lulz

The hacking free-for-all continued this week as Sega apparently became the latest victim of a network breach and none other than hacking group LulzSec offered to help the game company by taking down the responsible parties.

The blog PlayStation LifeStyle posted yesterday what it said was a letter sent by Sega to users of its Sega Pass service, informing them that "unauthorized entry was gained" to the Sega Pass database and that the company is investigating.

"We have identified that a subset of Sega Pass members' e-mail addresses, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords were obtained," … Read more

A power surge mid-show knocked us, Donald's birthday celebration, and the rest of the episode offline. Here's what we managed to salvage from the wreckage ... at least you can read the stories and emails for yourselves! See you tomorrow!

The U.S. Senate site was hacked again yesterday, Reuters reports.

According to the news service, hackers breached the site and stole information, though the type of data taken was not divulged.

Martina Bradford, the U.S. Senate's deputy sergeant at arms, confirmed the breach to Reuters yesterday. However, she said, the hackers are "getting nothing" of value and the Senate so far has "been able to stay ahead of the hackers and keep them out of the main separate network."

No one has been publicly accused or taken responsibility for the breach yet.

The … Read more

The CIA's public Web site is inaccessible this afternoon, and the hacking group Lulz Security is taking for responsibility for taking it offline.

Shortly before 3 p.m. PT, LulzSec tweeted: "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz"

And indeed, the world's most famous spy agency is currently without an official Web presence, as of about 20 minutes after Lulzsec's tweet--cia.gov returns an error message.

LulzSec has enjoyed a higher profile of late, thanks to a slew of successful attacks on prominent Web sites. In the past couple of months, the group … Read more

Hacking group LulzSec was touting a hotline yesterday that let people call in and request takedowns of Web sites.

"Call into 614-LulzSec and pick a target, and we'll obliterate it," LulzSec wrote on its Twitter account yesterday. "Nobody wants to mess with The Lulz Cannon--take aim for us Twitter."

The LulzSec hotline's area code encompasses the Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area, though it's unlikely the people behind the organization are there. According to LulzSec, its hacking request line was lighted up all day, and it accommodated a total of eight requests. By the end … Read more

Every day there's another report of a computer hack. Yesterday it was a video game company and a U.S. Senate database. And today it could be the Federal Reserve. There's no doubt that there's a wave of attacks going on right now, against different targets and with seemingly different motives.

The questions on everyone's mind are who is behind these computer attacks and why are they doing it. This FAQ will help answer those questions in at least some of the cases.

Update: A 19-year-old man was arrested June 21 in the U.K. and … Read more

The hacking group known as LulzSec hit its latest target over the weekend: the U.S. Senate.

In an attack confirmed to the media by a Senate representative, LulzSec broke into the Senate's Web site and was able to gain access to the server's directory and file structure, the contents of which the group published on its own site.

In response, the government initiated a security review but so far has determined that network security was not compromised and that no user information was breached.

"The intruder did not gain access into the Senate computer network and … Read more

At first glance it appeared that the Web site of the LulzSec hacker group had been seized by the feds. But it turned out to be just another prank, the latest in a series of "lulz" that hackers do when they are not taunting Sony, FBI partners, and others.

Despite the official looking Justice and Homeland Security department symbols and notice saying "this domain name has been seized by ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) - Homeland Security Investigations," the page was a hoax. A search of Whois showed that the domain "www.lulzsecurity.org" … Read more

Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer currency floating around the Web, is now being targeted by two prominent senators.

Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have written a letter to both Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Michele Leonhart expressing their desire for the organizations to take down an online marketplace known as "Silk Road," which allows customers to buy illegal drugs, including cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and marijuana.

The senators said this about Bitcoin in their letter to the government agencies: