Cell phone battery catches fire, burns hacker's tail at Defcon

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Freak incident leads to cell phone battery lighting a real fire under a man's backside. Hotel room key-card saves him.<br />LAS VEGAS -- A cell phone battery spontaneously caught <span class="text_exposed_show">fire today, burned through a Defcon attendee's back pants pocket, and fell on the floor, creating burn spots on a carpet and leaving a burn-hole in the attendee's chair.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWyvrR_ZuZPd2R4Y-K43nn8bwxJIszEnAqp3tPaG03LVLrf9cYdLjSAZthyphenhyphenJ6xJdwmUFkYkNzD5rSbFx37vQKg4EoVPTd-jPIZW3lDo6DUI5WD4oZkJ1k8ptr-7mY9EcS-B3_oVGXAbvO/s1600/531282_434147693303969_515993893_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWyvrR_ZuZPd2R4Y-K43nn8bwxJIszEnAqp3tPaG03LVLrf9cYdLjSAZthyphenhyphenJ6xJdwmUFkYkNzD5rSbFx37vQKg4EoVPTd-jPIZW3lDo6DUI5WD4oZkJ1k8ptr-7mY9EcS-B3_oVGXAbvO/s320/531282_434147693303969_515993893_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> The man, who asked not to be identified, was not harmed but his trousers were ruined. He told CNET that he was sitting in a session at Defcon around 11:30 a.m. PT when he started to smell something burning and felt some heat underneath him on his seat. He stood up to find that his back left pocket was on fire.<br /> <br /> "I smelled the burn, the smoke, and I stood up and could literally see flames," he said. "I tried to tap it out (with a hand) and it fell to the floor. It burned right through the backside."<br /> <br /> The battery, which he said goes with a Droid Bionic smartphone that was not in the pocket, was still burning on the ground. He kicked it and it rolled and burned another spot into the carpet. He then left the room to get help as people around him began taking photos.<br /> <br /> His derriere probably would have been scorched as well if he hadn't had his plastic hotel room key-card in between him and the battery. "My hotel key saved my butt," he said, laughing.<br /> <br /> A woman who was taking video of the event for Defcon was seated on a platform about 20 feet away and had a good view of what happened. "I saw something glowing out of the corner of my eye," she said. "A guy's butt was in flames."<br /> <br /> The rest of the session was canceled and the room was evacuated. The man said he had nothing else in his pocket but the battery and the hotel card key, and that he had no idea why the battery would have started to heat up.</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRb5z59P_rkQP-WzXW-JyfkojbAR10s14mCswB46eoIYpUbRfmcQ705TWLilO_RTqTNGcMfb-cf1Z9DYjmiT0L9A7PVT24w8XkQJvNhdPgOhkTWYMKCcn9itonWG3vCSICJ4JjROiZ1IpS/s1600/524235_434148063303932_619332051_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRb5z59P_rkQP-WzXW-JyfkojbAR10s14mCswB46eoIYpUbRfmcQ705TWLilO_RTqTNGcMfb-cf1Z9DYjmiT0L9A7PVT24w8XkQJvNhdPgOhkTWYMKCcn9itonWG3vCSICJ4JjROiZ1IpS/s320/524235_434148063303932_619332051_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> <br /> CNET did not see the phone and was unable to confirm its make and model.<br /> <br /> A Motorola representative provided this statement when asked for comment: "Motorola Mobility's priority is the safety of our customers. All Motorola products are designed, manufactured, and tested to meet or exceed international and local standards for consumer safety and performance. We will will look into this matter immediately."<br /> <br /> The cause of the overheating remains a mystery.<br /> <br /> Don Bailey, a mobile expert at Capitol Hill Consultants, said batteries can heat up if the metal leads touch something conductive. "Something as simple as steel wool can cause a short between the leads on a cell phone battery," he said.<br /> <br /> It could been a bad battery, or the man could have damaged the battery somehow. But if there was no metal in the pocket at the time, it's likely the culprit was some conductive material, such as steel wool from a brush used to clean metal, that had somehow worked its way into the fibers of his pocket, Bailey said. "It's rare for manufactured batteries like these to have that kind of a failure."</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></div><a class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" href="https://twitter.com/thehackersmedia">Follow @thehackersmedia</a><script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); </script></div>

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Cell phone battery catches fire, burns hacker's tail at Defcon

Freak incident leads to cell phone battery lighting a real fire under a man's backside. Hotel room key-card saves him.LAS VEGAS -- A cell phone battery spontaneously caught fire today, burned through …

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8.7 million mobile customers hacked in South Korea

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />SEOUL — South Korean police have arrested two hackers who stole personal data of 8.7 million customers of the nation’s second-biggest mobile operator, the company said.<br /><br />KT said the hackers — formally arrested on Sunday — had stolen data such as customers’ names, phone numbers and residential registration numbers for five months since February and sold the information to telemarketing firms.<br /><br />“The number of affected people account for nearly a half of about 17 million customers of ours,” a KT spokesman told AFP, adding the company had alerted police on July 13 after detecting traces of hacking attacks.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOfvVTzwACh4Gku1Gx8hPEGxO0Iti8DAOHDzF9sTaYP62xL-lkwvFxU7YSbJDlsgXohABr13wL4OctjKX8Nff8IY7ODivzrZsE5A559J4WD88VpGUuwe0YME2lttvP3JFm42GLGipY-jA/s1600/korian+mobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOfvVTzwACh4Gku1Gx8hPEGxO0Iti8DAOHDzF9sTaYP62xL-lkwvFxU7YSbJDlsgXohABr13wL4OctjKX8Nff8IY7ODivzrZsE5A559J4WD88VpGUuwe0YME2lttvP3JFm42GLGipY-jA/s320/korian+mobile.jpg" width="303" /></a></div><br />Yonhap news agency, citing police, said the duo — including a former veteran programmer at a local IT company — had earned at least 1 billion won (about $880,000) by selling the stolen data.<br /><br />Seven other people were also booked for buying the leaked data for telemarketing purposes, Yonhap said.<br /><br />“We deeply bow our head in apology for having your precious personal information leaked… we’ll try our best to make such things never happen again,” KT said in a statement to customers.<br /><br />Hacking attacks on major companies aimed to gain access to the personal data of their customers is a frequent occurence in South Korea, one of the world’s most-wired nations.<br /><br />Seoul authorities said in July last year hackers using an Internet address registered in China had gained access to South Korean major websites including web portal Nate.com and may have stolen the private data of 35 million users.<br /><br />In November 2011, Seoul’s top games developer Nexon saw personal information of 13 million users of its popular online game MapleStory stolen by hackers.<br /><br />In March 2010, authorities launched a probe into the security systems of major retailer Shinsegae and 24 other companies after private data on 20 million customers was leaked.<br /><br /></div><a class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" href="https://twitter.com/thehackersmedia">Follow @thehackersmedia</a><script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); </script></div>

8.7 million mobile customers hacked in South Korea

SEOUL — South Korean police have arrested two hackers who stole personal data of 8.7 million customers of the nation’s second-biggest mobile operator, the company said.KT said the hackers — formally a…

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