“While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down.”
These are the words of the anonymous voice that purports to represent Anonymous in a video posted to YouTube today.
“An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the government of the United States,” the narrator begins. The reason: SOPA, PIPA and other perceived threats to Internet rights.
In order to bring down Facebook, the video asks for everyone who understands and supports Anonymous’ position to participate in this online protest. This is a protest that began over the last week, says the narrator, with attacks on the CBS.com, Warner Brothers, and FBI sites.
The narrator suggests that anyone who supports the cause download a program in order to participate in a Facebook attack.
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The next time you use your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy tablet, think about this: The person sitting next to you could be stealing the information you type into your email, Facebook or bank account.
Most of us realize digital thieves can infiltrate our computers. But their latest targets are popular smartphones and tablets that they can access using wireless tricks and malicious software.
That’s why I avoid strange links on texts and email from strangers even on my smart phone.
The methods for breaking into a phone or tablet remotely are the same as breaking into your home computer,” said Mark Wuergler, expert hacker and senior security researcher for Immunity, Inc., a South Florida cyber security firm. “Your iPad, iPhone and Android devices all have operating systems on them that can be exploited.”
Exploited can mean many things, from using malicious software to steal passwords, credit card information and your birth date, to highjacking digital footprints of someone happily using free WiFi in a Boca Raton or Hollywood coffee shop.
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Cybercrime is on the rise, up 10% from 2009. In fact, PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that nearly half of all businesses had been a victim of fraud in the past year. For small businesses, these attacks can be especially harmful to your bottom line, putting your clients’ personal data at risk and threatening to take systems down for days at a time. Below are a few ways cybercrime can affect your business in 2012:
Website compromising.
Website hacking is dangerous because it can influence the way your clients see you. When PBS’s website was compromised in 2011, hackers not only posted a fake news story about deceased rapper Tupac Shakur, they released usernames and passwords for PBS affiliates. SonyPictures.com also suffered an attack last summer in which usernames and passwords were leaked. In both cases, outdated software and security measures were blamed, but it was also noted that many of the passwords being used were surprisingly simple. Small businesses should set strict password standards, enforced server-wide. As recommended by Microsoft, passwords should be at least six characters long and contain a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
Keylogging.
Imagine someone having a printout of everything you type, every time you log in to your computer. That’s what keylogging does and it’s one of the ways hackers can gain entry into your system. This is an especially dangerous hack, since it can allow outside entities to gain access to your customers’ credit card data, bank account info, and social security numbers, in addition to the passwords to your business’s databases and in-house software. Keylogging software can either be installed through a virus or directly installed by someone gaining inside access to your computer systems. It is important that small businesses keep all virus definitions up to date and make sure software applications like Java and Adobe Flash are consistently up to date on every PC and laptop in your organization. Having outdated versions of these applications can leave you open to vulnerabilities.
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Hackers thought to have stolen source code from the Symantec’s extended network have threatened to release the source code for Norton Antivirus tomorrow, but the company says such a release poses no threat.
The hackers, who call themselves “Yama Tough” and employ the “Anonymous” mask in its Twitter avatar, said in a tweet Saturday it would release the 1.7GB source code on Tuesday, along with the message “the rest will follow…”
Several reports surfaced earlier this month that hackers had managed to access the source code for certain Symantec products. Symantec identified the products as Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 11.0 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2 but said the attack did not affect any current Norton consumer products.
The hackers said they found the code after breaking into servers run by Indian military intelligence. The code was apparently left on there by mistake after Indian authorities inspected the sourced code to ensure it was secure, which is where the hackers found the code.
The group said in a Pastebin post that it had the “source codes of dozens of companies” and contained documentation describing the API procedures for Symantec’s virus definition generation service. The group’s post on the Pastebin site has since been removed, though a Google cached version still exists.
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The website of Israel’s main stock exchange was floored by a denial-of-service attack on Monday. Israeli airline El Al has also come under attack by hackers, but its website remains running despite the assault.
Visitors to the Tel Aviv stock exchange website are confronted with the message “Please try again later. The site is too busy right now”, rather than the latest market information. Orna Goren, a stock exchange spokeswoman, told the BBC: “Our trading system is working as usual.”
The attacks, unleashed by hackers affiliated with elements of Anonymous and other groups, are the latest in tit-for-tat campaign that began a fortnight ago. It began when a hacker called OxOmar posted thousands of Israeli credit card details online and invited others to make mischief with the information in order to wreck international trust in the cards’ issuers.
Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon responded to this by comparing the cyberattack to a terrorist assault and threatening reprisals. Elements of Anonymous waded in at this point, talking up attacks against Israeli websites. Pro-Israel hackers threatened to publish details of Saudi credit cards at around the same time.
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With over nine million followers, Ashton Kutcher is a powerful figure on Twitter.
A link or endorsement posted by the actor, who recently separated from Demi Moore, is something that many brands and websites would dream of, imagining the traffic that would come as a consequence.
So it’s perhaps no surprise to find that some mischief-makers might also delight in trying to hack into Ashton Kutcher’s online accounts, to see what trouble they could cause.
The “Two and a half men” star’s Twitter account posted some bizarre messages on Sunday, apparently confirming that he was in a romantic relationship with Lorene Scafaria:
First official sleepover with my girl @lorenescafaria so maybe breakfast with everyone next time! (@ Lorene’s House). [LINK]
and
Check out my new girl Lorene’s House (Los Angeles, CA) on foursquare. [LINK]
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Hackers in China have found a way to infiltrate supposedly secure smart cards used by U.S. government employees, according to security company AlienVault.
The security firm said it has seen dozens of such attacks, which tap into a unique variant of a nasty bit of malware known as Sykipot.
The hackers appear intent on stealing data from the Department of Defense and other related agencies. The malware is capable of capturing the PIN numbers used by government smart cards, thereby allowing access to supposedly secure information.
“Like we have shown with previous Sykipot attacks, the attackers use a spear phishing campaign to get their targets to open a PDF attachment which then deposits the Sykipot malware onto their machine,” according to AlienVault. “Then, unlike previous strains, the malware uses a keylogger to steal PINs for the cards. When a card is inserted into the reader, the malware then acts as the authenticated user and can access sensitive information. The malware is controlled by the attackers from the command & control center.”
Government agencies use smart cards as an extra layer of security on top of passwords, according to the New York Times. Since passwords have been easy enough to hack, the smart cards were supposed to provide a final line of defense, at least until the new strain of Sykipot popped up.
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Personal banking information and other data from perhaps tens of thousands of students, faculty and administrators at City College of San Francisco have been stolen in what is being called “an infestation” of computer viruses with origins in criminal networks in Russia, China and other countries, The Chronicle has learned.
At work for more than a decade, the viruses were detected a few days after Thanksgiving, when the college’s data security monitoring service detected an unusual pattern of computer traffic, flagging trouble.
It appeared at first that the problem was contained in a single computer lab at Cloud Hall on the Phelan Avenue campus, one of a dozen City College sites around the city. David Hotchkiss, the chief technology officer, immediately shut the lab down and reported the problem to Chancellor Don Griffin, General Counsel Scott Dickey and Board of Trustees President John Rizzo.
But a closer look revealed a far more nefarious situation, which had been lurking within the college’s electronic systems since 1999. For now, it’s still going on. So far, no cases of identify theft have been linked to the breach. That may change as the investigation continues, and college officials said they might need to bring in the FBI.
The college’s payroll, admissions and accounting systems have yet to be analyzed for the viruses.
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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/12/MN4Q1MO9JK.DTL#ixzz1jP3ObQQk
Israel said on Saturday the online publication of thousands of its citizens’ credit card details by a hacker who says he is based in Saudi Arabia was comparable to terrorism, and promised to hit back.
The data theft, which appeared to focus on commercial websites, was one of the worst Israel has said it has faced.
While government officials and credit card companies said the financial damage was minimal, the breaches were welcomed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and have heightened concerns about the potential use of stolen information by the Jewish state’s foes.
Such cyber-attacks are “a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such”, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in a speech, adding that Israel had not yet ruled out the possibility that the hacking had been carried out by a group “more organised and sophisticated … than a lone youth”.
“Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action,” he said, without elaborating.
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If you see your password below, STOP!
Do not finish reading this post and immediately go change your password — before you forget. You will probably make changes in several places since passwords tend to be reused for multiple accounts.
Here are two lists, the first compiled by SplashData:
1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football
Last year, Imperva looked at 32 million passwords stolen from RockYou, a hacked website, and released its own Top 10 “worst” list:
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Cybercrime touched the lives of so many Americans in 2011 that it felt as pervasive as the common cold and as painful as the flu. According to a report by security giant Symantec, someone is a victim of a cybercrime 14 times every second. In the last year, over 430 million people have been the victims of cybercrime. All this information does not mean that we need to throw out all our fancy digital devices and gadgets. Instead, these staggering statistics mean that careful attention to cyber security is a necessary part of smart living.
But to understand how to be prepared, we need to look back at cybercrime in 2011.
More “Catchy” Viruses
Viruses and malware were the most common types of cybercrime last year. Viruses are usually transmitted through unsuspecting users who visit or download from corrupt sites and who open emails containing malicious software — or “malware.” In 2011, 54 percent of online adults experienced a virus or malware attack.
Many of the most potent viruses this year were transmitted via links to corrupted sites or email attachments, often hitting as a disguised news story.
•We’re used to getting emails about packages being delivered. This year, hackers exploited that comfort and sent out emails impersonating DHL that launched a virus into the user’s computer.
•A popular “news” scam was a report about Fidel Castro’s death that launched a virus.
•A faked video of the death of Osama bin Laden was another virus circulated this year.
•Lady Gaga’s Twitter account was hacked and attackers sent out a link to a site where users could get a free iPad 2. Users were directed to a corrupted website.
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A scrappy rebel alliance launches jury-rigged space weapons in the hope of defeating a monolithic empire that’s put the choke hold on freedom.
Sound like a space opera you might’ve seen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?
Actually, it’s the latest imagined scenario to arise from one of Europe’s major hacking conferences, which just wrapped up its 2011 edition in Berlin.
As the BBC’s David Meyer reports, SOPA-hating hackers at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress (or 28C3) are hatching a plan to develop a DIY satellite-communications network that could keep the Internet alive and unfettered in the face of any government effort to pull the plug.
“The first goal is an uncensorable Internet in space,” Meyer quotes hacktivist Nick Farr as saying. “Let’s take the Internet out of the control of terrestrial entities.”
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