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How to set up Google's two-step verification

Did you read Mat Honan's tale of woe last week? The one where his Amazon, Apple, Gmail, and Twitter accounts were hacked and his digital life was eradicated?

If not, I strongly encourage you to read his story. In a nutshell, hackers strung together pieces of information to gain access to several important online accounts. The results were personally devastating for him. But his story is a good lesson for all of us. After learning the details of the attack -- from one of the hackers himself, no less -- Honan says he regrets three things most of all.… Read more

Reuters hacked (again) with fake story of Saudi minister's death

Someone must have it out for Reuters. For the second time in two weeks, the blogging platform for the news source's Web site has been hacked into and false stories have been illicitly published.

Today's sham article reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died, according to Reuters. The first bogus story, posted earlier this month, was about the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted," Reuters News' director of … Read more

Anonymous promises revenge for the takedown of Demonoid

Anonymous has promised to bring down its wrath on the Ukrainian government after authorities were said to have taken down the file-sharing site Demonoid last week.

"Last week, our generous green friend, the Demonoid, was met with a state sponsored Distributed Denial of Service attack...These illegal actions were then followed up with a raid by Ukraine authorities," the hacking group wrote in a blog post on AnonPR yesterday. "In retaliation for your criminal acts against us and the free flow of information, we have already begun an operation against those responsible. Lazers are already being fired.&… Read more

E-mail lists, encrypted passwords stolen in Battle.net hack

Game maker Blizzard Entertainment's internal network security has been breached, the company informed customers today.

While the company behind World of Warcraft and Diablo believes no sensitive financial information was compromised, it said e-mail addresses for non-China Battle.net players and scrambled passwords were stolen, Blizzard President Michael Morhaime said in a company blog post:

This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened. At this time, we'… Read more

Justice Dept. won't appeal computer fraud dismissal

The U.S. Justice Department has decided not to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appellate court ruling in a criminal case that found a decades-old anti-hacking law was being applied too broadly.

The decision means the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of the case against David Nosal, who was accused of illegally misappropriating trade secrets from his employer, will stand. In a 9-2 ruling, the court found in April that the 1984 federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was being interpreted too broadly and warned that millions of Americans could be subjected to … Read more

Apple freezes AppleID password resets requested over the phone

Apple has reportedly stopped taking AppleID password resets requests over the phone, following the account hack of a technology reporter over the weekend.

An unnamed Apple employee told Wired that the ban would remain in effect for at least 24 hours and speculated that the freeze was instituted to give Apple more time to determine what security policy changes, if any, were necessary.

That information was apparently corroborated by an Apple customer representative who said Apple had halted all AppleID resets requested over the phone. The explanation came as Wired was attempting to replicate a hacker's exploitation of the … Read more

Amazon addresses security exploit after journalist hack

When tech reporters get hacked, it seems like tech companies pay attention.

Wired reporter Mat Honan's entire online life was compromised by a hacker named Phobia four days ago. Phobia used Honan's AppleCare and Amazon IDs, along with his billing address and last four digits of his credit card to get into his various online accounts. Apple responded yesterday saying that it was looking into how users can reset their account passwords to ensure data protection; and Amazon responded today.

"We have investigated the reported exploit, and can confirm that the exploit has been closed as of … Read more

Reuters Twitter account hijacked, fake tweets sent

Reuters has suffered a second security breach in two days after hackers gained control of one of its Twitter accounts, the news agency revealed this morning.

The Reuters Tech account was commandeered late Saturday and renamed TechMe, Reuters said today in a tweet on its main Twitter news feed. The account has since been suspended and an investigation of the breach is under way, Reuters said.

Earlier today @reuterstech was hacked and changed to @reutersme. The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 5, 2012

The newly renamed feed was then defaced with … Read more

Pwned or paranoid? Phone weirdness at Defcon

Every year at Defcon there are rumors of some network being hacked. It would be unusual if such tales didn't crop up at the world's largest hacker conference. But this year there were reports from a number of credible sources of strange behavior on phones -- reports that had people more paranoid than normal.

Here's what people said they were seeing last weekend, along with some possible explanations for the scenarios:

• Voice mail messages that led to unknown numbers instead of to the standard phone number that points to the user's automated voice message recovery system.… Read more