Hackers

Last month the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (one of the US's most prestigious think tanks) was attacked by a group of hackers.

The attack aimed to compromise the computers of the website's high-profile clientele, which includes high-level politicians, powerful businessmen (and humble Shanghaiist writers).

The hack was believed to be carried out by the Elderwood Group, a China-based hacker coalition that has previously targeted Google, Tibetan- and Uyghur-rights groups, Amnesty International, Taiwanese travel sites, and other pages seen to be "anti-China."

The lunatic power-bigots at the WBC are down another Twitter account—and this time it belongs to its leader's son, Fred Phelps Jr. What's more surprising is that Cosmo the God—yep, that one—is claiming responsibility.

Like last time, the team at UGNazi is saying they've attained full control of a prominent WBC member's account in retaliation for the hate group's plans to picket Newtown victim funerals. They also posted a picture of an alleged email exchange between "church" members, suggesting the account was broken into through a password reset sent to a compromise email inbox.

The US is planning a legal assault on the international hacking community and the companies – and governments – that use IP stolen from America.

John Carlin, the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice’s national security division told Defense News that the DOJ was training over 100 special prosecutors who would work with a variety of government departments, including the FBI, Homeland Security, and NSA.

If the ethics of hacking celebrities’ e-mail accounts doesn’t stop you from doing it, perhaps a decade-long jail sentence will.

On Monday, a Florida man found guilty of gaining access to 50 e-mail accounts—including those of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Renee Olstead, and others—was sentenced on federal charges to 10 years in jail. Chaney pled guilty to nine counts of "aggravated identity theft," "wiretapping," and other crimes earlier this year.

A penetration tester has reportedly hacked Yahoo!, claiming to have gained access to website backup and database files for a dozen databases.

The hacker using the handle Virus_Hima published screenshots that showed the purported site backups for a Yahoo! finance subdomain.

The hacker claimed to have accessed the databases via a reflected cross site scripting vulnerability which he told SC was fixed by Yahoo!. He also said he discovered a SQL Injection hole. Virus_Hima disclosed the flaws alleging that Yahoo! had ignored his vulnerability disclosure email.

Charges against Gary McKinnon for breaching US government IT systems have been dropped by UK authorities, bringing a decade long battle to an end.

In a statement from the Crown Prosecution Court and Metropolitan Police it was announced that a case against McKinnon would not proceed in the UK, following the decision to block his extradition to the US.

Nothing is beneath the Westboro Baptist Church, as evidenced by the group's announcement to picket outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in wake of the recent tragedy. The group's most recent, perhaps most deplorable decision has apparently irked one of its oldest enemies: infamous hacker collective Anonymous.

Hacktivist campaigners Team GhostShell claim to have stolen accounts from a number of organisations including NASA, ESA, the Pentagon and the Federal Reserve.

Russian hackers are holding a Gold Coast medical centre to ransom after encrypting thousands of patient health records.

The hackers are asking for a ransom of $4,000 to decrypt the sensitive information held on a server at the Miami Family Medical Centre.

 Hackers broke into insurance company Nationwide's network in October, stealing the personal information of more than a million customers across the country, the insurance company recently revealed.

The company said the compromised information included people's names and a combination of Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, their date of birth, and possibly marital status, gender, and occupation, as well as the names and addresses of employers. Nationwide said it had no evidence that any medical information or credit card account data was stolen.