than 400-fold."

If this vascular-based stem cell expansion strategy continues to be validated, physicians could use any source of hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells, propagate them exponentially, and bank the cells for transplantation into patients.

In a true first, the study demonstrates how this novel vascular cell platform or "vascular niche" can self-renew adult hematopoietic stem cells for weeks, both in vitro and in vivo, by co-culturing them on a bed of endothelial cells. The researchers chose endothelial cells because they are in close contact with blood stem cells, and previous work from Dr. Rafii's lab had demonstrated that endothelial cells produce novel stem-cell-active growth factors. However, maintenance of the endothelial cells is cumbersome and if they are not "fed" specific substances, such as growth factors known as "angiogenic factors," they immediately die. To get around this problem, the researchers genetically engineered the endothelial cells to stay in a long-term survival state by inserting a recently discovered gene cloned from adenoviruses, which does not promote oncogenic transformation of the human cells. This earlier discovery, using a single gene to put endothelial cells into a long-lasting "suspended animation" state without harming their ability to produce blood vessels, was also discovered in Dr. Rafii's lab and published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy Sciences in 2008.

Endothelial Cells Could Generate Stem Cells and Their Differentiated Progeny

In this study, the researchers also discovered that endothelial cells not only could expand stem cells, but also instruct stem cells to generate mature differentiated progeny that could form immune cells, platelets, and red and white blood cells, all of which constitute functioning blood.

"We are the first group to demonstrate that endothelial cells elaborate a repertoire of stem-cell-active growth factors that not only stimulate stem cell expansion but also orchestrate differentiation of these stem cells into their mature progeny," says Dr. Jason Butler, a senior investigator at Weill Cornell Medical College and first author of the study. "For example, we have found that expression of specific stem-cell-active factors, namely Notch-ligands, by the endothelial cells lining the wall of working blood vessels promote proliferation of the blood-forming stem cells. Inhibition of these specific factors on the endothelial cells resulted in the failure of the regeneration of the blood-forming stem cells. These findings suggest that endothelial cells directly, through expression of stem-cell-active cytokines, promote stem cell reconstitution."

Further describing this innovative concept, in a high-impact article published in the January 2010 issue of Nature Reviews Cancer, Drs. Rafii and Butler, and Dr. Hideki Kobayashi, who is also a co-author of the current study, have elaborated on specific endothelial cell-produced growth factors that promote the growth of tumor cells besides stem cells.

Development of the vascular-cell technology that supports long-lasting growth of stem cells will also allow scientists to generate abundant sources of functional and malignant stem cells for genetic and basic studies. This study has also resolved a long-standing controversy in which several groups had claimed that bone-forming cells (osteoblasts) exclusively support the expansion of blood-forming stem cells. "However, using a highly sophisticated molecular imaging approach, we show that regenerating blood-forming stem cells in the bone marrow are in intimate contact with the blood vessels, indicating that endothelial cells are the predominant regulator of stem cell repopulation in the adult bone marrow," states Dr. Daniel Nolan, a senior scientist in Dr. Rafii's lab and a co-author of the new study.

One other important concern addressed in this study was whether forced expansion of the stem cells over a long period of time would induce cancerous mutations in the stem cells. However, the authors of this study show that, even after one year, there was no indication of tumor formation, such as leukemias, when the expanded stem cells were transplanted back into mice. This suggests that the endothelial cells provide a milieu that proliferates stem cells without creating cancer risk.

The current breakthrough represents the culmination of many years of work by Dr. Rafii and his lab, including their research in converting adult mouse spermatogonial stem cells to endothelial cells (Nature, September 2007) and in deriving stable, copious endothelial cells from human embryonic stem cells (Nature Biotechnology, Jan. 17, 2010).

The ability to generate many stable endothelial cells from human embryonic stem cells leads to new research opportunities, according to Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, who is a co-author in this study and director and physician-in-chief of the Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine, as well as the director of the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative Derivation Unit at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Rosenwaks says, "Generation of endothelial cells derived from diseased embryonic stem cells that are being propagated in our Derivation Unit will open up new avenues of research to molecularly eavesdrop on the communication between vascular cells and stem cells. This innovative line of investigation -- to determine how normal and abnormal human vascular cells induce the formation of organs during development of embryos and how dysfunction of endothelial cells results in developmental defects -- will lay the foundation for novel platforms for therapeutic organ regeneration."

Dr. Rafii sees even more opportunities. "Identification of as yet unrecognized growth factors produced by human embryonic cell-derived endothelium and adult endothelial cells that support stem cell expansion and differentiation will establish a new arena in stem cell biology. We will be able to selectively activate endothelial cells not only to induce organ regeneration, but also to inhibit specifically the production of endothelial cell-derived factors in order to block the growth of tumors. Our findings are the first steps toward such goals and they highlight the potential of vascular cells for generating sufficient stem cells for therapeutic organ regeneration, tumor targeting, and gene therapy applications," concludes Dr. Rafii.

Co-authors include Daniel J. Nolan, Eva L. Vertes, Hideki Kobayashi, Andrea T. Hooper, Koji Shido, Ian A. White, Mariko Kobayashi, Yuki Kimura and Marco Seandel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Genetic Medicine and Ansary Stem Cell Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Zev Rosenwaks, Chad May and Larry Witte of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Carrie Shawber and Jan Kitajewski at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center; Barbara Varnum-Finney of ImClone Systems Incorporated; and Irwin D. Bernstein at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. The study received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Email or share this story:
| More

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Weill Cornell Medical College.

Journal Reference:

  1. Jason M. Butler, Daniel J. Nolan, Eva L. Vertes, Barbara Varnum-Finney, Hideki Kobayashi, Andrea T. Hooper, Marco Seandel, Koji Shido, Ian A. White, Mariko Kobayashi, Larry Witte, Chad May, Carrie Shawber, Yuki Kimura, Jan Kitajewski, Zev Rosenwaks, Irwin D. Bernstein, Shahin Rafii. Endothelial Cells Are Essential for the Self-Renewal and Repopulation of Notch-Dependent Hematopoietic Stem Cells. Cell Stem Cell, 2010; 6 (3): 251-264 DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2010.02.001
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)