You've heard of black hat hackers and white hat hackers, but what about leather hat hackers? Meet the first: Kyle Williams. This creative genius has built the ultimate network hacking PC, the "Janus Project," which can focus its eight WiFi cards to break your standard WEP encryption in under five minutes. Beyond that, it can sniff 300 WiFi networks simultaneously, store and continuously encrypt all the data with AES 256-bit keys. In addition, the Janus Project has an instant off switch, which requires a USB key that has a 2000-bit passkey and a separate password to regain access. What's under the hood? Williams packed an Ubuntu Linux machine running on a 1.5GHz VIA C7 processor with an Acer 17-inch screen into that snazzy little rugged yellow box. Oh, and the closed case is waterproof too, in case you need to transport Janus Project on a whitewater raft to your next hacking hotspot. We don't doubt someone will.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Security minded Immunity corp is developing a wireless handheld device dubbed Silica, meant to help security professionals conduct mobile penetration, or pen, tests on the sly. The device is fitted with Bluetooth and WiFi and comes pre-loaded with hundreds of automated exploits to simulate a malicious attack. So instead of conspicuously setting up shop with a laptop and cantenna, the (hopefully) white hat hacker just slips the Silica into a pocket to scan every WiFi and Bluetooth device while strolling about the office, campus, or city streets. The device will then download "items of interest" from penetrated systems before connecting 'em to an external listening post -- good times! Immunity is currently beta testing Silica with hopes of launching the device for right around $3,000 in October... and then shortly thereafter on eBay. Let the warpenning begin!

Usually the term "hacking" has some rather negative connotations, so it almost seems counterintuitive to pay someone good money for breaking into your system, but that's exactly what HP is offering to do for its corporate customers with a new service called HP Active Countermeasures, or HPAC. As you'd imagine, HP's hackers won't do anything malicious once they break into a client's server -- propagating a worm, for instance, would seem to be bad for business -- but they will use a combination of buffer, heap, and stack overflows to exploit a system in much the same way that black hatters cause Internet terror on a daily basis. Specifically, the company will employ one of its own servers to launch attacks using eight to ten scanning clients for every 250,000 devices that are part of the program, and offer customers a temporary patch until they're able to hire a dedicated security firm for shoring up any vulnerabilities. Pricing is promised to be "aggressive," with firms using less than 20,000 IP addresses expected to pay only a few dollars per user per year for the privilege of learning how shoddy their security really is.

[Via The Inquirer]