Hackers

The hacking free-for-all continued this week as Sega apparently became the latest victim of a network breach and none other than hacking group LulzSec offered to help the game company by taking down the responsible parties.

The blog PlayStation LifeStyle posted yesterday what it said was a letter sent by Sega to users of its Sega Pass service, informing them that "unauthorized entry was gained" to the Sega Pass database and that the company is investigating.

Sega has become the latest gaming company to fall victim to digital ne'er-do-wells, with the company's Sega Pass system having been cracked wide open by forces unknown.

In an e-mail to members, Sega admits that recent downtime on the service - which has been unavailable since yesterday - was caused by a security breach. "Over the last 24 hours we have identified that unauthorised entry was gained to our Sega Pass database," the e-mail reads.



Computer hackers who promise "high-quality entertainment at your expense" claimed to have taken down the Central Intelligence Agency website in support of WikiLeaks, but as of Thursday morning, the website appeared to be operating normally.

"WikiLeaks supporters, LulzSec, take down CIA... who has task force into WikiLeaks," the hackers, who call themselves "Lulz Security," said on Twitter late Wednesday. WikiLeaks, Julian Assange's group that facilitates the release of secret information, reposted the message on its own Twitter feed.

The Metasploit team is looking for exploits for 30 security vulnerabilities, for which it is offering bounties of up to $500 each.

After writing an article about a Department of Justice report, stating the FBI focuses on catching kiddie porn perps and many agents lack the know-how to work on national security issues, I was contacted by a man who says he's worked with the FBI to catch hackers. You might be surprised at how hard it can be for an IT professional to work with the FBI on a hacker case. This is one IT professional's story.

The “hacktivist” group, Anonymous, posted a mission statement to Pastebin on June 12 describing the reasoning behind their planned and upcoming attack on official Malaysian government websites. Anonymous warned, “We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom, we [will be] obligated to act fast and have no mercy.”

Citigroup Inc. waited as long as three weeks to notify credit-card customers of a hacking attack because it was conducting an investigation and producing replacement cards, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The internal investigation took 10 to 12 days and began within 24 hours of the discovery by Citigroup officials in early May that the New York bank's systems had been breached, this person said. In some cases, Citigroup took action to protect accounts considered vulnerable to fraud.

The International Monetary Fund suffered a "major breach" earlier this year that allowed hackers to access a "large quantity" of data, staff and board members were told by e-mail last week. The organization has made no public statement, but sources speaking to the New York Times said that breach lasted several months, with a source "familiar with the attack" telling Bloomberg that the attack was the work of an unspecified foreign government.

Last April, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was compromised when a hacker corrupted the game causing Xbox Live to send out "potential phishing attempts." That problem received immediate attention from Microsoft and Infinity Ward, and the issue has since been resolved. So why is it that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has been experiencing hacking problems on Xbox Live since February 2011, but nothing has been done about it?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suffered a major hack, according to media reports this weekend.

The organisation, already making the headlines following the arrest and resignation of its boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn (whose alleged perpetration of a sexual assault has itself been used as springboard for malware attacks), attempts to oversee financial crises around the world and promote economic development.