Impressed: it has been years since I've been hacked this well :(

[David Bovill]

On 15/06/07, Scott Kane <scott at cdroo.com> wrote:

> Thing with "hackers", in my own experience with them (and curse the media
> for disassociating the name "Hacker" from those it belonged to originally
> -
> programmers, the former should be called "crackers" or in most cases
> "script
> kiddies) is so many of them are full of bull dust.


Absolutely. A couple of years ago I did an arts residency, based on a group
of so called "hackers" in Vienna. The project was based on a complete
download of the NSA's email archive on Biometric Security - "Datamining the
NSA" will still bring up a few hits :) This list will be pleased to know
that I used Revolution extensively in this project - as a front end to WEKA
and for visualisation of the datamining.

Further - most of the "real"
> hackers aren't into Joe Sixpack's computer - there are far more worthwhile
> targets wiating out there with surprisingly poor security.


Hey - are you calling me Joe Sixpack? I tell you what - I am going to get my
hacker mate onto you...

If I was really worried I might beef up my defences with a software firewall
> (or beef up the one you already have if you are using OSX or *nix),


Thinking of putting the Nix based firewall back up Iits on an old PC) - but
I would have thought  the one in the NetGear router would be fine.

encrypt
> any stored passwords or credit card numbers,


Done luckily!

consider getting a credit card
> with a security code, consider (if you do online banking) getting a
> security
> widget.  I have a little electronic number generator that voids previous
> numbers after they are entered into my banks web server - they are issued
> by
> some banks.  Thus you can't get into my account using just my account
> number
> and pin/password.  You need the little gizmo (fits on your keychain) to
> get
> in.  Not 100% hack-proof as a brute force attack might yeild entry - but
> then *nothing* is truly 100% hack proof.  ;-)


Didn't know about them - will check them out - but I guess it needs a bank
to offer the backend?

I'm going to have to wait until I get a clean machine / CD and then scan
everything for malware - then Ill get up an extra nix firewall - and get
some advice on how to set it up from a professional - well hacker that i
trust. Lesson 3: real hackers are your friends.