London: Scotland Yard's cybercrime unit has arrested a teenager it suspects of working as the spokesman for the Lulz Security hacking collective, officials said Wednesday. The Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit arrested a 18-year-old at an address in Scotland's remote Shetland Islands, the force said in a statement. His name wasn't released, but police said he was believed to be "Topiary," one of LulzSec's most prominent members. Police originally gave...
09:16 AM, Jul 28, 2011
Boston: The computer hacking community is gearing up for its own version of the annual Oscars, with two notorious "hacktivist" groups and industry heavyweight WikiLeaks among those vying for the top award. Sony Corp and EMC Corp's RSA Security division will also be recognised at next week's award ceremony, for the dubious distinction of having fallen victim to hackers. While the Pwnies may be tongue-in-cheek, the awards represent a serious...
07:30 AM, Jul 27, 2011
London: Computer hackers broke into the website of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling British tabloid and altered the front page to show a fake report about the media mogul's death. The hackers redirected visitors to the Twitter feed of hacker group Lulz Security, which came to prominence after several cyber assaults on the websites of Sony Corp, the CIA, and News Corp's Fox TV. "We have owned Sun/News of the World," LulzSec...
07:22 AM, Jul 19, 2011
Washington: The US Defence Department unveiled a new strategy for protecting military computer networks from hackers on Thursday, designating cyberspace as an "operational domain" US forces will be trained to defend. US Deputy Defence Secretary William Lynn said the Pentagon wanted to avoid militarising cyberspace, but aimed to secure strategic networks with the threat of retaliation, as well as by mounting a more robust defence. "Our strategy's overriding emphasis is...
10:59 AM, Jul 15, 2011
Boston: The fast-growing microblogging site Twitter has fallen behind some other Internet services in introducing tools to help secure the accounts of users, security experts say. Weaknesses in Twitter's security became apparent on the US July 4 Independence holiday as an unknown hacker took control of a Fox News Twitter account and sent out messages falsely claiming that US President Barack Obama was dead. While the hijacking of Twitter accounts...
07:31 AM, Jul 08, 2011
Boston: Hackers seized control of a PayPal Twitter feed for more than an hour on Tuesday, then sent out messages criticising the payment processor in the second attack of its type in two days. The hijacking of the PayPalUK Twitter feed came a day after hackers took control of a Fox News feed for more than five hours, then sent false tweets saying that US President Barack Obama had been...
07:38 AM, Jul 06, 2011
Washington: The Secret Service said Monday it will investigate the hacking of Fox's political Twitter account over updates claiming that President Barack Obama had been assassinated. Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie says the law enforcement agency whose job it is to protect the president will conduct a probe of the false postings and that "we will conduct the appropriate follow up." Hackers broke into the FoxNewsPolitics account early Monday, leaving...
08:03 AM, Jul 05, 2011
San Francisco: The Internet vigilante hacker group Anonymous claimed to have broken into an Apple Inc server and published a small number of usernames and passwords for one of the US technology company's websites. Anonymous said on Sunday via its account on microblogging site Twitter that Apple could be a target for hackers and released the data as part of its Anti Security, or "AntiSec," campaign. "Not being so serious,...
07:38 AM, Jul 05, 2011
Viena: Cyber criminals are outwitting national and international legal systems that fail to embrace technological advances, a top US official said on Friday, demanding a cross-border campaign to combat the security threat. "Most countries don't even have a legal framework that really governs cyber. It is such a new phenomenon in that regard so the legal systems - both domestic and international - have not kept pace with the technological...
09:08 AM, Jul 02, 2011
Boston: Google Inc brags that computers running its recently released Chrome operating system are a lot safer than traditional PCs, partly because user data is stored in the Internet cloud and not on the machine. Yet researchers at an independent computer security firm warn that the Chrome PC's reliance on Web computing makes it vulnerable to the same attacks that hackers have been launching on websites and Web browsers for...
07:49 AM, Jun 30, 2011
New York: Groupon Inc's Indian subsidiary SoSasta inadvertently published its users' passwords on the Internet, but the sensitive information was quickly removed after the security breach was discovered last week. The world's largest daily deals site said an "information security expert" told the company about the problem Friday morning Indian time, or Thursday night central US time, after which it immediately took down the data and began informing affected subscribers....
07:51 AM, Jun 29, 2011
New York: The Lulz Security group of rogue hackers announced it was disbanding on Saturday with one last data dump, which included internal AOL Inc and AT&T documents. LulzSec, which gained wide recognition for breaching the websites of Sony Corp, the CIA and a British police unit among other targets, said in a statement that it had accomplished its mission to disrupt corporate and government bodies for entertainment. "Our planned...
08:02 AM, Jun 27, 2011
New Delhi: Facebook has become a hot target for online scamsters. The latest Facebook scam doing the round on the world's largest social networking site is in the form of a Facebook wall post with the title "The beautiful Marika Fruscio shows her breasts on Italian TV!" and some variations of the text. The post is accompanied with an image of the Italian adult model and television personality. "The beautiful...
11:45 AM, Jun 24, 2011
New York: Here is a timeline of some attacks claimed by hacking group LulzSec since early May. The group knocks websites offline by overwhelming them with Internet traffic in what are known as denial of service attacks. LulzSec also uses a variety of hacking attacks to break into computer networks and steal data. May 7 - Fox's "X Factor" contestant database breached May 10 - Fox.com sales database hacked and...
12:55 PM, Jun 23, 2011
London: The rogue hackers behind brazen cyber attacks are clever online technicians but have a critical human frailty - petulant personalities prone to infighting that may spell disaster for their raids on spies, banks and companies. At least that's the hope among state cyber sleuths racing to track down the Lulz Security (LulzSec) hackers responsible for a wave of attacks on Western governments and multinational companies. Britain arrested a 19-year-old...
12:52 PM, Jun 23, 2011
New York: The recent spate of cyber attacks have raised questions about the security of government and corporate computer systems, and the ability of law enforcement to track down hackers. Here's a breakdown of the different types of cyber assaults, from "hactivists" to serious criminals. DISSIDENT HACKERS SEEKING MAXIMUM PUBLICITY The Lulz Security and Anonymous groups have broken into computer servers to steal data that they publish on the Internet...
12:26 PM, Jun 23, 2011
Washington: Police in the United States and seven other countries seized computers and servers used to run a "scareware" scheme that has netted more than $72 million from victims tricked into buying fake anti-virus software. Twenty-two computers and servers were seized in the United States and 25 others in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the US Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday....
12:23 PM, Jun 23, 2011
Tokyo: Japanese video game developer Sega Corp said on Sunday that information belonging to 1.3 million customers has been stolen from its database, the latest in a rash of global cyber attacks against video game companies. Names, birth dates, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords of users of Sega Pass online network members had been compromised, Sega said in a statement, though payment data such as credit card numbers was safe....
06:43 AM, Jun 20, 2011
Boston: Professional hacker Nicholas Percoco received an unusual request from a major financial institution this week: How can you help us avoid becoming the next Citigroup Inc? Amid a wave of cyber attacks on Citi, the International Monetary Fund and other institutions, Percoco and his team at security firm Trustwave Holdings Inc are fielding more and more calls from banks wanting to stress-test their online defences. Trustwave is increasingly being...
09:47 AM, Jun 18, 2011
Washington: The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans, as a recent wave of cyber attacks boosts concerns about US vulnerability to digital warfare. The twin efforts show how President Barack Obama's administration is racing on multiple fronts to plug the holes...
09:39 AM, Jun 18, 2011
