defacement

Harvard Web site hacked with pro-Syria message

Harvard University's home page was hacked earlier today in what was described as a "sophisticated" attack that briefly defaced the site with a message accusing the U.S. of supporting the uprising against Syria's president.

Accompanying an image of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a message that said "SyRiAn ELeCTronic ArMy WeRe HeRE," according to a screenshot captured by the BBC. The defacement included an anti-U.S. diatribe that accused the U.S. of supporting a "policy of killing" in Syria, the BCC reported:

Do you support the war on Syria? If … Read more

Anonymous defaces BART site, leaks user data

Anonymous has apparently made good on a promise to wreak havoc on the Web site of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System today, although not exactly as planned.

Earlier, the amorphous collective had threatened to take Bart.gov offline for six hours today, or twice the amount of time BART managers took cell phone service offline at some BART stations Thursday night in order to head off a planned protest then. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was supposed to begin at noon pacific time, according to a release from Anonymous.

As of 30 minutes past noon, the BART … Read more

MySpace homepage goes down

MySpace's usual homepage was replaced this evening with a puzzling message, leading many (including this reporter) to initially believe the site may have been hacked. That apparently was not the case.

Visitors to the social network were greeted by a largely blank page topped with the browser title bar that read "All is wrong :(" where the MySpace name would normally appear. In the upper left of the normally vibrant page was the message: "We messed up our code so bad that even puppies and kittens may be in danger. Please turn back ...now." It was … Read more

Report: Sony Music Greece, Indonesia hacked

Sony Music Greece was hacked with its user data published to the Web and Sony Music Indonesia's Web site was defaced, according to an online news report.

The attacks, if confirmed, would be just the latest in a series of security problems the company has had in the past month starting with a distributed denial-of-service attack by the loosely organized hacker group Anonymous in early April to protest Sony's taking PS3 hackers to court.

A Sony spokeswoman provided this statement via e-mail this evening: "There was an online tweet that one page of Sony Music Indonesia's … Read more

Congressional sites defaced after Obama speech

Someone defaced the Web pages of nearly 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives with an explicit insult to President Obama after he gave his State of the Union address on Wednesday night.

The 49 House Web sites, representing both Democrats and Republicans, were managed by a company called GovTrends, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.

The hacking occurred while GovTrends was performing an update, Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the House chief administrative officer, told the AP.

Last August, 18 House sites managed by GovTrends were also defaced, according to Ventura, who added that the House is reconsidering … Read more

Twitter hijacked by 'Iranian Cyber Army'

Updated at 11:15 p.m. PST to include comment from witness and reflect Twitter.com accessible again. Updated at 11:50 p.m. PST with status update from Twitter.

Twitter.com was down Thursday evening, and it appears that the microblogging site may have been hacked or the victim of a DNS hijacking.

The site, which was inaccessible for about an hour starting around 10 p.m. PST, was defaced with the following image before it was taken offline:

The message at the bottom of the image appears to be written in Perso-Arabic script and when translated to English … Read more

Teens await arrest after Comcast attack

Updated at 12:15 p.m. PDT to clarify that Comcast wasn't technically hacked, but that its domain and Web site were hijacked.

Two teenagers who say they hijacked Comcast's Web portal on Thursday also say they expect to be arrested for their actions.

"I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad," 19-year-old "Defiant" told Wired's Kevin Poulsen, who managed to get a one-hour phone interview with Defiant and his 18-year-old cohort "EBK."

"I slept in my clothes, because the last time … Read more

Where we didn't start the fire

EPISODE 46

After a contentious morning with an almost late Wilson Tang and a false office fire, the 404 hosts kick off the show with a look at billboard defacing, MyVu already showing up on Woot, prizes given away, and not so fantastic movies coming out this weekend!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Anonymous posts another video against Scientology

Editors' note, 11:00 a.m. PST: This blog has been condensed from an earlier version.

A group calling itself Anonymous is continuing its war against the Church of Scientology with a new video posted Monday. In its latest video message, the group seeks to dispel the notion it is a group of super hackers and, as though to prove it, includes a call for real-world protests outside Scientology centers worldwide on February 10. Friday night, the Church of Scientology issued a statement about the online attacks.

The latest two-minute video from the group continues to use a computer-generated voice, … Read more