hackers

Two British men pleaded guilty today to conspiracy charges related to a spree of attacks on U.S. and U.K. government and corporate Web sites by the LulzSec hacking group last year.

Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake Davis, a 19-year-old who used the hacker handle "Topiary," admitted to launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Web sites including Sony, Nintendo, News International, Arizona State Police, HBGary Federal and PBS, according to The Telegraph.

Cleary pleaded guilty to four additional charges, including hacking into U.S. Air Force computers at the Pentagon. He was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury … Read more

Hackers have released consumer data stolen from an online loan provider, after the company refused to pay an extortion fee.

"On June 12, AmeriCash Advance received a fax, telling us that part of our Web site had been hacked. The letter went on to demand initial payment of $15,000 from us," AmeriCash Advance, an online payday cash advance provider, said in a statement provided to CNET. "We immediately notified the appropriate authorities and promptly took steps to ensure that no other data could be accessed. We will not cave in to blackmail, and are cooperating fully … Read more

A hacker claiming to have broken into networks of dozens of banks and stolen customer data, has released as proof a file that contains names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers in plain text, but no credit card numbers.

"I penetrated over 79 large banks, I've been targetting these banks since 3 months," read a tweet from the Twitter account of Reckz0r. "Actually, I didn't hacked VISA & Mastercard, I hacked the banks, #Chase..etc."

A Pastebin post from today has a link to a downloadable file on the AnonFiles.com site that appears … Read more

The British man that allegedly hacked into the Fox reality TV show "The X-Factor" and the "PBS News Hour," along with music companies and government security agencies, was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on conspiracy and hacking charges today, according to the Associated Press.

Ryan Cleary, 20, reportedly had ties to the well-known branch of Anonymous called LulzSec before he was arrested in London last June (although the hacktivist group denies his involvement with it). U.S. federal prosecutors said today that he worked to take down, deface, and steal personal information from … Read more

It's been three months since the arrest of a handful of people accused of conducting denial-of-service and other attacks on police and corporate networks as part of the notorious LulzSec hacking crew.

Yet rather than laying low following the arrests, hacker activists are still going strong and, in fact, regrouping, taking up the baton from the Lulz crew or citing dissatisfaction with the schizophrenic nature of all the various Anonymous operations. Suddenly, there is "LulzSec Reborn," "MalSec," and "SpexSec," fresh names for groups of malicious hackers using old techniques.

It's unknown if … Read more

Credit card processor Global Payments said today that in the course of investigating the theft of 1.5 million credit card numbers, it has discovered that hackers may also have stolen consumer data from servers.

"Our ongoing investigation recently revealed potential unauthorized access to personal information collected from a subset of merchant applicants," the company said in a statement on its Web site.

"It is unclear whether the intruders looked at or took any personal information from the company's systems; however, the company will notify potentially-affected individuals in the coming days with helpful information and make … Read more

Last.fm today urged its users to change their passwords because of a compromise that may be related to a huge password leak involving LinkedIn and eHarmony.

"We are currently investigating the leak of some Last.fm user passwords. This follows recent password leaks on other sites, as well as information posted online," a Last.fm blog post said. "As a precautionary measure, we're asking all our users to change their passwords immediately."

The blog post did not say how many users were affected or how the passwords were leaked. A Last.fm executive did … Read more

Update 1:11 p.m. PT: LinkedIn confirms that passwords were "compromised."

So far, LinkedIn has come up empty on the password leak reported earlier today.

The company's latest tweet simply states that "our team continues to investigate, but at this time, we're still unable to confirm that any security breach has occurred. Stay tuned here."

Assuming the initial report was authentic, LinkedIn's failure to find any sign of compromise in its system doesn't jibe with the number of people on Twitter who say they've found their own hashed LinkedIn passwords … Read more

Hacktivists from the online group Anonymous claim to have taken down the Chicago Police Department's Web site in the wake of violent clashes between the police and protesters.

Members of AntiS3curityOPS, which claims to be affiliated with Anonymous, posted a video on YouTube taking credit for a hacking that allegedly brought down the page and accusing Chicago police of brutality during clashes Saturday night with protesters, who were demonstrating against the NATO summit discussing the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

"We are actively engaged in actions against the Chicago Police Department, and encourage anyone to take up the cause … Read more