Have you ever wondered about the exact processes and steps that security researchers and computer hackers take to gain access to a target computer or device? If that particular area of computer science is of interest to you, then you may take a particular interest in a new five-minute hacking lesson that shows George Hotz walking and talking through the necessary steps involved in gaining access to a laptop connected to a Wi-Fi network.

The modern day Internet world faces its biggest challenge right now, and users are affected with it – the data security nightmare. Every now and then, successful hackers manage to break through the security measures of a renowned database, exposing along the way the online identities of hundreds of thousands of users of these services. While the targeted companies manage to recover from these attacks over the course of time, users aren’t always so lucky, where most of them are often left wondering whether their critical info was a part of the leak or not. This is where Australian software architect Troy Hunt’s new project comes in.

Hacking, as we’ve seen on many occasions, can be used for good as well as evil, or at least unscrupulous ends, but a new game for iOS by the name of 868-HACK plays down the wider issues by letting you have fun and essentially become a computer geek yourself. Of course, since it’s made purely for entertainment, there’s nothing amiss (although one suspects some App Store browsers may be initially off-put), and once you get into it, there’s much fun to be had.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI employs a secret tactic in its quest to keep up to speed on suspects: a hacker-like feature that allows the Bureau to remotely activate the microphone of any laptop or an Android smartphone. From there, the FBI can listen in on activity without the knowledge of the device’s owner.

As news of the notorious hacking group, Lulz Security (or LulzSec to their friends) disbanding was spreading like wildfire across the blogosphere, the group released one final data dump as a parting gift.

The eccentric group of six anonymous hackers who collectively go by the name of LulzSecurity (or just LulzSec) have announced that they are ending their journey of lulz today.

According to Craig Fox, organizer of MyGreatFest, a London-based iPhone-related event, a jailbreak for the iPhone 5 might be released when once the event kicks off, on September 17th, if the new device is indeed released in August, as we reported yesterday.

An interesting little tidbit coming out of Microsoft today, with news that the Redmond outfit has offered a job to a young Irish boy who came to their attention though a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 phishing scam.

It seems not a single day goes by without there being more ‘Geohot Vs Sony’ lawsuit news these days, and here’s the latest. According to Wired, Geohot (or George Hotz to his Mother) has been ordered to provide Sony with his computer’s hard drive by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.

With Chronic Dev Team releasing GreenPois0n RC5 yesterday much was made of the inclusion of the option to add a custom animated boot logo. That’s all well and dandy, other than the fact it doesn’t entirely work.

It’s nothing new that the much-loved HTC HD2 can be hacked in order to install either Android or Windows Phone 7, but how about dual-booting?

This year’s Pwn2Own contest will play host to a new world of mobile phone hacking when security researcher Ralf-Philip Weinmann shares a new way of hacking a cellular device, writes ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez.