Hackers

Microsoft will dump its Xbox Live point system by years' end, according to reports, in a move that could kill what is a cash cow for fraudsters.

The Microsoft Points system was used to purchase gaming content on Xbox Live.

But it was also used by scammers who etched out a grey market selling hacked Xbox Live profiles loaded with Microsoft Points. SC Magazine previously visited dozens of lawless auction and retail sites that freely sold Microsoft Points for a fraction of the cost charged by Xbox Live.

Pwn2Own, one of the most anticipated hacking contests that takes place each year at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, is set to unfold under dramatically different rules this year.

First and foremost, smartphone hacking is no longer on the table - Pwn2Own returns to its roots and will welcome only researchers targeting Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, running on Windows or Mac OS.

All aboard the crazy cyber-attacked train? The TSA claimed that hackers launched a cyberattack that manipulated a railway company's computers. The two IP addresses belonging to intruders on December 1 and a third IP address location on Dec. 3 may indicate the cyberattack on railway computers was launched from overseas, according to NextGov.

Last week, after Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing voluntarily blacked out their Web sites to protest proposed antipiracy legislation, hackers began their own blackouts with attacks on dozens of sites across the Internet.

Anonymous- the hacktivist group, recruited unwitting accomplices during their latest cyber attack against the US Department of Justice (DoJ), revealed a prominent security researcher, Graham Cluley, according to whom the group initiated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against DoJ in retaliation for a ban on Megaupload.

Anonymous continues to lash out following the seizure of Megaupload and the jailing of its founder, having momentarily deleted both CBS.com and UniversalMusic.com. Xbox Live has been threatened, but is that credible?

Put it this way, if hackers can obliterate corporate presences of that size (even if they are now back up), as well as whack government, motion picture and music publishing sites with a huge DDoS attack, then yes, they possess the motivation and the means to threaten something like Xbox Live. Whether that is actually a target is another question.

DreamHost customers should change their passwords ASAP.

That's the word from the web-hosting service and domain name registrar, which sent an email to customers over the weekend saying that their FTP passwords may have been accessed by hackers.

One afternoon this month, a hacker took a tour of a dozen conference rooms around the globe via equipment that most every company has in those rooms; videoconferencing equipment.

Several Polish government websites, including that of the parliament and the prime minister, appear to have been disrupted over the weekend by online activists.

The attacks began late Saturday and lasted through Sunday morning,.
The affected websites were inaccessible or extremely slow.

An informal group of hackers who said were linked to the international hacking organization Anonymous took credit for the online attack meant as protest against the government's plans to sign the treaty, known as ACTA, they said in statement put on YouTube video-sharing website.

"HaXoreD BY Federal," reads the banner of the newly defaced RihannaOnline.net, a site that normally posts news, lyrics and images of singer Rihanna Fenty.

Anonymous Operations this morning on Twitter said that the hack had come from Anonymous Morocco in response to the arrest of Kim Dotcom in New Zealand last week. Dotcom, the founder and head of file-sharing site Megaupload.com was nabbed along with six others on alleged piracy charges.