lulzsec

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Anonymous may have became a little less anonymous this afternoon.

One by one, as alleged members of Anonymous heard their full legal names read aloud in a courtroom here, they stood before a federal judge and acknowledged that, yes, they understood the nature of the remarkably severe criminal charges that were filed against them in July.

The 14 defendants are facing felony charges of conspiracy and computer hacking stemming from last December's distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack against PayPal. It was organized in response to PayPal halting donations to WikiLeaks a few days earlier.

Magistrate Judge … Read more

The NYC takeover of BOL continues, as the hardware heads from the Digital City talk about Day One problems with Apple's new Lion OSX update, the death of Google Labs, and who's getting hacked next.

The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down California's attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, arguing that the current ratings system is enough to let parents make informed decisions about what to buy. Unlike the MPAA's rating system, which led me and my 4-year-old to "Cars 2." Thanks for that, MPAA. Also, LulzSec tucks its puppykicker tail and runs away, but not before hacking a librarian and book-sharing Website. Nice.

After a whirlwind run of headline-grabbing hacking exploits that involved the likes of Sony, the CIA, the U.S. Senate, and FBI partner Infragard, hacking group LulzSec is apparently--and suddenly--calling it quits.

The group, which cropped up on many people's radar for the first time just last month, sent a tweet late today with a link to a document on Pastebin declaring that the group's run of cybermischief was coming to an end.

"It's time to say bon voyage," the statement reads. "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail … Read more

Lytro's Founder and CEO Ren Ng Ph.D. stopped by the BOL studio today to discuss his new product the Lytro Light Field Camera which allows you to focus different depths of field within one photograph. We picked his brain about how the technology works and how it will evolve into the art of photography and beyond. We also discuss the FTC's probe into Google's business practices as well as the upcoming possible overhaul of the United States Patent office rules and regulations. Lulzsec continues to make news and publish the identity of its victims while a rival hacker group calling themselves TeaMp0ison has vowed to out the members of Lulzsec by publishing Lulzsec's identities and personal information in retaliation. All this and more on today's Buzz Out Loud with special guest host from Android Atlas Antuan Goodwin who has a deep fear of Zombies.

The otherwise staid and professional Jason Hiner joins us from TechRepublic to discuss important issues like the amazing Yonanna machine, which turns your banana into froyo just like that! Ok, ok, in tech news, a 19-year-old is arrested in the UK, but LulzSec says he's just the IRC moderator. Sounds important to us. Plus, your Facebook and Twitter posts will haunt you for seven years, just like your bad credit card purchases.

The CIA's public Web site is inaccessible this afternoon, and the hacking group Lulz Security is taking for responsibility for taking it offline.

Shortly before 3 p.m. PT, LulzSec tweeted: "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz"

And indeed, the world's most famous spy agency is currently without an official Web presence, as of about 20 minutes after Lulzsec's tweet--cia.gov returns an error message.

LulzSec has enjoyed a higher profile of late, thanks to a slew of successful attacks on prominent Web sites. In the past couple of months, the group … Read more

LulzSec is at it again. Today, after much taunting on Twitter, the hacking group has posted online the source code and database passwords of Bethesda Softworks, a subsidiary of gaming company ZeniMax Media.

ZeniMax owns several studios besides Bethesda and is the company behind popular games like Fallout 3, Doom, Quake, and Brink.

LulzSec says in its statement that it initially launched a distributed denial-of-service attack on Bethesda and then found a weakness that provided administrator access to the Web server, and eventually other servers in the network.

"After mapping their internal network and thoroughly pillaging all of their servers, we grabbed all their source code and database passwords, which we proceeded to shift silently back to our storage deck," the group wrote in a statement posted to code-sharing site Pastebin.

In an earlier tweet, LulzSec said the actual attack took place months ago.

"Bethesda, we broke into your site over two months ago. We've had all of your Brink users for weeks. Please fix your junk, thanks!"

Members of the group also profess to be fans of the company. LulzSec says it has data pertaining to more than 200,000 registered users of the game Brink, but says it held back that information because "we actually like this company and would like for them to speed up the production of Skyrim, so we'll give them one less thing to worry about. You're welcome!" … Read more

Almost a week after hackers posted a trove of customer information stolen from various Sony businesses' Web sites, Sony Pictures has more details on the attack.

Today the company posted a statement saying that personally identifying information of 37,500 customers had been exposed in the breach.

"We are continuing to investigate the details of this cyberattack; however, we believe that one or more unauthorized persons may have obtained some or all of the following information that you may have provided to us in connection with certain promotions or sweepstakes: name, address, email address, telephone number, gender, date of birth, and website password and user name," the statement reads.

Sony Pictures notes that it had not requested credit card information, Social Security numbers, or driver's license numbers from those people.

Sony Pictures said it notified those affected this morning. … Read more