Philips electronics hit by hackers
The new hacker collective "r00tbeersec" has struck again — and this time, it matters.
More than 350 passwords, full names and email addresses belonging to Italian customers of the Dutch consumer electronics giant Philips were posted online Monday. The Italians had apparently purchased Philips flat-screen TVs with interchangeable colored frames some years ago.
That came one day after r00tbeersec revealed the usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords of nearly 200 employees and associates of chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices. While annoying, the AMD breach was less serious because the passwords were strongly encrypted. The difference with today's breach was that the Philips customer passwords were in plain text, meaning anyone can now log into those Philips customer accounts — and any other online account where those users registered the same email address and password.
