Hackers

Hacktivist group Anonymous reportedly plans to launch more attacks on Chinese government Web sites to "uncover corruption" and take down the "Great Firewall of China".

The group wanted to alert the Chinese government that they "aren't afraid", and were going to "show the truth" and "fight for justice", Anonymous hacker, f0ws3r, told Reuters in a report Monday.

An expert said devices like heart monitors and insulin pumps could easily be used to kill their host, with would-be attackers having greater access to them than ever before, the BBC reports. 

Professional hacker Barnaby Jack, who works for computer security company McAfee Inc, was able to hijack a well-known insulin pump by hacking its radio signal within just two weeks.

A series of hacks perpetrated against so-called “smart meter” installations over the past several years may have cost a single U.S. electric utility hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the FBI said in a cyber intelligence bulletin obtained by KrebsOnSecurity. The law enforcement agency said this is the first known report of criminals compromising the hi-tech meters, and that it expects this type of fraud to spread across the country as more utilities deploy smart grid technology.

China was struggling Thursday to restore several government websites that international hacking group Anonymous says it attacked in an apparent protest against Chinese Internet restrictions.

On a Twitter account established in late March, Anonymous China listed the websites it says it hacked over the last several days. They include government bureaus in several Chinese cities, including in Chengdu, a provincial capital in southwest China.

Earlier today, security researcher Gareth Wright revealed the discovery of a security hole in the Facebook app running on Android and iOS mobile devices.  The simple 'hack' allows users to copy plain text configuration files off the device and thus effectively 'stealing' credentials / gaining unauthorized access to accounts on that iOS device. 

Three Taiwanese nationals and their Filipino cohort were arrested last week for allegedly running a call bypass fraud syndicate from their condo units in Makati City, Philippines.

The arrests were made by the National Bureau of Immigration on a complaint from Smart Communications Inc.

One spring day in 2010, a hacker named Kevin Finisterre knew he had hit the jackpot. A network he had been casing finally broadcast the live video and audio feed of a police cruiser belonging to a US-based municipal government. His jaw dropped as a computer in his home office in Columbus, Ohio showed the vehicle—with flashing blue lights on and siren blaring—charging down a road of the unnamed city.

Hewlett-Packard on Friday issued an urgent support notification to registered HP LaserJet printer owners warning of a vulnerability that could allow hackers unauthorized access to 50 product lines.

HP said in an email that no reports have been made of the affected printers being accessed through the vulnerability, but pointed owners of LaserJet-branded printers to a list of affected products and instructions for fixing the bug on its tech support site.

Trend Micro is reporting that websites of Indian government and Tibetan activists in India were attacked in a cyber attack campaign by a Chinese hacker, working with one of the world's largest online retailers Tencent. 

Known as the Luckycat cyber campaign, about 90 attacks were detected in recent past, against targets in India and Japan, as also Tibetan activists, according to the report released Trend. 

Credit card payments processing company Global Payments announced last Friday that there was “unauthorized access into a portion of its processing system.” The company identified the problem and reported the situation to authorities, prompting the US Secret Service to launch an investigation. Rumors of the breach caused the company’s stocks to spiral, plunging 9.06 percent to $47.50 by midday, until trading was immediately closed to stop the stock from crashing. The company confirmed the news after the market closed.