Hacking

SEC accuses Latvian man of hacking brokerage accounts

January 31, 2012

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a Latvian man with participating in a scheme that manipulated the value of more than 100 New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq stocks.
 

Bug allows HP printers to be remotely hacked, set on fire

November 29, 2011

HP LaserJet printers do not validate the origin of remote firmware updates before applying them, meaning anyone could potentially reprogram them to access a corporate network -- or even light them on fire.
 

Illinois water pump failure not a cyberattack

November 28, 2011

An Illinois water utility pump failure may have been an accident caused by an employee -- not the work of foreign hackers.
 

AT&T struck with "organized" hacking attempt

November 22, 2011

Attackers attempted to use automated technologies to link AT&T telephone numbers with online accounts.
 

Anonymous leaks cybercrime investigator's private emails

November 21, 2011

The hack was carried out as part of Operation AntiSec, as revenge for police crackdowns against the Occupy Wall Street movement.
 

Water utilities in Illinois, Houston reportedly hacked

November 18, 2011

Hackers reportedly breached the systems of a company that makes supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, used to manage operations at critical infrastructure facilitates, and stole customer usernames and passwords.
 

Romanian hacker accused of breaking into NASA server

November 17, 2011

Robert Butyka was detained Tuesday in Cluj Napoca, Romania's fourth most populated city.
 

VCU server hacked to compromise personal data of 175K

November 14, 2011

Hackers accessed a sensitive computer server containing the personal information of faculty and students at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond.
 

Freezing assets and turning up the heat

Stephen Cobb, security evangelist at ESET • November 08, 2011

Victories in the fight against cybercrime, from indictments and arrests to asset recovery, should be celebrated, even if there are not yet enough of them.
 

Anonymous ready to continue with Operation Cartel

November 02, 2011

A plan by Anonymous to expose the details of people connected to one of the world's most dangerous drug cartels is back on after being briefly canceled, according to a video posted Wednesday.
 

Accused Scarlett Johansson hacker claims innocence

November 02, 2011

A Florida man pleaded innocent Tuesday to hacking into the email accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and dozens of other celebrities to steal photos, emails and other documents.
 

China disputes claim hackers breached U.S. satellites

October 31, 2011

China is denying a U.S. congressional committee's claim that hackers interfered with two government satellites.
 

Disgraced bike champ accused of cybercrime

October 26, 2011

Cyclist Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his Tour de France medal in 2006 following positive doping results, now faces arrest in France for his alleged involvement in planting a trojan on the computer network of the French national anti-doping laboratory (LNDD), which conducted the test. According to reports, French prosecutors said Landis and Arnie Baker, his coach at the time, employed a hacker at Kargus Consultants to plant the trojan in an attempt to steal documents from the lab for an appeals process they were pursuing. Kargus has also been suspected of breaking into Greenpeace and French utility company EDF. Prosecutors said Landis should serve an 18-month suspended prison sentence for his part in the alleged scheme.
 

Accused LulzSec hacker pleads innocent to Sony attack

October 18, 2011

A purported member of the hacktivist group LulzSec pleaded innocent Monday in federal court in Los Angeles to charges of hacking into the systems of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Cody Kretsinger, a.k.a. "recursion," 23, of Arizona is facing one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. He is accused of participating in a weeklong SQL injection attack, ending in early June, on the Sony Pictures site. The compromise resulted in the theft of data belonging to roughly one million users, some of which was publicly posted.
 

Celebrity email hacker arrested

October 14, 2011

A Florida man has been charged with hacking into the email accounts of Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera, Scarlett Johansson and dozens of other celebrities to steal photos, emails and other documents. Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville was nabbed following an 11-month police investigation dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi," according to an FBI statement this week. Once he had access to a victim's email account, which he obtained by using publicly available information, he allegedly changed the settings so that all of their emails would be automatically forwarded to him. He also stole private photos, which he offered to celebrity blogs. Chaney was charged with accessing and damaging protected computers without authorization, wiretapping and aggravated identity theft. He faces up to 121 years in prison.
 

MySQL.com hacked to distribute malware

September 26, 2011

Visitors to MySQL.com on Monday were greeted with a drive-by download that attempted to silently install malware on their machine.
 

NBC Twitter hack attributed to 'Christmas tree' trojan

September 14, 2011

A group of hacktivists was able to compromise the NBC News Twitter account on Friday by tricking the network's social media head into clicking on a malicious attachment. According to an MSNBC report, a group known as The Script Kiddies commandeered control of the account to send a series of tweets falsely reporting an attack on Ground Zero in New York, two days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The mischief makers may have obtained the account's login information by duping Ryan Osborn, NBC News' director of social media, into clicking on an attachment, which installed a copy of the password-stealing "Christmas tree" trojan onto his machine. The erroneous tweets were removed soon after they were posted, and the FBI is looking into the matter. Twitter has since suspended the account of the The Script Kiddies, who also have hacked into the Facebook account of Pfizer.
 

Chinese documentary depicts attack against U.S. target

August 24, 2011

A Chinese military documentary appears to offer a rare glimpse of an actual state-sponsored hacking tool being used to attack a U.S. website affiliated with the dissident Falun Gong religious movement.
 

Hackers break into sensitive Purdue University server

August 19, 2011

A computer server containing the personal information of thousands of former Purdue University students was accessed by hackers.
 

AntiSec hackers release cache of police data

August 08, 2011

The leak, dubbed "Shooting Sherifs Saturday," contains more than 10 GB of stolen data belonging to sheriff's offices for mostly rural towns across the country.
 

Former HBGary Federal CEO bows out of DEFCON talk

July 27, 2011

Former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr has withdrawn from a scheduled appearance at the DEFCON conference after being threatened with legal action, according to a report.
 

Credit card fraudster sentenced to ten years in prison

July 26, 2011

Rogelio Hackett Jr., 25, of Lithonia, Ga., stole more than 675,000 stolen credit card numbers used to conduct fraudulent transactions totaling more than $36 million.
 

Senate hearing set to update anti-hacking law

July 25, 2011

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee next week plans to hold a hearing focused on updating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a national anti-hacking law first enacted in 1984 that makes it illegal to access government or financial institution computers without authorization. A White House cybersecurity legislative plan to Congress, released in May, proposed broadening the scope of CFAA and increase penalties under the statute. Witnesses for the hearing are scheduled to include James Baker, associate deputy attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice, and Pablo Martinez, deputy special agent in charge of the Criminal Investigative Division of the U.S. Secret Service. The hearing is planned for 10 a.m. on Aug. 3 and can be viewed online.
 

Lady Gaga website hacked to expose users' data

July 18, 2011

The personal information belonging to thousands of Lady Gaga fans was stolen after hackers breached the singer's U.K. website.
 

Newspaper hacks hacking? Not exactly

David Harley, ESET senior research fellow • July 11, 2011

A newspaper's unauthorized access to voicemail has had wide and serious repercussions, but what does it mean to those of us who aren't celebrities?
 

Secret Service probing Fox Twitter hack

July 05, 2011

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the compromise of the the Twitter account belonging to Fox News Politics, which was used to post a number of fake tweets reporting that President Obama had been assassinated, an agency spokesman told SCMagazineUS.com. A hacking group known as The Script Kiddies, an offshoot of Anonymous, has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to reports. The fraudulent tweets, delivered to some 38,000 followers of @foxnewspolitics during the early morning hours EST on Monday, have since been removed from the feed. It is unclear how the hackers got access to the account.
 

Suspected LulzSec member arrested, in custody in London

June 21, 2011

Police believe they have apprehended a major cog in the LulzSec hacking collective's wheel, but the group said the suspect was, at best, a fringe associate.
 

Bitcoin currency exchange compromised, database stolen

June 20, 2011

The largest Bitcoin currency exchange market, Mt.Gox, is currently offline after suffering a cyberattack that caused the market to crash.
 

Three Anonymous members arrested for DDoS, hacks

June 10, 2011

Three members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous have been arrested in Spain, but the group has promised revenge to the country.
 

Greek police arrest man accused of hacking U.S. sites

June 09, 2011

Police in Greece have arrested an 18-year old man suspected of hacking into computer systems belonging to the Pentagon, National Security Agency, FBI and Interpol, according to reports. The unnamed hacker, who used the alias "nsplitter," faces charges of hacking, fraud and illegal weapons possession. In addition to infiltrating government sites, the man also is reportedly accused of participating in credit card fraud. Greek police arrested the teen in his home in Athens on Monday. U.S. and French authorities aided in the investigation.