Hackers

As the nine-day DDoS hammering of WikiLeaks continues, hacking group AntiLeaks, has said that attacks will continue and widen, but have nothing to do with the Trapwire monitoring system the whistle-blowing site has been documenting.

In an email conversation with The Register, someone claiming to be the head of the AntiLeaks hacking group – aka DietPepsi – said the attacks were in protest over the role of Julian Assange, who is currently the guest of the Ecuadorian embassy while waiting for his plea for political asylum to be decided.

Security experts have called for Australian organisations to update their security and privacy policies as they invite customers to access more loyalty card services online.

Loyalty programs run by the likes of Coles, Woolworths, FlyBuys and Qantas could be a treasure trove for cyber criminals looking to misuse personal details such as name, address, date of birth and transactional history.

Hackers have broken into a website of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers and published 260 user login credentials on the internet.

The institute, the peak industry body that represents professional business brokers, was unaware of the hack which happened late yesterday. National President Paul Nielson said the members login area did not include financial data.

It might sound strange, but every industry and profession could benefit from an employee as creative, resourceful, and motivated as a hacker. Hackers can teach themselves how things work and how groups of things work together. Hackers know how to modify things—to adjust, personalize, and even improve them. And it is the hacker whose skillset is diverse, unique, and powerful enough to be dangerous in the hands of the wrong person.

This is a call for article submissions for Issue 009 of HITB's quarterly magazine - http://magazine.hitb.org/ which will be released alongside #HITB2012KUL - The 10 year anniversary of the HITB Security Conference series in Malaysia.

The Reuters news service suffered a second successful hacker attack this weekend, just 48 hours after a computer intruder was able to post fake news stories on its web site.  In Sunday's attack, a small Reuters Twitter feed -- @ReutersTech , with 17,000 followers -- was briefly controlled by hackers.

"Earlier today @ReutersTech was hacked and changed to @ReutersME," Reuters announced on its Twitter feed Sunday. "The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation."

The Reuters blogging platform was hacked on Friday, and a false story about an alleged interview with a Syrian rebel leader was posted. On Sunday, Reuters suffered a second security breach in which hackers gained control of one of its Twitter accounts. While Twitter hasn't commented on the latter, we have more information on the former: Reuters forgot to keep its WordPress installation updated.

How do hackers get information about a person's online user name and password, even if both are well protected by the account owner? In the past, we have seen reports that hackers make use of phishing scams to retrieve information about Xbox Live accounts.

Obviously, hacking can be a major problem. Gross amounts of money have been spent in an attempt to prevent hacking, and Internet security remains an important issue. Still, it happens. On Friday, Reuters was hacked and fake stories concerning Syria were posted.

According to the a statement released by a parent firm. Thomas Reuters, "Reuters.com was a target of a hack on Friday. Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists."'

Hackers hit Major League Baseball teams' Facebook pages with phony postings on Thursday, including an announcement that New York Yankees star Derek Jeter would undergo sex change surgery, the sports site Deadspin reported.

"He promises to come back stronger than ever in 2013 as Minnie Mantlez," said a posting that was quickly removed from the Yankees' page. Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle was a Yankees' slugger in the 1950s and 1960s.