Hackers

In the maritime business, Automated Identification Systems (AIS) are a big deal. They supplement information received by the marine radar system, are used for a wide variety of things - including ship-to-ship communication - and are relied upon each and every day. Unfortunately, the AIS can also be easily hacked in order to do some real damage, claims a group of researchers presenting at the Hack In The Box Conference currently taking place in Kuala Lumpur.

Greece's foreign ministry on Monday said its internal email system had been penetrated by hackers and that an investigation was under way to determine the extent of the damage.

"A web posting on Monday announced a successful break-in by the 'Anonymous' group of activists into the ministry's email directory," the ministry said in a statement.

In September, Serbia's city of Novi Sad hosted the first-ever official hacker conference in the Balkans, BalCCon: First Congress (First Contact).

I attended the conference and quickly learned that to understand Balkan hacker culture is to know Balkan history. Serbia, as it was explained to me one night over beers by the conference's jovial keynote, "Is where everyone is armed and dangerous, you know?"

The Bitcoin discussion forum bitcointalk.org was recently hacked and defaced by hackers calling themselves "The Hole Seekers" (h/t Softpedia).

The defacement page showed an unusually creative animated video of rockets and explosions, followed by the statement, "Hello friend, Bitcoin has been seized by the FBI for being illegal. Thanks, bye."

Just hours after it played a supporting role in the takedown of the Silk Road drug empire, the Bitcointalk.org website suffered a hack that exposed users' personal messages, e-mails, and password data.

"To be safe, it is recommended that all Bitcoin Forum users consider any password used on the Bitcoin Forum in 2013 to be insecure," an e-mail sent to registered users stated. "If you used this password on a different site, change it. When the Bitcoin Forum returns, change your password."

A small, sophisticated international hacking group was responsible for a widely publicised 2011 spying attack on members of Japan's parliament as well as dozens of previously undisclosed breaches at government agencies and strategic companies in Japan and South Korea, security researchers said.

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab believe they have found a squad of hackers for hire, who contract out to governments and possibly businesses, in contrast to recent reports on hacks said to be carried out by full-time government employees.

An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America’s largest consumer and business data aggregators, according to a seven-month investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.

IF you know about the annual HITB Security Conference or HITBSecConf, then you probably know that at the end of every successful conference, the Hack In The Box (HITB) team will already be thinking about how to elevate the next event with better talks, bigger shows and stronger battles.
 

A cybersecurity executive breached the NASDAQ website in only 10 minutes.

By using any combination of browser history, cookies or phishing attacks, hackers can easily take over the exchange’s website, said a security expert who claims hackers can control the site using basic tools.

Wanted: More hackers for the Russian criminal underworld.

Faced with boosted cybersecurity defenses at banks, top Russian-speaking cybercriminals are opening their ranks in a way not previously seen, according to a new report from RSA, the security division of EMC.