Articles about Hacking

Hackers with the group Anonymous claimed Thursday that they had hacked into the servers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, it wouldn't release much of the gigabyte of information it stole because doing so would be "irresponsible," seemingly indicating some of the data may be sensitive to security interests.

"Yes, #NATO was breached. And we have lots of restricted material," the group tweeted over its @AnonymousIRC account. "In the next days, wait for interesting data :)"

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Anonymous and LulzSec issued a joint statement Wednesday, firing back at FBI director Steve Chabinsky over his comments to NPR that Tuesday's arrests of 14 hackers associated with the groups was meant to send a message that "chaos on the Internet is unacceptable." The response strikes a markedly political tone.

Posted to Pastebin, the statement accuses governments of lying to their citizens and "dismantling their freedom piece by piece," governments conspiring with corporations and wasting taxpayer money, and lobbyists having too much control over day-to-day business "and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change."

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At least a dozen individuals were arrested early Tuesday as the FBI expanded its investigation into the hacking group Anonymous. In conjunction with these arrests, raids were carried out in three homes -- two in Long Island, N.Y. and the other in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- as well as locations in California.

The FBI was not commenting on the raids directly but sources told Fox News that the raids were related to the federal government's widening probe of the activities of Anonymous. Arrests were made in California, Florida, and New Jersey. Charges against the detained individuals were not specified.

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There's an irony to today's LulzSec attacks on News Corp. websites. It's bad for newspapers to wiretap, but OK to hack them. That's the message from the hacktivists -- they're justified to break the law but no one else.

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Mischievous hacker group LulzSec on Monday repeatedly attacked websites belonging to international media conglomerate News Corporation, calling it "Murdoch Meltdown Monday."

At 5:40pm EST, LulzSec announced on Twitter that it had "owned" the UK news outlet The Sun, and replaced the front page with a fake one which proclaimed that News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch was found dead.

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Responding to Google's ban of +YourAnonNews on new social network Google+, "hacktivist" group Anonymous and Presstorm Media began discussing the possibility of a new social network called AnonPlus (or Anon+).

"This project is not overnight and will take many of those out there who simply want a better internet," the site's landing page says. "We will not be stopped by those looking to troll or those willing to stop the spreading of the truth. One thing i would like to point out that this project is for ALL people not just anonymous, this idea is a presstorm idea and only takes the name anon because of the Anonymity of the social network."

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Black hat security group Anonymous has exposed 90,000 military email addresses stored on servers from consulting firm and U.S. government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The hacker group said the breach was done to expose the corruption of government and related corporate entities.

Booz Allen Hamilton deals with all branches of the armed services as well as the defense and intelligence communities of the U.S. Government. It claims to provide, among other things, "strategy and technology solutions that help deter 21st century threats and meet complex mission requirements."

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The alarming tweets that went out a few hours ago are false, according to Fox News. They claimed that President Barack Obama had been shot while campaigning, which itself is red flag something wasn't right. What president would campaign on America's Independence Day nearly 18 months before the election?

"FoxNews.com's Twitter feed for political news, FoxNewspolitics, was hacked early Monday morning", according to a report by Fox News. "Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created".

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Now operating under the #AntiSec banner, the LulzSec hackers are still busy causing trouble. The latest data dump posted to torrent sites goes after several governments worldwide as well as both Viacom and Universal Music Group.

"While the LulzBoat is still sailing with us (albeit not with the LulzSec flag), the objective of #AntiSec is different," the description of the torrent reads. "#AntiSec is more than Lulz and more than even Anonymous: It is our true belief that this movement has the capability to change the world. And should that fail, we will at least rock the world."

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LulzSec may have faded off into the hacking annals of history, but Anonymous isn't resting. The group on Monday released a file of what appears to be a cyberterrorism training manual. It is not clear how the group obtained the document.

"Little teaser while we work on the actual release: Ever interested in anti-cyberterrorism training?" a tweet from a Twitter account associated with the group reads. The manual appears to come from FEMA's Counter Terrorism Defense Initiative and is dated from 2009.

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Or stated differently: Have the ill-winds of fate caught the Lulz Boat's sails?

Today, quite unexpectedly, LulzSec Security announced its retirement. "This is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could", according to a statement from the hacker group. "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind -- we hope -- inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love".

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LulzSec's theft and disclosure of "law enforcement sensitive" documents and personal information from the Arizona Dept. of Public Safety has caused quite an uproar over privacy and security, but it has also provided a glimpse into crime in the American Southwest, where cross-border drug trafficking is a major concern. For us, It has provided a look into the impact consumer technology has had on the criminal underworld in the last three years.

1. Laptop Drug Mule -- According to an intelligence bulletin from the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a passenger flying on Copa Airlines from Colombia to New York in March was caught with 1.6 kilos of heroin smuggled inside an HP laptop, mouse, external hard drive, ipod speakers, digital picture frame and mp3 player.

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Editor's note: Yesterday, hacker group LulzSec Security released a cache of documents taken from Arizona Dept. of Public Safety servers. The data dump included personal information, such as home address and spouse's name, for cops. Here, a victim from an earlier LulzSec data dump -- 62,000 stolen usernames and passwords, many connected to public services like AOL and Gmail -- has something to say about the group. This commentary is edited together from separate emails. Fearing reprisals, the LulzSec victim requests anonymity, so we can't fully verify the story. But based on email exchanges we're confident it's legit.

The feelings that morning as all my accounts were being shut down for no apparent reason was like my experience in Washington, DC on 9/11-- initially confusing. Then as news reports leaked out and I realized that I was a target, the panic ensued. Just [like] we were hearing that our building might possibly be a target of an aircraft on 9/11.

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Would WikiLeaks be so bold as to release personal information -- like home address and spouse's name -- of cops? That's exactly what hacker group LulzSec Security did late today. The hackers took the sensitive information from Arizona Dept. of Public Safety servers. The agency has confirmed the data breach.

Key takeaways you'll find in this post: 1) LulzSec chose a target that would be divisive regarding public opinion -- is this a hacktivist/anarchist group of do-gooders or terrorists? 2) One victim of LulzSec's earlier data disclosure calls the group "terrorists". 3) A Betanews poll finds respondents to be equally divided about whether LulzSec is a hacktivist group revealing secrets or cybercriminals who should be prosecuted.

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Whatever happened to disposable credit card numbers? They're a great idea and they can work really well, but few banks offer them and even those don't push them really hard. The problem is users: To use these numbers, users would have to think about their own security.

Almost every security proposal, especially the really broad ones, has an element of user education in it. "We've got to train users to look for these things and avoid them" or something to that effect. Many security experts will sigh and tell you that it's like teaching math to your dog. Not only will they not learn it, they don't even get the point.

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