Articles about Hacking

Despite many reports to the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that downtime experienced by Facebook, Instagram and Tinder was anything to do with Lizard Squad. Earlier today, the three services were inaccessible for a short while and Lizard Squad took to Twitter to announce the outages.

The tweet, which read "Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad" was taken as an admission of guilt and reported as such by many, many websites. Even when Facebook announced that the downtime came as a result of a system change by Facebook, site after site continued to report that Lizard Squad was to blame.

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In the race to the bottom of security, Flash has remained a strong contender, competing with Java to win the competition. It's really nothing against Adobe, the company seems to try fairly hard to keep things safe. It's more that Flash is so popular that it becomes a primary target. Something Microsoft would know a thing or two about, given the success of Windows.

The company has issued its latest security bulletin. It isn't the best of news -- the report seems to encapsulate two vulnerabilities, and both are being exploited in the wild.

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The past few weeks have not been kind to hacking group Lizard Squad. They've managed to raise the ire of the last possible group of folks you'd wish to anger -- Anonymous. The organization is also experiencing arrests of its members, thanks to poor procedures put in place for identity protection. But the latest blow may come as poetic justice to many people.

The loosely-knit hacker communicative has been trying to sell its wares online -- namely DDoS for hire services. Unfortunately for it, and rather fortunately for the rest of us, the offering has been hacked. According to multiple reports LizardStresser.su was compromised.

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While the news of the recent Sony hack has died down, it certainly isn't forgotten. The simple fact remains that we still have no clear answer on who was responsible. The US government blamed North Korea and initiated sanctions on the nation, though no real evidence was put forth to support this alleged misdeed, leaving the move to reek of political motivation.

The simple fact that the hackers originally asked for money, as if it were a hostage situation, seems to point away from state-sponsored wrongdoing, but we simply don't know the real truth, and perhaps never will. All we really know is there's a lack of evidence for this case. We'd be safe in speculating a jury would be unlikely to convict the country.

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Cyber crime investigators have arrested an 18-year-old man in the UK for the attacks of the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network that took place over Christmas. This is something that Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for, but at the moment it is not clear whether the man who has been arrested is associated with the group.

South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) worked in conjunction with the FBI and the UK's National Cyber Crime Unit to home in on the unnamed man believed to have been involved in the DDoS attacks. Thousands of gamers had their Christmases spoiled after the gaming networks were rendered inaccessible, leading Sony to offer compensation to those affected.

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The US and UK usually get on pretty well, but plans are afoot for the two nations to stage cyberwar on each other. Later this year, Wall Street and the City of London will be subjected to a series of attacks that is being described as "unprecedented".

But this does not signal a breakdown in the "special relationship" that extends across the Atlantic, rather the "war games" are part of a venture between the two countries to help improve security. The aim is to expand information sharing in a bid to stave off real cyber attacks that could be launched by other nations.

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The other day I wrote about hacker collective Anonymous, covering its war on Lizard Squad and its vow to now go after terrorists. This isn't the slippery slope that some may think it is. The group isn't attacking Islam, it is targeting the extremists responsible for the murders of people. That clarification makes it hard to not be behind them. After all, entire governments have been doing this in a less technological way.

Those promised threats are now no longer just promises. Anonymous has taken down its first target -- ansar-alhaqq.net (we aren't linking to them), rendering the site, which was deemed a terrorist hive back in 2013, completely inaccessible. Reaching the site is now impossible as the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) targeting of it is well underway.

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Let's get one basic thing out of the way -- incidents are sometimes used for political maneuvering. That's not always the case and I'll be making no accusations, as the information simply cannot confirm nor deny anything about the recent Sony hack, or North Korea's possible role in it. We can, however, defer to more expert opinion.

As for background, if you could possibly have missed this story, Sony was hacked rather badly and the big thing that came out of it was the movie The Interview, which ends with the death of Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea. The US government, in turn, accused the nation of perpetrating the act. That seems an odd thing, given that those responsible released the ending of the movie, which would be detrimental to North Korea.

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North Korea has reacted angrily to the sanctions imposed on it by the US. President Obama signed an Executive Order putting sanctions in place after an FBI investigation placed the blame for the hack of Sony Pictures firmly at the door of Pyongyang.

North Korea continues to deny involvement in the hack which was sparked by Sony's comedy movie The Interiew in which North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, is assassinated. The country's state-run news agency issued an angry statement accusing the US of "groundlessly stirring up bad blood".

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Barack Obama today signed an Executive Order imposing sanctions against North Korea following the well-publicized hack of Sony Pictures. The move comes after the "recent cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment and the threats against movie theaters and moviegoers" which the US has pinned on North Korea following FBI investigations.

Although not directly named, the announcement of the sanctions makes clear reference to the movie The Interview which was pulled from theaters following a series of threats. The Executive Order is described as a reaction to attempt to "undermine U.S. cyber-security and intimidate U.S. businesses and artists exercising their right of freedom of speech".

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You don’t have to be a gamer to be aware that Microsoft and Sony's gaming networks were hit by DDoS attacks over Christmas. Hacking group Lizard Squad found itself on the receiving end of threats from Anonymous after disrupting gamers' holiday fun, and PlayStation owners found themselves unable to enjoy online games.

To thank its users for putting up with the outage, Sony is offering compensation to PlayStation Network users. As well as extending PlayStation Plus memberships by five days to make up for holiday disruption, the company is also offering all PlayStation Network users a discount code for the PlayStation Store.

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You know what it's like. You have a niggling desire to launch a DDoS attack on a website but there are a couple of problems. You might not know how to do it, you might not want to run the risk of getting caught, or you might, you know, be too lazy to do it yourself. Never fear, Lizard Squad is on hand to help you out.

The hacker collective hit the headlines over the holidays after taking out the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. It then claimed to have had a (small) hand in the hack of Sony, but now the aim appears to be to monetize the whole venture. Lizard Squad has launched a service called LizardStresser that could be used to launch DDoS attacks.

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To many people Lizard Squad comprises a collection of attention-seeking skiddies looking for their five minutes of fame. To others, they are the group that ruined Christmas by taking down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live over the holiday period. Of course, it didn't end there. There were then claims of attacks on the Tor network, but the group's impact might be even more high-profile than first thought.

While not claiming full responsibility for the now infamous hacking of Sony, Lizard Squad has said that it provided Sony login details to the people who did. A man identifying himself as a Lizard Squad administrator said that Sony employee details were given to Guardians of Peace (GoP), one of the groups at whom the finger of suspicion is pointing.

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German researchers have discovered that technology from the 1980s can be used by hackers anywhere in the world to spy on your phone calls and text messages.

The Signaling System 7 (SS7) network, which is still in use today, could allow hackers using an African or Asian network, for example, to hack into a US or UK-based mobile.

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So which country boasts the most skilled hackers? Well, that would be Russia and China, at least according to a new report from MWR InfoSecurity.

In a survey of UK cyber-security pros, MWR found that 34 percent believed the most skilled hackers are Russian. China was second, although quite some distance behind Russia with 18 percent saying Chinese hackers were the most highly skilled.

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