Much of the talk about Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufacturer the iPad and iPhone for Apple, these past couple of weeks has been in relation to the ongoing concern over its treatment of its employees however today bring s the news that the company suffered a major hack attack.

A group calling themselves Swagg Security; using an Internet Explorer vulnerability that had been left unpatched by a Foxconn employee, managed to break into the Foxconn network and leaked the login for every employee, including the company CEO, on to the web. They said that the only reason they attempted the security breach of the Foxconn servers was to prove that it could be done.

All the information gathered from the hack was bundled together and put up on the web as torrent which the group encouraged everyone to download and use. Apparently with the information you could place fake orders with the company using the names of Foxconn’s vendor partners like Apple and Microsoft.

They also released this statement about the attack:

“This is Swagg Security, we aim to to reshape your perspectives, our perspectives, by the inducing of entertainment. A unique approach to spreading a unique philosophy which brings the sought after tranquility. In a way we are “hacktivist”, but in our own views we are Greyhats. We believe there is no reality in hacktivism, even with good intentions. We know those who claim to be “hacktivists” that inside of you, a suppressed part of you, enjoys playing a part in the anarchist event of hacking of an infrastructure. One which at the same time presents a challenge, upon completing reveals an almost unknown feeling of a menacing satisfaction. We encourage not to continue quelling such a natural emotion but to embrace it. Only when embracing what society has taught you to hinder, is when you realize your own identity” Swagg Security statement

via SlashGear

iPad manufacturer Foxconn gets hacked is a post from: The Inquisitr

VeriSign Inc. is responsible for the integrity of web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov, directing traffic for half the world’s internet users and on Thursday it revealed that company systems were hacked towards the end of 2011 with hackers gaining access to several servers inside the company’s network.

In responding to the attack VeriSign executives said they ”do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network.”

It’s that DNS network that ensures users land at the right numeric Internet Protocol when typing in a url such as Facebook.com.

Taking down VeriSign would deal a critical blow to internet companies, the organization currently serves more than 50 billion queries daily and gaining access to its DNS server could allow hackers to redirect users to any website they choose. For example typing Google.com could take users to a scam survey. Access could also allow hackers to steal government and corporate emails and potentially steal government data through secure channels.

In hearing the new Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security exclaimed to Reuters:

“Oh my God. That could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net.”

News of the successful hack arrived in the company’s quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in October in which the agency promised to deliver better reporting of security breaches to investors.

While the DNS side of the company’s business appeared to remain untouched VeriSign is also known for protecting customer sites and managing their traffic. It’s hard to take a “Protected by VeriSign” logo seriously when they can’t protect their own servers.

Along with DNS and customer protection the company also houses the information for thousands of small, medium and large scale customers.

At this time VeriSign executives are denying interview requests and employees have been given almost no information pertaining to the data breach.

Luckily in August 2010 VeriSign sold it’s Secure Sockets Layer certificates business to Symantec. If hackers had figured out how to crack that system they could gain access to https accounts, for example they could break a banks certificates and gain access to bank accounts around the world. The VeriSign brand name is still connected to those certificates but they are no longer managed by the company.

Symantec spokeswoman Nicole Kenyon revealed:

“There is no indication that the 2010 corporate network security breach mentioned by VeriSign Inc was related to the acquired SSL product production systems.”

In the meantime VeriSign admitted in their filing that they are often the subject of ”the most sophisticated form of attacks” that are “virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against.”

Do you think VeriSign is doing a good job of protecting website and user data the best they can in a market full of new and sophisticated attacks?

VeriSign Servers Hacked, Very Few Details Reviewed In SEC Filing is a post from: The Inquisitr

Anonymous, a hacker group that’s gained quite the buzz and reputation lately, denied that they will be taking down Facebook this weekend on January 28th. Rumors have been spiraling all over the Internet after a video surfaced on Youtube talking about taking down the social network.

The hacker group denied the rumor on their Twitter account. Lately, the group has went after a number of websites in relation to the SOPA and PIPA protests all across the Internet. Thankfully, SOPA was pulled from Congress and the vote for PIPA was delayed.

In regards to the fake video uploaded, here’s some details:

“An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the government of the United States,” the video narrator says. “While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from Congress, this does not guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld.”

“The video goes on to say that taking down Facebook would be the “greatest Internet protest and first official cyber war.” The voice scoffs at the idea that Facebook is too big to destroy. “While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to take it down.”

“The video also tells viewers that “there is no way you can get caught. Hundreds of thousands of us … will all be participating. They cannot take down that large of a group.”

When something is popular, some people tend to latch on and milk it for what’s worth, or cause problems. While this is one of many rumors, it’s definitely not the last.

What do you think about Anonymous and what they’re doing?

Anonymous Not Shutting Down Facebook Despite Rumors is a post from: The Inquisitr

Online hacktivist group Anonymous has begun hacking and taking down various US and Industry websites after popular file hosting site Megauploaded was shut down on Thursday by U.S. officials.

In the groups Twitter messages they touted the ability to take down websites from the U.S. Department of Justice, Universal Music, and the Motion Picture Association of America (Tweet pictured above).

The Anonymous Twitter account then goes on to note:

“The Largest Attack Ever by Anonymous – 5,635 People Confirmed Using #LOIC Bring Down Sites!”

LOIC refers to Low Orbit Ion Cannon, a tool Anonymous and its supports user to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks on websites.

Later into the campaign Anonymous tweeted about their “largest attack ever.”

In IRC chats surrounding the groups activities include various website such as the:

Recording Industry of America (RIAA), the White House, the FBI, BMI.com, Copyright.com, Viacom, Anti-piracy.be/nl, Vivendi.fr, Hadopi.fr, and ChrisDodd.com (who now heads the RIAA).

In the meantime the arrival of SOPA and PIPA protesters have seemed to push hacktivists further then they have done in the past on such a scale, noting on the Anonymous account:

“Seems like some friendly ships are launching torpedos justice.gov as we speak. The site seems down to us! (via @AnonOpsSweden).”

While the group AnonOps adds:

“Tango down! universalmusic.com & justice.gov// #Megaupload.”

“Anonymous/Megaupload backlash update: http://RIAA.ORG is now Tango Down | #OpPayback #OpMegaupload #SOPA #PIPA,” another tweet from that account said.

There is still no official word from MegaUpload and it’s unknown as this time what will happen to user fees that were paid to use the service with a premium membership.

Are you surprised by the outrage felt by Anonymous and its hacktivist followers or do you believe MegaUpload should have been allowed to remain in business?

Anonymous Attacks US Government And Business Websites After MegaUpload Gets Shutdown is a post from: The Inquisitr

Previously we mentioned hackers targeting a South African bank and it looks like this time, hackers went after a United Arab Emirates bank and Arab Bank. While no money was stolen in this case or user accounts compromised, they managed to completely shut down the websites.

No one knows the names of the people behind the attack except that it is the work of Israeli hackers who operate under the name ‘IDF Team’. The hacker group had mentioned the day before their plan to shut down the central bank website as well as the website of Arab Bank.

Via Financial Times:

“Both sites were inaccessible on Thursday. UAE Central Bank officials brushed aside the significance of their site being compromised, saying talks with the European delegation, which included Mr Draghi and a number of ECB governors, were their top priority.”

“We have been busy here,” said Sultan bin Nasser al-Suwaidi, governor of the UAE Central Bank, when asked about the hack. “There are IT technicians who will take care of it.”

As to how they pulled off the attack and took both websites down, it became very clear.

“The sites are likely to have been hit by denial-of-service attacks, which use a network of computers to flood the system running a website with requests, causing it to break down. Often the computers used for such attacks have been infected by viruses that allow hackers to control the machines remotely, without the knowledge of their owner.”

Hackers and various groups have been taking down sites and causing disruption for years and doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

What would you do if your website got taken down by hackers?

Hackers Attack Two Banking Websites And Bring Both Offline is a post from: The Inquisitr

Hackers continue to plug away and a recent case didn’t involve worms or compromising customer data, but stealing cold hard cash. A group of hackers over a three day period, managed to get away with $6.7 Million from Postbank in South Africa, the nation’s post office service.

One has to wonder how they managed to pull it off over a three day period and why no alarms were made. The group pulled it off over a holiday weekend which is one reason why. Here’s how the attack went down:

“Once the offices were closed for the New Year holidays, the gang put their plan in motion. They accessed the computer from a remote location and used it to break into Postbank’s server system and transfer money from various accounts into the ones they opened.”

“Having also raised the withdrawal limits on those accounts, money mules had no problem withdrawing great amounts of money from ATMs in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State during the next few days, stopping completely when the offices were opened again on January 3.”

Had they had more time, they could have potentially got away with Millions more. While the fraud detection system should have worked, well, it clearly didn’t. Postbank’s fraud detection didn’t work period and was one of the biggest reasons why the hackers got away with all the money.

Upon further investigation, it’s no surprise says a banking security expert considering their network and security systems are very outdated and in a serious need of an upgrade. Thanks to insurance, they will likely get their money back, but it’s not something you want to have happen in the first place.

What would you do if you had Millions of dollars in the bank and some people stole it?

Hackers Get Away With $6.7 Million From South African Bank is a post from: The Inquisitr

Israel is taking hacking quite seriously after a hacker with the name “OxOmar”, said he had posted 11,000 credit card details online Thursday. This was also behind him saying that ”greatest Saudi Arabian hacker team” posted details of a whopping 400,000 credit cards earlier in the week.

Israel said that they “will respond to cyber-attacks in the same way it responds to violent “terrorist” acts, by striking back with force against hackers who threaten the Jewish state.”

Hacking continues to be a problem for countries and companies with various movements such as Anonymous and also hackers focused on exposing information for personal financial gain, such as what happened with the over 400,000 credit card details.

The good part is that despite the leak of such information, Israel’s three largest credit card companies reported only 6,050 of the 11,000 exposed being affected and just 14,000 of the 400,000 had been exposed.

Cyber attacks are starting to be viewed as a terrorist act and whenever you throw that word around, the consequences can become even more serious. Granted, no one is being killed in the process, but that doesn’t matter in the eyes of the government.

With that said, if the hacker “OxOmar” along with these supposed Saudi Arabian hackers are caught, they could face some serious jail time and won’t be touching a computer for a long time, that’s for sure.

“Hackers stand warned, Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon said. “They are putting themselves in danger and that they will not benefit from any immunity against reprisal actions from Israel.” Cyber-attacks amount to “terrorism that must be treated as such. In cyberspace, we have active capacities and we can hit those who try to hit us.”

Israel To Hackers: “We’ll Respond The Same Way We Do To Terrorist Acts” is a post from: The Inquisitr

In an effort to squash bugs and stomp out security exploits, Facebook has begun handing out Visa debit cards to white hat hackers–or “security researchers”–for any bugs and/or exploits they’re able to find.

Researchers can receive a “White Hat Bug Bounty” Visa debit card that acts just as a credit card would. The more bugs and exploits hackers are able to sniff out, the more Facebook will refill the debit card, with a minimum payment said to be $500.

Interestingly, it doesn’t look like there’s a maximum payment, so security researchers could potentially be looking at a significant reward if a serious vulnerability is spotted. There is, of course, a catch to all of this however.

In order for white hat hackers to receive their payout (and not be sued), they must agree not to leak the vulnerability within a “reasonable amount of time” (leaking vulnerabilities is a common last resort method among hackers to force a company to address any vulnerabilities they’re able to find), and must make a “good faith effort” in avoiding privacy violations.

ZDNet reports that the highest bounty paid so far is $5,000, and has been paid out several times. To date, Facebook says that they’ve received help from 84 different researchers.

via ZDNet

Facebook hands out Visa debit cards to white hat hackers is a post from: The Inquisitr

The British Broadcasting Corporation is reporting an interesting proposal being floated around by the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.  Hackers attending the conference want to create a private Internet by putting their own network of communications satellites into Orbit.  The proposed project is being called the Hackerspace Global Grid.

The Hackerspace Global Grid will consist of a series of communications satellites in orbit in addition to a series of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.  They also state that a long term goal is to put a private astronaut on the moon.

The hacker activist Nick Farr started soliciting donors and participants for the project back in August.  I was due to a number of proposed laws which will censor the internet that caused him to start the project.

Mr Farr was quoted as saying “The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let’s take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities,”

There are a whole host of issues with launching this type of system.  Satellites that are usually launched by governmental entities or large corporation have the benefit of being placed in orbit by a rocket.  This makes communication easy as ground centers know exactly where the satellite is.  It also can put it in a stationary orbit right near the equator, which allows it to be “still” above a target.

The biggest drawback to this type of system is that from the height of these satellites, there is usually quite a delay in the signal causing problems for most applications.

If launched by amateurs, the satellites will be in low orbit making sure there is no delay but they will only be “visible to each ground station for a brief moment every 90 minutes.  The only real way to overcome this is by having many satellites and many ground stations to pick up on the data.

The group says it wants to have a prototype to show the world at next years conventions, let’s see if they can do it.

Do you see the benefit to a private internet?

Anger Over SOPA Prompts Hackers to Propose Private Satellites is a post from: The Inquisitr

Mobile experts from Security Research Labs warned on Sunday that a vulnerability in a widely used wireless technology can be exploited by hackers to take control of your smartphone and use it to send text messages and make calls without your knowledge, Fox News is reporting.

The vulnerability exists in GSM networks, the type that run about 80% of the world’s phones.  If hackers exploit this loophole, they could use your phone to call premium service text and pay lines to charge huge bills to victims.

The Security service told the conference that while hackers had been able to hack individual phones in the past, this type of attack could commandeer hundreds of thousands of cellphones in seconds.

Even though the security firm says they will not reveal the code at the conference, it is usually within weeks of these kinds of announcements that hacking networks figure out how to do it on their own.

This type of vulnerability has already been done and in fact is fairly common in business based landlines.  Hackers set up huge networks of bogus pay per service lines and have thousands of landlines call them at once charging huge bills to the business.  The telephone company who provides the lines usually winds up taking a large hit for the problem.

The security company said that most GSM providers have been lacking when it comes to network security.  A lot of times they are able to provide higher levels of security just by constantly updating their internal software.

Researchers reviewed operators in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Slovakia, Switzerland and Thailand.

Security Experts: 80% of All Smartphones Vulnerable to Hijack Scams is a post from: The Inquisitr

According to Twitter, the group claims to have access to Stratfor’s super secret client list which includes such names as the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, Goldman Sachs and the now defunct MF Global.

In an embarrassing turn of events for the Global Security Think Tank, “Anonymous” claims to have been able to obtain all the credit card data because Stratfor never bothered to encrypt it.  If this charge is true it will be a major embarrassment for the firm.

Stratfor sent an e-mail to all clients saying they had suspended all access to their servers until they could figure out if they had truly been hacked and what precautions they would have to take in order to rectify the problem.

Fox News in reporting the email as saying “We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites, We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained.”

“Anonymous” relayed through Twitter that it had many targets lined up for this week to celebrate the holidays.

According to Wikipedia “Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a group, whose members are geographically spread around the world but connected through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, chaotic, global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.”

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, the Church of Scientology, and many music industry trade groups.

Do you think that “Anonymous” hacking is a true form of civil disobedience or a criminal organization?

Stratfor Global Intelligence Victim of “Anonymous” Hackers is a post from: The Inquisitr

A report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released today says that on two separate occasions, hackers managed to take over U.S. satellites in 2008.

The first satellite hacking listed in the report was of NASA’s Terra Eos satellite in June of 2008. The report says that the breach allowed hackers to issue commands to the satellites, but NASA wasn’t able to find any evidence of the satellite receiving any commands from the hackers.

The satellite was hacked again in October of 2008, and again hackers managed to have full access to the satellite, but no commands were issued in that instance either. The report says that the Landsat-7 satellite, operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, was also hacked in 2007 and 2008, but in neither cases did hackers have command-level access.

The report says that the hackers responsible for the satellite hacks haven’t been found, but the report goes on to note that the attacks must have been from a nation of power, and Chinese military documents referenced attacks on ground-based space communications facilities.

“Chinese military writings advocate attacks on space-to ground communications links and ground-based satellite control facilities in the event of a conflict. Such facilities may be vulnerable,” the report noted, “In recent years, two U.S. government satellites have experienced interference apparently consistent with the cyber exploitation of their control facility.”

Source: USCC (via ABC News)

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

Two U.S. satellites hacked multiple times, report says is a post from: The Inquisitr

Duqu is one of the most intricate, mysterious viruses to be released in several years, matched only in complexity by its predecessor, Stuxnet, but there’s apparently a lighter side to the virus hidden away in the code.

When digging about the source code of an earlier version for clues on how Duqu works and who made it, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab discovered an “easter egg” of sorts: a reference to Showtime’s hit television show Dexter.

One of the lines of code, referencing a fake font that is utilized in the attack, reads:

“Copyright 2003 Showtime Inc. All rights reserved. Dexter Regular version 1.00. Dexter is a registered trademark of Showtime Inc.”

That the creators have a sense of humor (and a love for Dexter) wasn’t the only thing Kapersky Lab learned about Duqu in their digging, however. When investigating an earlier variant of the virus, researchers discovered a driver signed in 2007, suggesting that development on Duqu could have begun as early as four years ago.

“We can’t be 100% sure [of that date], but all the compiled dates of other files seem to match to attacks,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher with Kaspersky, in an interview today (via Computer World). “So we’re leaning towards that date as correct.”

Microsoft has yet to release a patch, but in the interim they’ve offered a temporary fix for the vulnerability. You can find out more about that at this link.

Duqu creators apparently have a thing for Dexter is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, recently announced plans to boost cybersecurity spending by up to 50% over the next five years.

At least some of that extra cash will be devoted to boosting the US Military’s cyber arsenal, allowing our military to be just as effective in cyberspace as they are on the ground in offensive attacks. Additionally, DARPA wants to beef up their defenses, admitting that their security isn’t exactly where they want it to be.

“Modern warfare will demand the effective use of cyber, kinetic, and combined cyber and kinetic means,” said agency director Regina Dugan, speaking before a DARPA ‘cyber colloquium’ held at a hotel in Virginia. “We need more options, we need more speed, and we need more scale. We must both protect its peaceful shared use as well as prepare for hostile cyber acts that threaten our military capabilities.”

Dugan was speaking to a collection of what she referred to as “visionary hackers” and various academics and cybersecurity experts at the event. DARPA is essentially reaching out to the cyber community for help in light of growing concerns about the security of government networks.

She admitted that while security of sensitive government infrastructure network has grown over the past several years, the reality is that it’s still too easy to gain access to the networks. Just last week, the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a branch of the US government, told Congress that China and Russia are using cyber attacks to steal trade and technology secrets from the US. (source: Chicago Tribune)

“We are losing ground because we are inherently divergent from the threat,” Dugan explained. “Such divergences are the seeds of surprise, and this [size disparity] is a striking example of why it’s currently easier to play offense rather than defense in cyber. This is not to suggest that we stop doing what we are doing in cybersecurity. But if we continue only down the current path, we will not converge with the threat.”

via Wired

[Image credit: US Air Force]

DARPA to increase cybersecurity research spending, boost cyber arsenal is a post from: The Inquisitr

Never mind Facebook.

Forget about Westboro Baptists.

They’re are all minor little irritants that hacker group anonymous takes on when they are bored and need to have a little bit of fun. However when anonymous gets serious they sure don’t mess around as evidenced by their most recently announced target.

It seems that an anonymous supporter in Mexico was kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel, and well, this isn’t sitting too well with the larger Anonymous group as a whole. In fact Anonymous has let it be known that if they Zetas Cartel doesn’t release their compatriot the hackavist group will start publishing the names, address, and other personal information of all the Zetas Cartel members as well as politicians, cops, and military members who are bought and paid for by the cartel.

They say everyone from taxi drivers to businesses that fronts for the cartel will be revealed on the web and as the spokesman for the group says in a recently posted Spanish speaking video – it won’t be hard as we already know who they are and where they are located.

As Mike Vigil, a retired head of international operations for the DEA said following this announcement – the Zetas Cartel needs to take Anonymous seriously because by publishing the names they identify the Zetas Cartel members to rivals and they will go after them.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything really will come of this as one group with no guns but the power of the web takes on some of the nastiest people on the planet to carry a gun, or three.

Here is the Spanish speaking video put out by Anonymous.

via Chron

Anonymous tells Mexican cartel they are next is a post from: The Inquisitr

Banks are having such a rough time these days. If it isn’t customers getting pissed off over being charged to use their bank debit cards it’s those nasty hackers breaking into their computer systems and making off with all kinds of information.

While there isn’t much that will be done about the first problem, after all who gives a crap about customers anyway, it seems that the National Security Agency, which is some super secret arm of the US military, has decided that they are perfectly suited to help those Wall Street banks fight back against those evil hackers.

This is all part of a larger attempt by these incredibly powerful and rich banks to get the US military and private defense contractors to fight off all those horrible cyber criminals out there. Claiming that hackers could possibly take up residence within the computer systems used by banking companies the banks say they could then disable trading systems, create fake crashes which could lead to real ones, and of course the good old stealing of money via huge wire transfers.

At this point the co-operation is still in discussion stages with NSA director Keith Alexander saying that the talks are just about them sharing information with banks about malicious software making the rounds. Additionally the NSA is working with the NASDAQ to improve their defenses against cyber attacks after it was found that their network had been broken into last year.

Apparently also on the list of companies that are supposedly perfect targets for hackers are oil companies, gas companies, technology companies, and defense contracting companies.

via Reuters

NSA getting into bed with Banks to help them fight hackers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Just how secure is our data?

Just how secure are all those databases that our information is stored in?

Security companies would have us believe that biometrics are the best way to secure our data and to verify that we are who we say we are. This is why you see things like fingerprints, photographs, and iris scans being collected in giant databases as well as being used as a verification to view those databases.

The problem is those databases are only as secure as the people both working on them and supposedly protecting them. So what happens when one of those people decides that they are also a perfect way to make money by selling that biometric data to the highest bidder.

This is what has happened in Israel as the records of 9 million Israelis, both living and dead, has ended up in the hands of criminals. This data includes name, date of birth, their national identification numbers, and family members; but what is even worse is that the database contained the information of the birth parents of hundreds of thousand adopted citizens.

This breach was discovered this past Monday when a contract worker for the Israeli Welfare Ministry was arrested for stealing the country’s primary national biometric database back in 2006. It was only after he was fired from his job for unrelated reasons that he began to offer the database for sale resulting in his arrest.

Subsequently an additional suspect uploaded the whole biometric records database to the web where, with some quick Google searches, you can find more than a few torrents for the files.

via Fast Company

The double edged sword of using biometrics for data security is a post from: The Inquisitr

Somehow I am not the least bit surprised by this little tidbit of news but it seems that according to a recent report from Commtouch finds that only bout a third of users even notice if their Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or even Facebook accounts have been hacked. The other little kicker is that the only reason that they probably know about the hack is because a friend told them.

Security companies like Eset are finding that in this day and age of Facebook and Twitter that social engineering is playing an even larger role in hacking accounts than in the past. Today the attacks are much more sophisticated and sequential.

This means that hacking your email account may only be the beginning of a much deeper hacking attack which due to the common practice of using the username/password combination across many services makes it easier to hack social accounts as well.

Where once it might have been only about getting email access it now is the collection of Facebook accounts, Twitter identifications, and gaming site log-ins.

In the report titled: The State of Hacked Accounts, it was found that one in eight hijacked accounts were used for phoney distress scams and more than half were used to send spam.

They also found that of the 34% who knew their accounts had been attacked, 15% claimed a WiFi connection, 15% clicked on email-based malware, and 15% said it was due to a Facebook scam link.

Most users don’t even notice if their accounts are hacked is a post from: The Inquisitr

FBI officials have arrested one suspect in the celebrity hacking ring which has placed naked pictures of actresses online for the world to see.

The arrest comes several weeks after the phone of Scarlett Johansson was hacked and naked photos of the A-List actress were published online.

The FBI Operation “Hackerazzi” has not named which celebrities had been hacked and a news conference is scheduled for sometime Wednesday afternoon where more information will be released.

FBI officials have been investigating a possible Hollywood hacking ring for more than a year however the issue heated up after the Johansson photos surfaced on the internet and hackers continued to mock their victims.

When FBI officers began their probe they were searching on behalf of actresses and other Hollywood figures who believed their information had been compromised.

While a single group has come forward to claim the hacking breaches officials warn that those claims have never been verified. What we do know is that reports have surfaced in which other unnamed celebrities have been victimized by the hackers even though their compromising photos have not yet been leaked to the press.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from LulzSec and other recent hacking scandals it’s that most hackers get caught, especially when they practically throw themselves into the public spotlight.

FBI Officials Arrest Celebrity Hacker Suspect is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sony chief security officer Philip Reitinger warned Sony Entertainment Online customers and PlayStation Network users on Tuesday night that their accounts may have been compromised after a hack led to 93,000 accounts being compromised.

Sony announced that all 93,000 accounts have been locked to prevent further hacks.

The company says they have noticed “additional activity” in a few accounts and they are currently checking their network for rogue access.

Sony officials say everyone will have to undergo a mandatory password change process the next time they log in while SOE customers must undergo additional steps to ensure the safety of the network.

At this time hacking initiative Anonymous has not claimed credit for the recent attack, while regular Sony hacking group LulzSec has been ruled out following various arrests of members in their group.

Credit card information was not at risk during this most recent attack.

Sony has been attempting to fix their public image after they were forced to shut down their network for one month following a massive attack to the PlayStation network.

Are you worried that Sony has not yet figured out how to protect their network from prying eyes?

Sony Online Entertainment and PlayStation Networks Hacked, 93,000 Accounts Compromised is a post from: The Inquisitr