security breach

Hackers broke into several television stations' Emergency Alert Systems this week and broadcast that zombies were "rising from their graves" and "attacking the living."

While a comical hoax, security consultancy firm IOActive warns that this type of behavior is dangerous and not that hard for hackers to do, according to Computerworld. This week it's zombies, but next time it could be something that might make people really panic, such as an anthrax or terrorist attack.

IOActive says that devices used by TV and radio stations to air emergency alerts have critical vulnerabilities that make them … Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy has confirmed that its computer systems were hacked into last month. According to The New York Times, the federal agency sent around an internal e-mail on Friday telling its employees about the cyberattack.

"The Department of Energy has just confirmed a recent cyber incident that occurred in mid-January which targeted the Headquarters' network and resulted in the unauthorized disclosure of employee and contractor Personally Identifiable Information," the e-mail said.

The agency said that it is working to figure out the "nature and scope of the incident" but that so far … Read more

If there's one thing to learn from the recent security breach at Yahoo, it's that we need to be more creative with our passwords.

Hackers yesterday exposed more than 450,000 login credentials, which appeared to be gleaned from Yahoo. The hackers said they hoped this would be taken as a wake-up call to the parties responsible for the security of the hacked site, but individuals should also see this as a warning to strengthen their own personal passwords.

CNET's Declan McCullagh wrote a program to analyze the most frequently used passwords and e-mail domains that surfaced … Read more

Anonymous continued its ongoing attack on agricultural biotech giant Monsanto today by publishing an outdated database of the company's material. This is the newest in a barrage of strikes from hackers aligned with Anonymous who operate under the "AntiSec" banner.

In a statement posted with the database on a Pastebin site, the hacktivist group wrote it was aware that exposing the database would not do much harm to Monsanto but warned it would continue to target the company for what it sees as wrong.

"Your continued attack on the worlds food supply, as well as the … Read more

Gameloft, a Paris-based video game company that's a leading mobile-game developer, acknowledged today that a security breach had prompted it to pull the plug on one of its Web sites.

Reports began surfacing on the company's Web forums earlier this week, suggesting that the GameloftLive.com Web site had been experiencing problems and that some accounts had been compromised. One poster suggested: "I told all of my friends to stay offline and they are doing so. I hope Gameloft gets this fixed."

In a statement to CNET this morning, a Gameloft representative said:

"Gameloft live … Read more

Cyberattacks from Anonymous and LulzSec and breaches against everyone from Sony to Lockheed Martin turned the second quarter into "one of the worst on record," according to a new report from Panda Security.

Released this week, Panda's second-quarter report (PDF) examined the security landscape from April to June and highlighted a string of alarming incidents.

Pointing to the attacks by Anonymous and LulzSec against the likes of Sony, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Spanish police, and several government sites, Panda said that the line between "hacktivism" and criminal behavor has gotten fuzzier.

Panda clearly questioned the methods of the new breed of hackers, saying that Anonymous calls its actions "peaceful protests," even though such actions are illegal. Also mincing no words with LulzSec, Panda said that "if you took the most irresponsible and brainless members of Anonymous and put them all together, they would be considered the most refined gentlemen compared to LulzSec."

Though LulzSec recently announced that it would be ending its attacks, the group urged other hackers to carry on the fight via operation Anti-Security, or AntiSec.… Read more

Hulu acknowledged this afternoon that an attempt to integrate itself with Facebook didn't go exactly as planned.

Far from aiding the "entire social experience," which the video streaming service had promised in its announcement earlier in the day, the attempted integration allowed some Hulu users to access other users' accounts.

In a followup blog post this afternoon, Hulu Vice President Richard Tom said the security breach was the result of a programming error, not malicious activity, and did not expose passwords or credit card numbers.

"When we launched our Facebook Connect feature early this morning, we … Read more

If you tried to sign into PlayStation Network on your PS3 or PSP in the last 30 minutes, you may have had no luck. Do not be alarmed: Sony says that PSN will be down today but that it's not another security issue.

The company posted today on its PlayStation blog that PSN will be undergoing "maintenance" between 8 a.m. PT and 5 p.m. PT. That means many users will have trouble signing into the service on their PlayStation 3 console or PlayStation Portable handheld, but can still sign in to play games online, including … Read more

Windows 7 is four to five times less vulnerable to malware infections than is Windows XP.

Those are the findings of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (PDF), which detailed in depth the state of software vulnerabilities, exploits, security breaches, and malware in 2010.

Overall, the study found that infection rates for newer Microsoft operating systems with the latest service packs are consistently lower than those for older OSes, giving Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 the highest marks for security.

Looking at the number of reported infections per 1,000 computers, Microsoft found that Windows 7 64-bit had … Read more