Washington: A breed of cyber pranksters known as "hacktivists" appears to be on a campaign to embarrass the US government, but such types of attack are unlikely to breach the computer firewalls that protect important official secrets, independent analysts say. A loosely organised group of hackers called Lulz Security, little known outside of cybersecurity circles, has claimed attacks against the public websites of the CIA and SUS enate over the...
08:26 AM, Jun 17, 2011
London A national government is the most likely culprit in an apparent cyber attack on the International Monetary Fund, say experts, given the complexity of the assault and its targeting of the organisation's secrets. With the IMF leadership up for grabs as it mulls Eurozone bailouts and global financial reform, there are no shortage of states who might like to read its mail. Any confirmation of a country's involvement would...
07:53 AM, Jun 14, 2011
London: Even working on her laptop in Amnesty International's London headquarters or talking on her mobile phone going around the city, Corinna-Barbara Francis suspects Chinese authorities are listening in. At a time when authorities in Beijing are carrying out the most serious crackdown on dissent since Tiananmen Square, the human rights group's China researcher says she simply assumes all her electronic data is already compromised. Whether or not she is...
08:08 AM, Jun 13, 2011
Washington/London: A major cyber attack on the IMF aimed to steal sensitive insider information, a cyber security expert said on Sunday, as the race to lead the body which oversees global financial system heated up. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping to investigate the attack on the International Monetary Fund, the latest in a rash of cyber break-ins that have targeted high-profile companies and institutions. "The IMF attack...
07:52 AM, Jun 13, 2011
Madrid: Access to the website of Spain's national police force was blocked for over an hour late on Saturday in a reprisal attack by the hackers' group Anonymous, the newspaper El Mundo said on its website Sunday. El Mundo said the group had warned police in a statement that it planned to disable the website at some time Saturday. The website was down for at least an hour from 2130...
07:47 AM, Jun 13, 2011
New York: The International Monetary Fund, already reeling from last month's arrest of its former leader, is investigating an attack on its computer system. IMF spokesman David Hawley said the organization is fully functional. He declined to provide further details on what he termed an "IT incident," including its scope or nature and whether any sensitive data were taken. The IMF has confidential information on countries in financial trouble. The...
01:17 AM, Jun 13, 2011
Tokyo: Nintendo was targeted in a recent online data attack, but no personal or company information was lost, the Japanese maker of the Wii game console said Sunday. The server of an affiliate of Nintendo Co.'s US unit was accessed unlawfully a few weeks ago, but there was no damage, company spokesman Ken Toyoda said. "There were no third-party victims," Toyoda said, while declining to elaborate. "But it is a...
01:10 PM, Jun 06, 2011
London: Nearly 180 passwords belonging to members of an Atlanta-based FBI partner organisation have been stolen and leaked to the Internet, the group confirmed Sunday. The logins belonged to members of the local chapter of InfraGard, a public-private partnership devoted to sharing information about threats to US physical and Internet infrastructure, the chapter's president told The Associated Press. "Someone did compromise the website," InfraGard Atlanta Members Alliance President Paul Farley...
01:05 PM, Jun 06, 2011
Taipei: The recent high-profile hacking of Google's Gmail service and Sony's Playstation gaming network is threatening to slow the take-off of the next big thing in the computing space - the cloud. Computer companies will need to collaborate to work on addressing security issues to boost confidence in cloud computing, where data and software is stored on servers and accessed via the Internet, especially in the corporate space where the...
12:34 PM, Jun 04, 2011
Bangalore: Sony Pictures Entertainment confirmed late Friday evening that some of its websites were breached and it was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the attackers. Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony, said it had begun an internal investigation into the breach. On Thursday, a hacker group calling itself LulzSec said it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures Entertainment websites. The breach is the latest of...
12:10 PM, Jun 04, 2011
London: Another massive data breach at Sony has left hackers exulting, customers steaming and security experts questioning why basic fixes haven't been made to the company's stricken cybersecurity program. Hackers say they managed to steal a massive trove of personal information from Sony Pictures' website using a basic technique which they claim shows how poorly the company guards its users' secrets. Security experts agreed Friday, saying the company's security was...
09:02 AM, Jun 04, 2011
Boston: Hackers have again broken into Sony Corp's computer networks, this time claiming to have stolen customer data to show that the company's systems remain vulnerable to attack. That marked the latest setback for Sony, which discovered in April that hackers had stolen data from more than 100 million of its accounts. Nobody has claimed responsibility for that attack. The group LulzSec said on Thursday it broke into servers that...
09:19 AM, Jun 03, 2011
New York: This cyber attack didn't go after people playing war games on their PlayStations. It targeted a company that helps the US military do the real thing. Lockheed Martin says it was the recent target of a "significant and tenacious" hack, although the defence contractor and the Department of Homeland Security insist the attack was thwarted before any critical data was stolen. The effort highlighted the fact that some...
09:05 AM, May 30, 2011
Tokyo: Sony said it discovered a security breach affecting 8,500 user accounts in a music entertainment website in Greece that comes on the heels of a hacker attack which forced its flagship gaming site offline. Sony Corp. spokesman Shigenori Yoshida said Tuesday that personal data including names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses may have been stolen. Yoshida said no credit card numbers have been affected. Sony shut the Greece website...
09:49 AM, May 25, 2011
Los Angeles: Another unit of Sony Corp. has come under attack from hackers - this time a mobile Internet service provider in Japan called So-net Entertainment Corp. So-net says that someone gained improper access to user accounts and successfully used so-called "So-net points" to obtain goods worth about $1,225. It said it discovered the activity late Wednesday after customer complaints and cut off the Internet Protocol address behind about 10,000...
10:46 AM, May 21, 2011
Paris: Hackers are increasingly aiming attacks at smartphones, touching off a race among software giants, start-ups and telecom operators seeking to cash in on ways to help consumers protect themselves. As the previously fragmented smartphone market coalesces around big operating systems like Apple's iPhone and Google's Android, it has become a more attractive target for hackers seeking to maximize damage with one hit. That's creating a big business opportunity for...
04:35 PM, May 18, 2011
New Delhi: Cybercriminals are like terrorists. They prefer to target the most high profile and frequented places. And Facebook is the currently the hottest and happening destination in the online world. While Facebook on its part is implementing new security measures to keep you safe online, the real responsibility lies with the user. Here are some tips to keep your Facebooking experience safe: 1. Be a sceptic. Doubt the authenticity...
04:07 PM, May 16, 2011
Bangalore: Facebook users' personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, according to Symantec Corp's official web blog. Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, Symantec's web blog said. "We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,"...
08:11 AM, May 11, 2011
Helsinki: The first PlayStation phone, Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play, is not affected by the massive data breach of PlayStation user accounts, the phone maker said on Thursday. Late in April Sony Corp warned that hackers had stolen names, addresses and possibly credit card details from almost 80 million users of its PlayStation online network, in one of the largest ever Internet security breaches. A Sony Ericsson spokesman said the problems...
07:19 AM, May 06, 2011
New York: Sony is looking to its insurers to help pay for its massive data breach, an amount that one expert estimates could exceed $2 billion, but others said insurers may balk at ponying up that kind of money. "We have a variety of types of insurance that cover damages. Certain carriers have been put on notice," Sony Corp spokesman Dan Race told Reuters. Race declined to name the insurers...
07:15 AM, May 06, 2011
