hacked

The U.S. Justice Department has decided not to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appellate court ruling in a criminal case that found a decades-old anti-hacking law was being applied too broadly.

The decision means the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of the case against David Nosal, who was accused of illegally misappropriating trade secrets from his employer, will stand. In a 9-2 ruling, the court found in April that the 1984 federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was being interpreted too broadly and warned that millions of Americans could be subjected to … Read more

Apple has reportedly stopped taking AppleID password resets requests over the phone, following the account hack of a technology reporter over the weekend.

An unnamed Apple employee told Wired that the ban would remain in effect for at least 24 hours and speculated that the freeze was instituted to give Apple more time to determine what security policy changes, if any, were necessary.

That information was apparently corroborated by an Apple customer representative who said Apple had halted all AppleID resets requested over the phone. The explanation came as Wired was attempting to replicate a hacker's exploitation of the … Read more

When tech reporters get hacked, it seems like tech companies pay attention.

Wired reporter Mat Honan's entire online life was compromised by a hacker named Phobia four days ago. Phobia used Honan's AppleCare and Amazon IDs, along with his billing address and last four digits of his credit card to get into his various online accounts. Apple responded yesterday saying that it was looking into how users can reset their account passwords to ensure data protection; and Amazon responded today.

"We have investigated the reported exploit, and can confirm that the exploit has been closed as of … Read more

Reuters has suffered a second security breach in two days after hackers gained control of one of its Twitter accounts, the news agency revealed this morning.

The Reuters Tech account was commandeered late Saturday and renamed TechMe, Reuters said today in a tweet on its main Twitter news feed. The account has since been suspended and an investigation of the breach is under way, Reuters said.

Earlier today @reuterstech was hacked and changed to @reutersme. The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation

The newly renamed feed was then defaced with … Read more

A former Gizmodo employee had his Twitter account breached, and the hackers then used it to crack the gadget site's Twitter account and send out racist tweets yesterday. Talk about a bad day. Emil Protalinski at CNET sister site ZDNet has the story.

Every year at Defcon there are rumors of some network being hacked. It would be unusual if such tales didn't crop up at the world's largest hacker conference. But this year there were reports from a number of credible sources of strange behavior on phones -- reports that had people more paranoid than normal.

Here's what people said they were seeing last weekend, along with some possible explanations for the scenarios:

• Voice mail messages that led to unknown numbers instead of to the standard phone number that points to the user's automated voice message recovery system.… Read more

The 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously asserted that war was an expression of politics by other means. A 21st century postscript: add cyber hacking to the list of means.

With Syria in the midst of a raging civil war, somebody hacked the Reuters.com Web site on Friday with a phony post purporting to carry an interview with Free Syrian Army head Riad al-Asaad.

"Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists," the company said in a statement and later tweeted. "We are working to address … Read more

When a few hundred Dropbox users began receiving spam emails about online casinos and gambling sites two weeks ago, it seemed like something was up. And indeed there was.

The online file storage service confirmed today that hackers accessed usernames and passwords from third party sites and then used them to get into Dropbox users' accounts.

"Our investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts. We've contacted these users and have helped them protect their accounts," the company wrote in a blog … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- A young hacker here at Defcon 20 has pulled back the dense curtain of text and ambiguity surrounding warranties to show consumers how they can hack the warranty system -- and to tell companies how to improve their warranty management.

"Darkred," as he prefers to be called, explained to a standing-room only session that it's the way manufacturers manage serial numbers and warranties that allows the system to be hacked.

"The serial number makes you the owner of a product," said the 17-year-old, a high school senior from Texas. Darkred declined to … Read more