Hackers

Sometimes hacking is about money; other times, it’s about competition, and when that happens, it is also about getting a little credit.

Enter RankMyHack.com. The site is described as the world’s “first elite hacker ranking system”, and invites people to submit proof of their Website hacks in exchange for points - the higher the points, the higher the place on the leader board.

With hammocks hanging from trees and the smell of marijuana lingering in the air, the summer camp organised by Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC) almost felt like Woodstock.

A growing number of illegal online pharmacies are flooding the Web trying to sell dangerous unauthorized prescriptions, according to a new report from cybersecurity experts at Carnegie Mellon University.

Report authors Nicolas Christin, associate director of the Information Networking Institute (INI) and a senior systems scientist at the INI and CyLab, Nektarios Leontiadis from the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), and Tyler Moore from Wellesley College, found that rogue websites were redirecting consumers to illicit pharmacies.

Cyber-attacks have dominated headlines this summer as government agencies, large organizations and small businesses have been hit by malware, distributed-denial-of-service attacks and network intrusions. On the personal front, individuals' email and social networking accounts have been hijacked.

According to Daniel Krebs an independent security researcher, hackers have started contending among themselves openly by providing DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) services that can help in causing websites to collapse. Signalnews reported this on August 2, 2011.

Apparently, several secret forums exist on which subscribers canvass their skills for carrying out devastating DDoS assaults in return for a payment.

The hacker-activist group Anonymous threatened cyber attacks against the Fullerton Police Department and the Bay Area Rapid Transit system after controversial police confrontations.

The threat to hack the Fullerton police website was in response to the death of homeless man Kelly Thomas during a confrontation with officers. The city deployed its information technology staff to secure computers and electronic communications and monitor the systems for any intrusions.

A support blog for alleged Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon was defaced on Friday morning.

Serial defacer TurkGuvenligi posted an image of an old fella spinning a plate (which looks a bit like a flying saucer) on his finger on the FreeGary support blog. An image of the defacement can be found here. We notified FreeGary.org's site administrators of the problem.

Cosmetics retailer Lush has narrowly escaped a hefty fine from the Information Commissioner after its website was hacked and customer account and credit card details stolen

The breach of the Data Protection Act and Lush's failure to process card details in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard mean 95 customers became victims of card fraud.

A Taiwanese political party suspects the Chinese government is behind a hacking attack that stole information about the party's election activities.

Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said on Tuesday that some of the attacks had been traced to China's Xinhua News Agency, a state-run press group. The attack operated as a phishing campaign, in which hackers impersonating other party employees sent DPP staffers email messages that asked the recipients to open attached files, which secretly contained viruses to monitor the computers, a DPP spokesperson said.

The Official BlackBerry Blog - Inside BlackBerry, has been defaced by TriCk of TeaMp0ison in retaliation to an earlier statement issued by RIM regarding full cooperation with telecom operators and law enforcement officials relating to the riots in London. The defacement included the text below and has been mirrored by Zone-H though it is pending verification:

Dear Rim;