Hard disks: if you read this, it's pretty much certain you use one or more of the things. They're pretty simple: they basically present a bunch of 512-byte sectors, numbered by an increasing address, also known as the LBA or Logical Block Address. The PC the HD is connected to can read or write data to and from these sectors. Usually, a file system is used that abstracts all those sectors to files and folders.

If you look at an HD from that naive standpoint, you would think the hardware should be pretty simple: all you need is something that connects to a SATA-port which can then position the read/write-head and read or write data from or to the platters. But maybe more is involved: don't hard disks also handle bad block management and SMART attributes, and don't they usually have some cache they must somehow manage?

All that implies there's some intelligence in an hard disk, and intelligence usually implies hackability.

Online games, such as MMORPG's, are the most complex multi-user applications ever created. The security problems that plague these games are universal to all distributed software systems. Online virtual worlds are eventually going to replace the web as the dominant social space on the 'Net, as Facebook apps have shown, and this is big business. MMORPG game security is something that is very important to game studios and players, yet bots and exploits continue to infest all major

During Defcon 22, @ErrataRob, @paulm and @Viss (mass)scanned the Internet and presented some Tips, Tricks and Results. Lots of people confronted @Viss after he posted some VNC screenshots on his Twitter timeline. He posted a follow-up article on his blog and Kashmir Hill, from Forbes, wrote an article about the exposed VNC services.

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One of the leading problems in cyber security today is the emergence
of targeted attacks conducted by adversaries with access to
sophisticated tools, sometimes referred to as Advanced Persistent
Threats (APTs). These attacks target specific organisations or
individuals and aim at establishing a continuous and undetected
presence in the targeted infrastructure. The goal of these attacks
is often espionage: stealing valuable intellectual property and
confidential documents