fbi

Hackers went on a rampage late today, targeting Sony Europe, Nintendo, and the FBI-affiliate InfraGard Atlanta in a series of intrusions and security compromises that appears to have exposed passwords of some Sony and federal government employees.

The moves follow reports of hacks hours earlier that involved Acer Europe, Iran, NATO, and the United Arab Emirates.

Sony, whose business units globally have suffered what amounts to about a dozen different computer intrusions already over the past two months, was again targeted. Someone identified as Lebanese hacker Idahc, who targeted Sony Ericsson last week, appeared to have compromised the e-commerce site … Read more

The U.S. government is investigating reports from Google that hackers attempted to break into the Gmail accounts of senior government officials but at this point doesn't believe any accounts were actually breached.

"Speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, we're looking into these reports and seeking to gather the facts," Caitlin Hayden, deputy spokesperson for the National Security Council, told CNET today. "We have no reason to believe that any official U.S. government e-mail accounts were accessed."

The FBI is taking the lead on the investigation, according to Hayden, "as … Read more

It turns out that no matter how technologically savvy we get in the world, we could always be betrayed by the "meat puppets behind the servers." Thanks for that one, Donald. And human error does appear to be what happened to Amazon, and also the Yankees. DSLReports, on the other hand, just plain got hacked. And it would also appear there's no one equipped to help us with our little data leakage issues, since the FBI's own cyber-security agents admit they're not up to the task. But there's even worse news than that: the white iPhone is 0.2mm thicker than the black one. THE HUMANITY! --Molly

Small and medium-size businesses in the U.S. lost more than $11 million over the past year in online scams in which stolen banking credentials were used in fraudulent wire transfers to companies in China, the FBI said.

There were 20 such incidents between March 2010 and April 2011, affecting companies and public institutions in the U.S. that tend to have accounts at local community banks and credit unions, some of which use third-party service providers for online banking services, according to the agency. The amounts transferred at any one time ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to … Read more

Facebook is unveiling, Youtube's going Hollywood, Nook Colors are Flashing, Netflix is growing, the White iPhone is coming, and Location Gate continues with Microsoft joining in the mix. All this while the USA tries to catch up with its superslow download speeds. I'd like a Tech Wrap Supreme please to help me digest all of this.

On today's show, Donald Bell gives us his in-person BlackBerry PlayBook review, why Twitter is like your freeloading, couch-surfing bum of a brother, and how the FBI's command and control server could end up taking Elvis off life support. What, you didn't know Elvis was still alive? The things you learn on BOL. Plus: the white iPhone is coming! No, really! And your comments on throttling, for good or for ill. --Molly

By seizing servers and domain names and getting permission to remotely turn off malware on compromised PCs, U.S. officials have disabled a botnet that steals data from infected computers.

The legal actions are part of the "most complete and comprehensive enforcement action ever taken by U.S. authorities to disable an international botnet," according to a statement from the Department of Justice. A botnet is a group of computers that have been compromised and are being remotely controlled by attackers, typically to send spam or attack other computers.

It's the first time law enforcement in the … Read more

For conspiracy theorists, it sounded like a giant step closer to their "Eureka" moment.

Earlier, the British publication The Sun set the ticker hopping with a report that "real-life FBI X-Files have emerged sensationally claiming flying saucers piloted by aliens did crash on Earth." The Telegraph published a similar piece and the Internet did the rest. It wasn't long before their lead was followed by dozens of other publications around the world.

A call to the FBI may have helped, where the only news at the agency's Washington headquarters was that traffic to its … Read more

The National Security Agency has joined the investigation into last October's cyberattack on the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange, according to a Bloomberg report that cited people familiar with the probe.

The top U.S. electronic intelligence agency will reportedly join efforts by the Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigations into a security breach at New York-based Nasdaq OMX Group. When the intrusions were revealed in February, it was thought that they had not compromised the tech-heavy exchange's trading platform, which executes investors' trades, but it was unknown which other sections … Read more