hacks

Twitter is investigating the release of what appear to be thousands of user account passwords and e-mail addresses.

"We are currently looking into the situation. In the meantime, we have pushed out password resets to accounts that may have been affected," Twitter spokesman Robert Weeks told CNET in an e-mail. "For those who are concerned that their account may have been compromised, we suggest resetting your passwords and more in our Help Center."

The user data, so vast that it took five Pastebin pages to post, was released yesterday and blogged about on Airdemon.net, putting … Read more

It's been a tough year for the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA).

The organization confirmed to TechWeekEurope today that its site has once again become the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and has been forced to take its site offline to "limit the impact" of the threat.

"Clearly the things we'd like to stress are that the SOCA website contains only publicly available information, it does not provide access to operational material," a SOCA spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. "DDoS attacks cause a temporary inconvenience to website visitors, … Read more

Hackers overrode the tallest building in Cambridge, Mass., last week, turning the 21-story Green Building at MIT into a giant Tetris puzzle game controllable from a nearby joystick attached to a podium.

The successful attempt comes after a glitch-filled try to run Tetris on the same building in September of last year. Hackers used 153 wirelessly controlled color-changing LED lights for the giant game on a building that hosts MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science facilities.

The MIT-hosted Hack Gallery notes, "MIT hackers have long considered 'Tetris on the Green Building' to be the Holy Grail of hacks, as the side of the building is a wonderful grid for the game." … Read more

In an effort to cut down on hacking, bugs, and vulnerabilities, Google offers dollar rewards for people to hack into its Web services.

The Internet giant began swapping security research for cash over the past couple of years, but today it announced that it was upping the ante.

"In just over a year, the program paid out around $460,000 to roughly 200 individuals," Google security team members Adam Mein and Michal Zalewski wrote in a blog post. "We're confident beyond any doubt the program has made Google users safer."

As of today, hackers can … Read more

Turn off your cell phone and cancel any commitments. The Diablo III open beta weekend begins today.

The beta lasts until 10 a.m. PT Monday, April 23, and will serve as a stress test before the highly anticipated May 15 launch of the influential action role-playing game. Anyone can play the Diablo III open beta weekend by signing up for a free account on Battle.net and downloading the Diablo III beta PC/Mac client. … Read more

The Anonymous defendants arrested last month for allegedly breaking into corporate networks, stealing data, and defacing Web sites as part of LulzSec are likely to have an extended vacation at Club Fed, experts say.

With well-known victims like Sony, Fox Broadcasting, and the FBI, prosecutors will want to make examples of those arrested in the Anonymous-related hacking cases in the hopes that it will send a message to others.

"I believe they will (get harsh treatment)," Michael Bachmann, assistant professor of criminal justice at Texas Christian University, told CNET in a recent interview.

Like Kevin Mitnick, who was … Read more

Pride in one's lover's bodily parts can lead to a fall in one's own bodily security.

That seems to be the lesson from the tale of an alleged hacker, Higinio O.Ochoa, a 30-year-old Linux administrator from Galveston, Texas, who was arrested by the FBI and charged with unauthorized access to a protected computer.

The accusation, as described by the Sydney Morning Herald, is that Ochoa hacked into several Web sites belonging to law enforcement.

Sometimes, though, the temptation to leave a calling card can be too great. So Ochoa allegedly used a Twitter account to direct … Read more

Warning that checking sports scores or updating Facebook could be considered a crime, a U.S. appeals court rejected the government's broad interpretation of a nearly 30-year-old anti-hacking law in trying to prosecute a man for misappropriation of trade secrets.

In a 9-2 decision (PDF), the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the broad reading of the 1984 federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, warning that millions of Americans could be subjected to prosecution for harmless Web surfing at work.

The case centers on David Nosal, a former executive at recruiting agency Korn/Ferry … Read more

Some 50,000 credit and debit cardholders may have their information exposed following a security breach at Global Payments, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The full extent of the breach is still unknown, the Journal reported today, and it's unclear whether fraudulent charges on cardholders have been racked up yet.

Global Payments later released a statement saying the breach didn't involve its merchants or their customers. The company said it had determined early this month that card data may have been accessed, and alerted law enforcement.

"It is reassuring that our security processes detected an intrusion,&… Read more