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Social networking site Twitter has been hacked, with approximately 250,000 user accounts affected. Hackers managed to gain access to the usernames, e-mail addresses, session tokens, and encrypted and salted password hashes belonging to users of the service, something that the company is quickly trying to rectify.
A financial institution in Maine has agreed to reimburse a construction company $345,000 that was stolen by hackers following a ruling that the bank had "commercially unreasonable" security precautions. People's United Bank has agreed to pay Patco Construction Company every cent it lost in 2009, plus $45,000 in interest after miscreants stole the Patco banking credentials and withdrew money from the account.
Hackers have altered DNS records of websites hosted by Go Daddy, with the aim of infecting visitors with ransomware. The attackers are adding subdomains to the DNS records, pointing to a malicious IP address under their control, allowing victims to believe they are going to the right website, and for the pages to avoid various security protection mechanisms. This attack comes two months after an alleged attack on the Go Daddy network.
The US Government is attempting to cool down rumors that hackers linked to the Chinese government penetrated the White House Military Office's (WHMO) network. The WHMO is responsible for presidential travel arrangements, and all communications with military units from the White House. A White House source denies the allegation, claiming that the spear phishing attack hit an unclassified network associated with the military office, and there is no evidence any classified information was stolen.
Music purveyor Last.fm and online dating matching service eHarmony have both recently announced that they are the victims of an assault by hackers. Both Last.fm and eHarmony have published brief statements about the break-ins, with little data about previous or new security precautions implemented as a result of the leak. The news comes days after the high-profile breach on LinkedIn.
AntiSec hackers said they have made their biggest hack and revealed it to the world by posting 10GB of confidential US law enforcement information, the group revealed in a statement. This move, the group said, is in response to the arrests of Anonymous and LulzSec hackers. The so-called Shooting Sheriffs Saturday dump is said to include private e-mail, passwords, addresses, social security, credit card numbers, informants, training files, and more.
LulzSec, the group of hackers that recently embarrassed Sony again, has now switched its attention an FBI affiliate’s site and hacked it. In doing so, it also exposed the user data of around 180 of the sites users. Among them, was the data of Unveillance CEO Karim Hijazi. Hijazi claims that LulzSec not only stole his data, including access to his company emails and Gmail account, but the group also tried extort more data and money from him.
Sir Howard Stringer has defended Sony’s response to the massive data breach that exposed user information to hackers. Numerous critics have lambasted Sony for waiting up to a week before notifying customers of the nature of the attack on its servers after first shutting them down without notice. In an interview with the New York Times, Stringer claimed that “[Sony] reported quickly.”
Amazon’s EC2 cloud-based rental server service is reported to have been utilized as a proxy in the Sony PlayStation Network hacks. According to Bloomberg, a person with knowledge of the matter has revealed that the hackers used an alias to rent an Amazon EC2 server and used it as the staging point for the attack. The person said that Amazon has closed the account used for the hack.
The New York Attorney General has demanded that Sony divulge information to his department regarding how it protects customers’ personal information. While Sony has refused to testify to Congress about the massive data breach it suffered at the hands of hackers, Eric Schneiderman has taken a legal tack, issuing the company a subpoena.
A new Android hack currently being installed by some users on the XDA Developers forum is shedding some light on the upcoming Google Music service. As originally expected, the service will be cloud-based, as one user who installed a CyanogenMod 7 hack with Android 2.3.3 and the Google Music app for Android 3.0 then supposedly synchronized his music collection from his phone's memory card. The process was left to run overnight, but removing the card still allowed the user to listen to his songs as they streamed from Google's servers.
Motorola has responded to reports that the Droid X has a hardware security protocol that would reportedly brick it rather than let hackers install different types of software. The hardware maker says Droid X handsets will not be permanently rendered useless by unsuccessful hacking attempts, but instead be prevented from booting if unapproved software is detected on the device. It will go into recovery mode, and can be re-booted once properly approved software is re-installed.
Macs are being deliberately targeted by a Russian hacking group, says Sophos security researcher Dmitry Samosseiko. The group is a subset of a larger criminal network known as the Partnerka, which normally turns a profit through spam promoting fake online drug vendors, and malware in the form of "scareware" anti-virus protection. The Partnerka have generally concentrated malware efforts on Windows users, who together represent the largest possible target.
Apple's Mac OS X operating system -- which the company advertises as more secure than Microsoft Windows -- is coming under increased scrutiny by security specialists and underground crackers as the platform increases in market share. After repeatedly posting record quarters and announcing a growth rate well ahead of the personal computer industry in general, Apple is fast appearing on the radar of more and more hackers across the globe. Infoworld reports that "The days when you can assume that Apple's products are exempt from harm are over."
Apple's operating system has a reputation for being secure and free from malicious users causing headaches, but with Apple's popularity on the uprise, users should learn basic maintenance and security procedures for their favored operating system. Tech news site CIO recently spoke with Ollie Whitehouse, architect for Symantec's Advanced Threat Research Team, about OS security, especially in regards to large corporations. Whitehouse says that Macs are safe mainly due to a smaller marketshare, but as Apple's popularity increases, so will the threats against the company's operating system.
