Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
August 5th
I received a message via facebook messenger in my johnwilhelmisaphotoholic-fb-page inbox. A man introducing himself as Adam Torres told me he would like to buy my fb page. I clearly remember how I was laughing about it with my wife (who is actually my girlfriend but it confuses people all the time to have 4 kids with a girlfriend so I call her my wife) and how I wrote him back that I was not interested in money.
For one reason or the other, all of us delete plenty of photos from our phones while choosing the keepers. If you have an iPhone X, your “deleted” images are not entirely gone. As a result – they may be accessible to hackers. Two researchers have recently found a vulnerability that could let hackers access your images, even if you previously deleted them.
Sony shooters, if you use a Mac, there’s a rather concerning issue regarding the Sony firmware update application. First highlighted by software expert Lloyd Chambers back in October 2017, Sony’s updater essentially forces you to give it root access to your system. This could potentially pose your entire system and data it contains at risk.
I’m not 100% sure on how big a deal this one is yet. From a security standpoint, it’s absolutely huge. But from a more real-world impact perspective, it possibly isn’t going to be a huge issue. In theory, root access means the software could do anything it likes to your computer. Install keyloggers or malware, for example. Not that Sony would do that, but who’s to say that somebody won’t compromise their software?
Social media is a wonderful thing. It allows us to instantly connect with an audience of hundreds of millions of people. But it also means that when a bug shows up, it potentially affects hundreds of millions of people, too. And that appears to be what’s happened with a recent issue on Instagram.
Last week, The Verge reported that hackers exploited a bug on Instagram to get the private phone numbers and email addresses of a number of celebrities. Now they say the hack affects millions of Instagram users. And that their private data is now up for sale. Instagram have fixed the bug, but one can’t undo what’s been done.
If you own a Flickr account you should probably change your password the minute you read this post. Yahoo says that the data breach occurred in late 2014 and “The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers“.
This does not mean that your Flickr password was necessarily stolen (and if it was, it is not that easy to un-hash hashed passwords), but you should probably change your password just to be safe. Especially if this user/password combo is used for more than Flickr.
You can read more about this breach on Yahoo’s FAQ.
[via cnn]
P.S. in case you are looking for an alternative, here are some self hosted options for you.
Initial reports stated Sony’s online store has the a7R listed for just $199.99 instead of $2,299.99, leading people to believe that someone had made a mistake.
A deeper look, however, reveals that several other products, including the a77II were listed for ridiculously low prices.
With so many product prices being slashed, it seems increasingly likely that a (very) disgruntled worker or a hacker attack is behind this.
The largest price reduction was on the 500mm f/4 telephoto lens which was advertised for just under $1,300 – a full $11,700 off its regular price!
Most of the prices have been corrected, while others are busy being fixed, but will Sony fulfill the orders that have already been placed? [Read More…]
Jan Krissler, a 31- year old hacker, has discovered a serious security breach that could affect millions of people. Krissler, who works under the pseudonym “Starbug” claims he can recreate a fingerprint using a few images taken with a “standard photo camera”.
Krissler told his audience during a presentation in front of the Chaos Computer Club (the largest hacker organization in Europe) that he had successfully duplicated the fingerprints of German defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen. Krissler explained that he pulled the hack off using a close up shot of von der Leven’s thumb along with a few other shots of the defense minister taken from different angles. He says he confirmed the replicated thumbprints to be accurate using popular fingerprinting software, VeriFinger.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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