hackers

Go Daddy says client Web sites back up

Web sites serviced by Web hosting and domain registrar Go Daddy were back online early this evening after being down for much of the work day, a company spokeswoman told CNET.

"All services are restored and at no time was sensitive customer information, such as credit card data, passwords, names, addresses, ever compromised," Go Daddy spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll said in a phone interview just before 5 p.m. PT. She said the company does not know at this time exactly what caused the outage and she couldn't say exactly how many sites were affected.

"It did … Read more

Go Daddy-serviced Web sites go down; hacker takes credit

Web sites serviced by DNS and hosting provider Go Daddy were down for most of today, but were back up later this afternoon. A hacker using the "Anonymous Own3r" Twitter account claimed credit for the outage.

"Things are restored," Go Daddy spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll told CNET just before 5 p.m. PT today. She said she did not have many details and was hoping to be able to give an update with more information in the next 24 hours.

In an interview this afternoon, Driscoll reiterated that she could not say what the cause of the … Read more

Phony Al-Jazeera text messages sent by pro-Syrian gov't hackers

Al-Jazeera has become the second news agency in a little more than a month to be targeted by pro-Syrian government hackers.

The Qatar-based satellite TV station revealed in a tweet this morning that its short messaging service had been compromised and used to send false news reports, including a report that Qatar's prime minister had been assassinated:

"We'd like to inform our subscribers that Aljazeera SMS service is being compromised by pirates and they've sent fake news with no basis," the news organization said, according to a translation by The Hacker News.

A group calling … Read more

Experts: Google's 'Aurora' hackers still at it years later

The hackers behind the cyberespionage attacks on Google and more than 30 other companies three years ago are still going strong and seem to have a steady stream of weapons in their arsenal in the form of rare unpatched vulnerabilities known as zero-days, Symantec researchers said today.

The group has used exploits for four zero-day vulnerabilities in attacks over the past few months against targets across a variety of industries, including energy, aeronautics, and financial, and particularly manufacturers of components sold to defense contractors, the security provider said in a blog post.

"This group is focused on wholesale theft … Read more

Asperger's study asks: Are hackers cognitively different?

Hackers perceive and experience the world differently than mainstream society, for a lot of reasons. Some people have postulated those reasons may be attributed to neurological conditions, such as Asperger's Syndrome.

Other than interviews with convicted hackers (mostly young men in jail), there has been little psychological study done on hackers. This is not surprising, as anyone attempting to learn about hacker culture from the outside will always be met with a predictable wall of mistrust, misinformation, and the subculture's trademark, guarded secrecy.

That didn't dissuade Dr. Bernadette Schell, Psy.D., and her co-researchers from embarking on … Read more

Hacker who infected 72K computers gets prison sentence

After pleading guilty last year to creating a botnet that wreaked havoc on about 72,000 computers, Joshua Schichtel was sentenced to prison today. The Department of Justice announced that Schichtel received a 30-month prison sentence for "selling command-and-control access to and use of thousands of malware-infected computers."

Schichtel was a unique hacker. Rather than infecting computers for his own benefit, he instead sold botnets to customers who must have not had the tech know-how to create their own malware.

"Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel … Read more

Feds probe alleged hacking theft of Romney's tax returns

The U.S. Secret Service is looking into claims that someone stole presidential nominee Mitt Romney's income tax returns and is threatening to release them if he doesn't pay up.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told CNET today that the agency is investigating, but had no further comment.

The claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone who snuck into the building and made copies of the document. The message … Read more

Nokia Lumia shows off new camera tricks

Wednesday's tech news roundup cures the colorful phone shakes:

Nokia revealed new Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 8. The Lumia 920 comes in red and yellow and the camera has "floating lens" technology, meaning it helps stabilize shaky movements and allows the shutter to stay open longer for more light to enter. It also has photo editing tools that remove someone walking by your picture, or you can animate part of a still photo as a cinemagraph. (Check out these examples.) It also has a charging station, so it doesn't need cords. The JBL Power Up … Read more

FBI finds no evidence that AntiSec hacked its laptop

The FBI said today that it does not know anything about a laptop that hackers say they compromised and that led them to millions of Apple iOS device user details, of which 1 million have been released on the Web.

"The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed," said an FBI spokesperson. "At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data." Before the statement was released the … Read more