Update on what happened yesterday with this in case anyone would like to know.  There was a protest in multiple places around the world heres a link to a blog post about what happened:

http://www.bandergrove.com/?p=4

Check this link out http://www.renderlab.net/projects/wrt54g/kiswin.html

Let me know if it works because I have not had the chance to try it out myself yet.

Check this out http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology

Yeah obviously I don't think it was a great idea to do the DOS and I don't know all the facts about Scientology I'm just interested to see if random people on the internet can actaully put something like this together without leaders and what not. 

HAHA yeah they might be looking for some now.  However from everything I looked up about Anonymous they seem to be done with the DOS and are moving on to other phases of their attack e.g. prank calls, IRL protests and other things.  I am very interested to see how this all plays out.  Obviously its not very ethical to DOS a website but I am interested to see if these people who all met online and have no leaders can actually have a successful protest and or be noticed.  I have never heard of anything like this before...  This site isn't working now but I'll post a link to their "plan" when I can later. 

I found this video on you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fencyclopediadramatica%2Ecom%2FMain_Page

A hacking ground named "Anonymous" did a DDOS attack on Scientology's website and that video is a declaration of their attack.  I just wanted to know what you all think of this and if anyone knows about this group.  You can find some more info about them at the following link:

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Anonymous

Edit:

I also found out that there is a world wide protest of Scientology on 2-10-08 and this group even made a set of rules for people that are going to protest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-063clxiB8I

This is all too weird...

If their using a private key to encrypt something all they are doing is verifying that the data came from them thus protecting the data's integrity much like a digital signature.  This is due to that fact that anyone with the public key, which is everyone since its public, can decrypt it.  This does not work and makes no sense at all if their trying to protect the confidentiality of the data in order to prevent people from playing the games or w/e. 

I could be thinking about what they are using the key for wrong but thats the way asymmetric cryptography works.  If you use your private key to decrypt something you'r not actaully hiding anything because anyone can decrypt it.  Thats all I'm trying to say.

You have the first part right but using the if I wanted to send you a message I would use your public key to encrypt it not my own private key.  If I use my own private key anyone in the world would be able to decrypt it via my public key.  On the other hand if I used the recipient of the message's public key to encrypt only the person with his private key can encrypt (which is hopefully them).

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography to brush up on your public key cryptography 


If this is true its the stupidest way of doing things ever.

Wouldn't the public key be used to encrypt things as opposed to decrypt?

Yeah theres nothing wrong with them raising the price, they are a business.  I was just surprised when I saw it went up that much in about a weeks time, plus they took away a lot of the option and things that you had to choose from. 

But w/e, I just passed my security+ so this is the next cert I'm looking to get.  I honestly can't wait.

I don't really know what I think about selling exploits since there are strong cases for and against it.  But I came across  a website a while back that you can literally bid on exploits basically like eBay.  Check out the link below:

http://www.wslabi.com

Like don said his example was not the first time something like this happened.  While the site seems to have ethical intentions this could potentially be dangerous.  All in all I don't think selling exploits to someone based on the fact that they say it will be used ethically is as simple as it sounds.  It seems to me that providing someone who has not verified their identity to you is not necessarily unethical but goes against common sense.

Yeah well thats almost a 75% increase from what the price was before... kinda sucks for the poor college kids like me.  Do you guys still think its worth the price?

Does anyone know why the course is 550 now instead of 350 like it was before?

So basically people just get away with this type of behavior?  I have seen articles talking about how botnets were shut down but they never mentioned anyone getting in trouble (that I noticed).   

It seems that if they have the power to just DoS anyone who is looking into their activity they are untouchable.  If someone is an expert at running a botnet is their activity basically untraceable?

If someone found a bot on their computer would it be possible to reverse engineer the code and add your own features to it that would allow you to gather information about the bot herder?

You should check out BackTrack's forum and post your hardware problems on there.  I think they want some feedback from the community with problems such as the ones you are having. 

I had a problem loading the CD version in virtual box so I guess I'll have to burn it to a CD since my USB drive is only 512mb .