Legislation cracking down on rogue websites could inadvertently help hackers who have struck major corporate and government targets in recent weeks, a group of computer science experts said on Thursday.
“America is getting hacked,” security consultant Dan Kaminsky said at a Center for Democracy and Technology briefing. “On a deep architectural level, we have to fix this or our economy cannot work.”
German police took months to notice that computer hackers had infiltrated federal police and customs service computers, media reports said Sunday, citing unnamed cyber security officials.
The Bild am Sonntag paper cited a confidential report by the BSI, the federal agency for cybernet security in Dusseldorf, as saying that federal police computers came under attack by hackers in September 2010.
Senior figures in his public relations team believe they had their telephones hacked into by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was working exclusively for the News of the World. Sir Paul was represented at the time by the Outside Organisation, one of Britain’s biggest entertainment PR companies.
Ironically, the company later employed Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World who was arrested last week, as its managing director. Outside is expected to sever all ties with Mr Wallis later this week.
The president of Sony Network Entertainment called the four-week outage of the PlayStation Network a "great experience," he said Wednesday. Moreover, he said that sales have been "better than ever".
Tim Schaaff, the president of Sony Network Entertainment sat down with VentureBeat executive editor Dylan Tweney on Wednesday for a wide-ranging chat at the MobileBeat conference here. Tweney asked Schaaff how Sony had recovered from the outage, which dominated headlines for weeks.
Agricultural biotech giant Monsanto confirmed today that it had been victimized by a hacking attack that the online activist collective Anonymous had announced on Tuesday.
Cyberwarfare in 2011 is an odd beast. Many Western governments reportedly actively monitor rivals and engage in online sabotage, while countries ranging from Israel to Iran to India also engage in cyberwarfare programs of their own. But it's attacks against the American government and commercial websites such as Google that grab headlines.
A group calling itself NN-Crew says it has broken into a server used by Germany's Federal Police and stolen a large amount of data used to GPS-track suspects under surveillance. The police apparently used the hacked server as a data pool and server to download GPS tracking software; it also contained instructions for installation and operation of that software. Criminal investigators require authentication for server access. The surveillance data published by NN-Crew included several usernames and passwords along with telephone numbers, license plate numbers, locations, and coordinates.
Hackers seized control of a PayPal Twitter feed for more than an hour on Tuesday, then sent out messages criticising the payment processor in the second attack of its type in two days.
The hijacking of the PayPalUK Twitter feed came a day after hackers took control of a Fox News feed for more than five hours, then sent false tweets saying that US President Barack Obama had been shot dead.
If you went to the website of Sony Music Ireland (sonymusic.ie) earlier today you would have discovered some astonishing celebrity stories:
WarGames.MY 2011, Malaysia’s first online Capture The Flag (CTF) competition, recently held on the 2nd July 2011, saw Malaysian hackers battle for fame and fortune during the 24 hours event. The competition attracted as many as 99 teams signing up for the competition however only 30 teams actually competed for the cash prize of RM2000, sponsored by System Defenders Sdn. Bhd, complimentary passes to HITBSecConf2011 – Malaysia, sponsored by Hack In The Box. Sdn. Bhd. and most importantly, the fame and glory of being crowned champions in Malaysia’s first online CTF competition!
