Tag Archives | hackers

FBI Escalates War On Anonymous

By on April 27, 2012 in News 5

Here’s what happens when you proclaim yourself to be the representative of the Anonymous meme. Buzzfeed reports:

Last month, the FBI raided the Dallas home of Barrett Brown, the journalist and unofficial spokesperson for the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous. The Feds seized Brown’s computer and cellphone, searched his parent’s home as well, and demanded his Twitter records, chat logs, IRC conversations, Pastebin info, [and] all his Internet browsing activity. The warrant suggests the government is primarily after information related to Anonymous and the hacking group Lulzec.

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Atari Teenage Riot Donates Money From Sony To Hacker Group

By on March 10, 2012 in News 34

Musically suspect Atari Teenage Riot sets a nice example. Here’s how to maintain your credibility when corporations knock on your door — accept their money and give it away to their most hated enemies. Pitchfork reports:

Alec Empire, frontman of the German electropunk group Atari Teenage Riot, has handed a large sum earned from Sony Entertainment off to FreeAnons, which is part of the pro-hacker Anonymous Solidarity Network [and] offers financial support to individuals facing legal trouble for alleged work with the Anonymous hacker group.

The money came from licensing the song “Black Flags” for use in a commercial for the PlayStation Vita console. It’s a particularly humorous move considering that Anonymous has in the past been in direct conflict with Sony.

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Fox News Twitter Account Gets Hacked Announcing President Obama’s Assassination

By on July 5, 2011 in News 4

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With instant access to knowledge via technology, it’s easy to get the wrong news. While some  hackers may expose a private tweet or e-mail, others create fake news, like the assassination of the American president. Los Angeles Times reports:

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner falsely said his Twitter account was hacked just before Memorial Day weekend. But over the holiday weekend, it looks like real hackers attacked the @foxnewspolitics verified account, one of several Twitter accounts run by FoxNews.com.

A group calling itself “ScriptKiddies” claimed responsibility for the hack and also declared it has ties to the international hacker collective Anonymous.

The Tweets began appearing just after 2 a.m. ET on Monday, July 4, an hour and date likely calculated to maximize the time the Tweets were up before the account owner noticed or could do anything about it. The fake messages announced the assassination of President Obama during a visit to Iowa, but there were no links to news reports on the incident.

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LulzSec ‘Takes Down’ CIA Website

By on June 16, 2011 in News 7

somehwat-mad-completely-mad-u-mad-MADADVia BBC News:

The hacker group Lulz Security has claimed it has brought down the public-facing website of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The alleged attack on CIA.gov occurred on the same day the group opened a telephone request line so its fans could suggest potential targets.

On its Twitter feed, the group wrote: “Tango down – cia.gov – for the lulz”.

The CIA website was inaccessible at times on Wednesday but appeared to be back up on Thursday.

It was unclear if the outage was due to the group’s efforts or to the large number of internet users trying to check the site.

The CIA would not confirm if it had been the victim of an attack. In a statement, a spokesperson told BBC News: “The CIA’s public web site experienced technical issues that caused it to respond slowly for a short time yesterday evening. Those issues are now resolved.”

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Anonymous May Day Attack On Iran

By on May 1, 2011 in News 16

Anonymous is bombing Iran — with code — in a May Day attack started today at 0500 GMT.

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From CNN:

The Internet hackers group Anonymous plans to hack Iran on Sunday, according to a press release published on their website. The group wants to use International Workers’ Day, which commemorates the first national general strike in the United States, as an opportunity to reignite last year’s protests in Iran.

Exactly how they intend to “attack” Iran remains to be seen. The sophistication of their previous attacks ranges from the denial-of-service overloading of web servers (this simply knocks a website out) to the exploitation of code and accessing of private data (more like the hacking seen in the movies).

The announcement follows news from the Bahrain News Agency that Iranian hackers had tried to access the Housing Ministry’s database regarding those who benefit from the housing services…

[continues at CNN]… Read the rest

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Russian Jailed For Hacking Highway Sign With Porn

By on March 28, 2011 in News 22

porn-in-moscowYahoo News reports:

MOSCOW (AFP) – A Moscow court jailed a Russian hacker for 18 months after he altered an electronic advertising billboard so that it screened a pornographic video, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday.

Hacker Igor Blinnikov stopped traffic in January last year by breaking into a computer system and screening a graphic sex video for around 10 minutes on a video billboard beside a busy highway in central Moscow in the late evening.

Blinnikov, who comes from the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk, was found guilty late Wednesday of illegally gaining access to information on a computer and distributing pornographic materials.

He called the video prank on Moscow’s Garden Ring highway a “joke that went wrong”…

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Sony Banning PlayStation 3 Hackers For Life

By on February 25, 2011 in News 15

250px-PS3VersionsCNET reports:

Sony came down hard on PlayStation 3 hackers today, saying they will be permanently banned from the company’s online services.

“Violation of the system software license agreement for the PlayStation 3 System invalidates the consumer guarantee for that system,” reads a notice posted to Sony’s official PlayStation blog. “In addition, copying or playing pirated software is a violation of international copyright laws. Consumers using circumvention devices or running unauthorized or pirated software will have access to the PlayStation Network and access to Qriocity services through PlayStation 3 system terminated permanently.”

To avoid the lifetime shutout, Sony said, consumers must “immediately cease use and remove all circumvention devices and delete all unauthorized or pirated software from their PlayStation 3 systems.”

In the post, Social Media Manager Jeff Rubenstein said the policy represents an initial response to questions from PlayStation.Blog readers about how Sony plans to deal with breaches of its policy.

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‘Anonymous’ Hackers Hit U.S. Security Firm

By on February 7, 2011 in News 9

anonymousBBC News reports:

Online activist group Anonymous has targeted an American security firm that claimed to know the identities of its leaders.

The secretive organisation is being investigated in several countries over strikes on Visa, PayPal and others.

Over the weekend Aaron Barr, head of HBGary Federal, said he had discovered the names of its most senior figures.

The group retaliated overnight by breaking into the company’s website and hijacking his Twitter account.

Anonymous, known for being a loosely-knit group, has been involved in a number of high profile online protests and attacks in recent months.

In December, the group launched a campaign in support of Wikileaks that disrupted services at MasterCard, Visa and other companies that had withdrawn support the whistle-blowing website.

The strike led to police investigations around the world, and a number of arrests in Britain and the Netherlands.

Although the individuals who make up the collective claim they do not have a traditional hierarchy, Mr Barr told the Financial Times that he had infiltrated the organisation and uncovered the names and addresses of several senior figures…

For more information, see original article.… Read the rest

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Albert Gonzalez: America’s Top Hacker?

By on November 13, 2010 in News 4

NYT MagThe New York Times Magazine devotes its cover and many, many column inches to a profile of the man Times’ writer James Verini describes as “America’s most notorious computer hacker”:

One night in July 2003, a little before midnight, a plainclothes N.Y.P.D. detective, investigating a series of car thefts in upper Manhattan, followed a suspicious-looking young man with long, stringy hair and a nose ring into the A.T.M. lobby of a bank. Pretending to use one of the machines, the detective watched as the man pulled a debit card from his pocket and withdrew hundreds of dollars in cash. Then he pulled out another card and did the same thing. Then another, and another. The guy wasn’t stealing cars, but the detective figured he was stealing something.

Indeed, the young man was in the act of “cashing out,” as he would later admit. He had programmed a stack of blank debit cards with stolen card numbers and was withdrawing as much cash as he could from each account.

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Your Credit Card Data Is Worth $1.50

By on September 22, 2010 in News 4

JJ Sutherland discovers that his precious credit card info isn’t so precious after all, writing for NPR:

If you’re like me, you’re slightly paranoid about your credit card data. You’ve taken all the precautions, checked your statements frequently for fraudulent spending, carefully hidden them in a ‘top-secret’ shoe compartment. What, wait, you don’t do that?

Well, your precious data that you protect so diligently is worth, wait for it, $1.50. That’s because, well, all those security precautions you take don’t really do that much, especially against trojans and hackers who you probably don’t do enough to defend against. There are so many stolen credit cards that they come cheap.

logoBrian Krebs found all this out by creating an account on one site that sells credit card data rock3d.cc.

The trouble is, the minute you seek to narrow your search using the built-in tools, the site starts adding all these extra convenience fees (sound familiar?).

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