Hacks

Saudi Oil firm says 30,000 computers hit by virus

Saudi Arabia's oil company, Saudi Aramco, says its main internal network is back up after a virus affected 30,000 work stations in mid-August, but the source of the attack remains unclear.

Saudi Aramco said all of the affected workstations have all been cleaned and restored to service and normal business resumed on Saturday when employees returned to work following the Muslim Eid holidays. The primary enterprise systems of hydrocarbon exploration and production were unaffected because they are kept on isolated network systems. Meanwhile, remote Internet access to online resources has been restricted, the statement said.

Saudi Aramco blamed … Read more

Hacking humans: Building a better you

Do you have a cochlear implant? An intraocular lens in your eye? A prosethetic leg with microservos? You may not realize it, but you're standing on the front line of a new age of medical augmentation, one that's raising a host of complex questions.

Who owns the expensive implant that allows you to hear or see better or the sleek thin blades that let you sprint faster? How are upgrades to your device handled? What happens to you and your device if that company goes out of business? Do the answers change if the procedure is elective rather than life-saving?

No one has easy answers, or even much beyond informed speculation -- certainly not the doctors we spoke to for this article or the medical students who addressed medical augmentation at a Defcon 20 session last month in Las Vegas. But all agree on one thing: A new frontier of medical augmentation isn't just coming sooner than you think. It's already here, as society moves from medically necessary augmentation to elective procedures. Call it human hacking. … Read more

Russian court Web site defaced over Pussy Riot verdict

A Russian court Web site has been defaced following a verdict that saw the members of the all-female punk-rock band Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in jail.

The Khamovnichesky District Court was hacked today by a group claiming to be affiliated with the U.S. branch of Anonymous. The site uploaded a message in Russian saying that it doesn't "forget" or "forgive." The group also posted a Pussy Riot song, called "Putin Is Lighting the Fires of the Revolution," and video of Bulgarian singer Aziz.

The BBC was first to report on … Read more

Anti-WikiLeaks group takes down Russian news site

An anti-WikiLeaks hacking group has taken credit for launching a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the Russian news site RT.com.

The organization, which calls itself Anti Leaks, today tweeted out to followers that it was "behind the DDoS attack on RT.com." Although the organization didn't explicitly say why it decided to attack RT, it included in its tweet a "#FreePussyRiot" hashtag.

The hashtag refers to the name of a Russian, all-female punk rock band. The band members were arrested in March after performing a "punk prayer" in Moscow's … 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

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

Apple responds to journalist's iCloud hack

After former Gizmodo reporter Mat Honan's entire digital presence was hacked via a loophole in AppleCare, Apple now says it is looking into how users can reset their account passwords to ensure that their data is protected.

It all began when Honan took to his Tumblr blog on Friday, detailing the events that led to his online life being sabotaged -- with his Google and Twitter accounts being deleted and his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone being wiped clean. He blamed an AppleCare technician for allowing his accounts to be hacked, as well as the tech blog's official feed.… Read more

Gizmodo sees Twitter account hacked

A former Gizmodo employee had his Twitter account breached, and the hackers then used it to crack the gadget site's Twitter account and send out racist tweets yesterday. Talk about a bad day. Emil Protalinski at CNET sister site ZDNet has the story.