hacker

LulzSec hackers plead guilty to attacks on Sony, Nintendo, more

Three members of hacker group LulzSec have pleaded guilty in a British court to carrying out cyberattacks against various media and entertainment companies and the U.K. National Health Service, according to media reports.

Ryan Ackroyd, 26; Jake Davis, 20; and Mustafa al-Bassam, 18, today all pleaded guilty to a computer hacking-related charge at Southwark crown court in London. They will be sentenced May 14 along with Ryan Cleary, who pleaded guilty to cyberattacks last year.

Ackroyd, who went by the hacker name "Kayla," admitted to trying to hack into several Web sites, including Sony, Nintendo, News Corp.'… Read more

Anonymous targets Israel in another cyberattack

Anonymous claims that a cyberattack launched against Israeli government Web sites this weekend has caused billions of dollars of damage, although Israeli officials say there have been no major disruptions.

The group claimed it hacked more than a dozen official Israeli Web sites, including those for the Israel Police, the Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Securities Authority, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, and the Central Bureau of Statistics. The country's page for the Ministry of Defense was offline today as well, which Anonymous took credit for hacking in a tweet:

Anonymous Operation Israel | Target: DOWN | mod.gov.il | #Anonymous … Read more

'Syrian Electronic Army' hacks a BBC Twitter account

The Twitter account of the BBC weather service was hacked today, and hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army -- which supports Syrian President Bashar Assad -- is taking credit.

The BBC confirmed to Reuters that its account was hacked. The @bbcweather account was posting strange messages today, ranging in content but often mentioning Syria and Middle Eastern politics.

"Long Live #Syria Al-Assad #SEA," read one tweet. The group also claimed to have hacked @BBCarabicOnline and @Bbcradioulster as well. The BBC tweeted that the issue has been resolved.

The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed hacks before, including one on … Read more

Two charged in theft of $40K from hacked Subway keypads

Two California men have been indicted for allegedly hacking point-of-sale terminals at Subway shops to steal at least $40,000.

Prosecutors accused Shahin Abdollahi, aka "Sean Holdt," and Jeffrey Thomas Wilkinson of hacking at least 13 point-of-sale (POS) terminals to install software that fraudulently loaded at least $40,000 onto Subway gift cards, according to an indictment unsealed in Boston on Friday (see below). The pair then allegedly used the cards to make purchases at Subway shops and sold them on eBay and Craigslist.

Abdollahi owned a Subway franchise in Southern California from 2005 to 2008 and later … Read more

FBI investigating how sensitive celebrity data landed on Web

Some hacker or hackers has it out for a handful of celebrities, politicians, and law enforcement officials, including First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and pop singer Beyonce.

Collected onto one Web site -- called "The Secret Files" -- is a slew of financial and personal information on these public figures. The data is so sensitive that it has sparked investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday that the government agencies are looking into how www.exposed.su obtained the Social Security numbers, credit reports, telephone … Read more

Denial-of-service attack takes down JP Morgan Chase sites

The Web sites for banking giant JP Morgan Chase are offline this afternoon as the result of a distributed-denial-of-service attack, a representative told CNET.

The site's usual banking tools and content were replaced this afternoon with a message that said:

Our website is temporarily down, but our branches and Mobile Apps are available. Please try again later. The representative couldn't say how long the site had been down or how long it would be until service was resumed.

Hackers have ratcheted up their assaults on financial institutions in recent months, using DDoS attacks to take down Wells Fargo, … Read more

Oracle issues emergency Java update to patch vulnerabilities

In response to discovering that hackers were actively exploiting two vulnerabilities in Java running in Web browsers, Oracle has released an emergency patch that it says should deal with the problem.

"These vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., they may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password," Oracle wrote in a security alert today. "For an exploit to be successful, an unsuspecting user running an affected release in a browser must visit a malicious web page that leverages these vulnerabilities. Successful exploits can impact the availability, integrity, and … Read more

Dropbox users getting spammed, might be from earlier hack

It looks like Dropbox may be grappling with some leftover issues from hackers' access into the system last July.

Over the past 24 hours, users have been posting on the file-sharing site's forum, saying that they're being hit with spam e-mails sent to e-mail accounts used only for Dropbox.

"My Dropbox specific email has been receiving spam since the 20th of February," Daniel B. wrote today. Richard F. wrote, "I have an internal to my company email address that I used for Dropbox only and I am getting the same fake paypal scam emails. This … Read more

China blames U.S. for most cyberattacks against military Web sites

China has accused the U.S. for most of the cyberattacks launched against its military networks.

In a statement released today, China's Ministry of National Defense said that cyberattacks against its military sites have increased over the past few years. Based on checks of IP addresses, the Defense Ministry claimed an average of 144,000 cyberattacks per month last year, according to Reuters.

And it fingered the U.S. for almost 63 percent of them.

The allegations from Beijing come hot on the heels of a recent report from U.S. security firm Mandiant, linking the Chinese army to cyberattacks … Read more