Hackers

A hacker known in the cybercriminal underground as “soldier” has stolen $3.2 million from major US corporations in the past six months, according to researchers at anti-virus firm Trend Micro.

The attacker, believed to be in his early 20s and residing in Russia, used toolkits to plunder millions of dollars from corporate bank accounts since January. The hacker oversees a network of money mules and accomplices, who are believed to reside in West Hollywood and Venice, California.

The websites of several Mexican government ministries, including Defense and Public Security, went offline on Thursday, and a hacker group claimed responsibility.

The ministry websites as well as several local government sites went down early on Thursday afternoon and could still not be accessed. A spokesman for the Mexican Defense Ministry said only that the website was experiencing technical difficulties.

Incredibly, I've managed never to send anything across the internet that's suddenly caused me to squeal in regret, break out in a sweat and rack my brains for an excuse.

I've never copied someone in on an email detailing the reasons why said person is an blithering idiot. Nor have I sent people pictures of myself in a gimp suit, not least because I've never worn one (he said hastily). But had I done either of these things, I may have resorted to that increasingly common excuse: "I've been hacked."

The FBI is probing allegations that a number of Hollywood celebrities have been hacked, after semi-naked pictures of Scarlett Johansson leaked onto the internet, the agency said.

The photos, apparently taken by the actress herself, were published on gossip websites, while there were reports also of a hacked picture of Justin Timberlake, taken by actress Mila Kunis.

The hacker responsible for the recent attack on DigiNotar has claimed that he also has the ability to issue Windows updates.

Microsoft has denied that this is possible in a recent security statement issued last week. The hacker, known as Comodohacker, claims that this is not true and he has already reversed an “entire windows update protocol”.

Hackers sponsored by the Chinese government and other nations are collaborating with profit-driven malware gangs to infiltrate corporate networks storing government secrets and other sensitive data, researchers say.

It’s been a couple of months since Sony were in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, with the PSN going down and the Global Hacking scene blowing up.

Many were branding hackers as the bad guys, and while in some cases this is true, sometimes hackers just want to see how far they can push a piece of hardware – to make it do things they were never intended to do.

The CEO of a certificate-issuing company that was hacked in March is even more certain now that a wave of attacks against similar firms is backed by the Iranian government.

"I think even more so now than before," said Melih Abdulhayoglu, the CEO and founder of Comodo, a Jersey City, N.J.-based security company that is also one of hundreds of certificate authorities, or CAs, allowed to issue SSL (secure socket layer) certificates.

Ford and Bug Labs announced today they are creating a platform that will encourage users to modify computers in the automaker’s future cars, bringing together the creativity of computer hackers and car tinkerers.

The companies are launching an open-source in-car research and development platform called OpenXC. The platform is based on Bug Labs’ open-source Bug System. Ford and Bug Labs made the announcement at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference in San Francisco.

The computer world has a rich history of hackers who steered the progress of computer science and gave shape to computers, the internet and networking as we see it today — in some cases single-handedly.

And while yes, there are the Black Hat hackers behind internet mayhem, thievery, and chaos, there are also White Hat hackers who use their computer savvy for good. There’s also a different kind of hacker entirely: the tinkerer. They all played parts, big and small, in creating the computer world as it exists today. Here are 10 of the greatest: