hacker

'Hacker hostels' let tech hopefuls snooze -- and schmooze (video)

From the outside, it looks like a typical California suburban home: garage, driveway, tidy yard. But walk down the path leading to the front door and you'll find your first clue that a traditional family of four does not live inside. On the front porch are dozens and dozens of pairs of men's shoes, all removed before entering in order to keep the house as tidy as possible.

When we knocked, Carlos De La Lama Noriega, the manager of the house, greeted us and welcomed us inside for a tour. The main living space was clean and airy … Read more

Massive worm hits Tumblr, spams big blogs like USA Today

A massive bug swept Tumblr today and infected some of the biggest blogs -- including USA Today, Reuters, The Verge, and CNET -- until Tumblr resolved the issue shortly before 10:30 a.m. PT.

GNAA, a hacker group, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group's Twitter profile earlier today said 8,600 unique Tumblr users were affected.

Tumblr didn't explain what happened but said in a blog post that no accounts were compromised, and users didn't need to take any further action.

"Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience," the company said. "As always, … Read more

Some Samsung printers vulnerable to hackers

Owners of certain Samsung printers may find their devices a target for hackers.

Samsung printers and some Dell printers made by Samsung have a hardcoded account that someone could use to control and access information on the devices, according to US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team).

As described by the security team, these printers contain a hardcoded SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) string that has full read/write access and stays active even if the network protocol is disabled by the user.

"A remote, unauthenticated attacker could access an affected device with administrative privileges," US-CERT said. "… Read more

Known keycard hack suspected in hotel room burglary

A known hack of a popular hotel keycard reader was allegedly employed in the burglary of a woman's hotel room in Texas.

The hack, which was detailed at a security conference in July, was allegedly used in September to break in to the Houston Hyatt hotel room of Janet Wolf, a Dell IT services consultant, who reported the theft of her laptop. Lacking any sign the lock had been picked, suspicion immediately fell upon the maid service. However, hotel management soon determined that none of the maids' keys had been used to open the room at the time of … Read more

Yahoo Mail hijacking exploit selling for $700

An exploit selling for $700 may put millions of Yahoo Mail users at risk of having their e-mail account hijacked and their browsers redirected to malicious sites.

Marketed by an allegedly Egyptian hacker on a cybercrime forum, the exploit targets a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Yahoo.com that allows attackers to steal and replace tracking cookies, as well as read and send e-mail from a victim's account. Typically, an attacker will encode a malicious link in e-mails; the script is executed when the unsuspecting recipient clicks on the link, allowing access to the cookies and other sensitive information. … Read more

Hacker found guilty of massive AT&T-iPad site breach

A hacker has been found guilty of breaking into an AT&T Web site and stealing data of more than 100,000 iPad users.

Andrew Auernheimer, 26, was convicted Tuesday in federal court in New Jersey of one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and one count of identity theft. The jury reached its verdict within hours of beginning deliberations, according to Wired.

After the verdict was announced, Auernheimer tweeted that the outcome had been expected and that an appeal was planned.

Hey epals don't worry! We went in knowing there would be a guilty … Read more

Anonymous escalates its 'cyberwar' against Israel

Anonymous' hacking campaign against Israel to protest its attacks on Gaza escalated today with the release of a list of thousands of individuals who supposedly donated to a pro-Israel organization.

The collective posted a Pastebin document that it said featured names -- and in some cases home addresses and e-mail addresses -- of donors for the Unity Coalition for Israel, which claims to represent "the largest network of pro-Israel groups in the world." The document appears to be quite old: one of the military e-mail addresses belonged to Douglas Feith, the U.S. undersecretary for defense under Bush, … Read more

Israel government Web sites hit by hacker blitz

Israel's government Web sites have been bombarded by hackers in the last couple of days, logging more than 44 million hacking attempts since Israel launched the Gaza air strikes on Wednesday.

One of the attempts was successful, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told Reuters, noting that an unidentified site was offline for about 10 minutes before being resurrected. Popular targets include defense-related sites, as well as those of Israel's prime minister, president, and Foreign Ministry.

Most of the attacks have been traced to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"The ministry's computer division will continue to block the … Read more

Protect yourself from social-network malware (video)

First there was e-mail spam clogging up your in-box. Now there's social malware making its way into your Facebook newsfeed.

If you've ever seen a spammy message from a friend promising a "Free iPad" or "Free" airline tickets, chances are it's socware (pronounced "sock ware") -- a phrase coined by engineering professors and graduate students at the University of California, Riverside, in a new study.

Their study analyzed 12,000 users of MyPageKeeper, a free app they developed to identify suspicious posts and help protect Facebook users from them. Of that … Read more

'Saturday Night Live' Web site defaced in apparent hacking

Hackers appear to have infiltrated and defaced several NBC Web sites, including the page for "Saturday Night Live."

The page's usual content was replaced with a message that the site had been hacked by "pyknik" and scrolling text with the nursery rhyme "Remember, Remember The Fifth of November Gunpowder and Treason Plot." The message also indicated that "user info" and "passwords" had been exposed, but it was unclear where this information was allegedly taken from.

The nursery rhyme is about a conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament in … Read more