Free Republic

A British teenager has narrowly escaped jail after sparking a nuclear panic by hacking into a top secret United States weapons laboratory. Joseph McElroy, 18, who on Monday was ordered to serve a 200-hour community punishment order, bypassed the facility's electronic security systems with sophisticated software he had developed and nicknamed Deathserv. McElroy wanted to use the advanced network's power to download and store films and music from the internet. London's Southwark Crown Court heard that in June 2002, he used a special password to protect his collection and cover up his "parasitic" invasion. But so many of his fellow...

Police believe teenage pranksters are hacking into the wireless frequency of a US Burger King drive-through speaker to tell potential customers they are too fat for fast food. Policeman Gerry Scherlink said the pranksters told one customer who had just placed an order: "You don't need a couple of Whoppers. You are too fat. Pull ahead." The offenders are reportedly tapping into the wireless frequency at the restaurant in Troy, Michigan. Police believe the culprits are watching and broadcasting from close range. Officer Scherlinck said the men are telling customers who order a Coca-Cola that, "We don't have Coke." And...

<p>January 9, 2004 -- A cocky hacker who often publicly boasts of his exploits to other cybergeeks took on a remorseful tone yesterday when he admitted to a Manhattan federal judge he broke into The New York Times' computer system. Adrian Lamo, 22, now faces only a year in prison, rather than the maximum 15-year sentence he could have received if he went to trial and was convicted.</p>

Filed at 9:54 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- A company developing security technology for electronic voting suffered an embarrassing hacker break-in that executives think was tied to the rancorous debate over the safety of casting ballots online. VoteHere Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., confirmed Monday that U.S. authorities are investigating a break-in of its computers months ago, when someone roamed its internal computer network. The intruder accessed internal documents and may have copied sensitive software blueprints that the company planned eventually to disclose publicly. Advertisement Chief executive Jim Adler said VoteHere was confident it knew the identity of its hacker and...

A Cincinnati man who plead guilty Thursday to cracking and cloning giant consumer databases was only caught because he helped out a friend in the hacker community. Daniel Baas, 25, plead guilty Thursday to a single federal felony count of "exceeding authorized access" to a protected computer for using a cracked password to penetrate the systems of Arkansas-based Acxiom Corporation -- a company known among privacy advocates for its massive collection and sale of consumer data. The company also analyzes in-house consumer databases for a variety of companies. From October, 2000 until last June, Baas worked as the system administrator...

NASA Web Sites Hacked By Sharon Gaudin Thirteen NASA Web sites were attacked this morning by a Brazilian group protesting the war in Iraq, according to two separate organizations that monitor hacking. On the same day as President George Bush and 34,000 onlookers celebrated the achievements of the Wright brothers and 100 years of powered flight, the Brazilian group, calling itself DRWXR, defaced the NASA Web sites, according to both mi2g, a digital risk management company based in London, and Zone-H, an organization that monitors hacking. The Zone-H Web site itself was down today. No one at Zone-H could be...

InformationWeek Danish information security consulting firm Secunia is warning Microsoft Internet Explorer users of a vulnerability that could enable Internet fraudsters to create more-realistic and authentic-looking fake Web sites. Secunia says it has found an "input validation" error in Internet Explorer. By exploiting this vulnerability, known as a URL-spoofing vulnerability, attackers can display any URL name they wish in the address and status bars of IE. This flaw would make it appear to Internet users that they're visiting a banking Web site, for example, when that site is actually a front for fraudsters attempting to collect sensitive financial information. Secunia...

LOS ANGELES - A Web designer was sentenced to community service for hijacking the Web site for the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera and redirecting its traffic to a site showing an American flag and the words "Let Freedom Ring." John William Racine II, 24, of Norco, was ordered Wednesday to perform 1,000 hours of community service and pay $2,000. He pleaded guilty in June to felony charges of wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication. U.S. District Judge A. Howard Metz said during the sentencing hearing that he believed Racine "immediately recognized how much terrible havoc" was...

Microsoft placed a $250,000 bounty on the respective heads of the MSBlaster and So.Big virus writers as part of a $5 million program it launched here on Wednesday with the FBI, Secret Service and Interpol to fight cybercrime. The reward program, sponsored by Microsoft and backed by those law enforcement agencies, represents the first major partnership between the private sector and government officials to hunt down, capture and prosecute hackers and virus writers.At a press conference today at the National Press Club in Washington, Microsoft's top attorney pledged to press prosecution of suspected virus writers and reward those who turn...

YAHOO! users being targeted by HACKER. An evil hacker (probably some spammer pissed about having his spam blocked by Yahoo! SpamGuardTM) has developed a new technology which completely fools SpamGuardTM.  Embedded in the messages is a powerful hacker exploit which damages the operating system of the unsuspecting Yahoo! user if they follow any of the links or click on the "unsubscribe me" opt-out link which is required by Minnesota and California laws governing UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). The hacker has been using it to harass millions of Yahoo! users for months and thereby exacting his terrible revenge on the Yahoo!...

SEC charges teen with securities fraud Agency to prosecute case called first of its kind WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a 19-year-old computer hacker with securities fraud Thursday for allegedly breaking into a brokerage account and making unauthorized trades. Tech stocks continue to rally as Yahoo, H-P surge SEC nabs teenage computer hacker on securities fraud Stock futures shoot up on jobless claims fall More news for CSCO This is the first securities fraud case that the SEC will prosecute that includes computer hacking and identity theft allegations. "I've not seen a case like this before,"...

CNBC WEBSITE SHOWS STOCKS IN CRASH...

A computer hacker brought the systems of a major American port to a halt during a revenge attack on a fellow internet chatroom user, a court has heard. Aaron Caffrey, 19, allegedly hacked into the computer server at the Port of Houston in Texas in order to target a female chatroom user following an argument. It was claimed that the teenager intended to take the woman's computer offline by bombarding it with a huge amount of useless data, and he needed to use a number of other servers to be able to do so. Mr Caffrey, of Fairlane, Shaftesbury, Dorset,...

Posted: 29/09/2003 at 16:35 GMT Citing a provision of the Patriot Act, the FBI is sending letters to journalists telling them to secretly prepare to turn over their notes, e-mails and sources to the bureau. Should we throw out the First Amendment to nail a hacker, writes SecurityFocus columnist Mark Rasch. Frequent readers of this space know that I am no apologist for hackers like Adrian Lamo, who, in the guise of protection, access others' computer systems without authorization, and then publicize these vulnerabilities. When Lamo did this to the New York Times, he violated two of my cardinal rules:...

<p>Administrators and security specialists hoping for a breather now that Blaster has faded and SoBig.F has expired may be in for a long weekend.</p> <p>The nature of the new vulnerabilities revealed yesterday in the RPC DCOM implementation in Windows is so similar to the one that Blaster exploits that security experts believe it's only a matter of days, if not hours, before someone releases a worm to attack the new weaknesses. Even though it infected close to a million machines, experts say the Blaster worm was poorly coded and as a result did not do nearly the damage that a more efficient worm could have done. Blaster easily could be modified to work much better, and because the source code for the worm is readily available online, it's likely that someone is already at work on that task.</p>

NEW YORK -- Since last month's Northeast blackout, utilities have accelerated plans to automate the electric grid, replacing aging monitoring systems with digital switches and other high-tech gear. But those very improvements are making the electricity supply vulnerable to a different kind of peril: computer viruses and hackers who could black out substations, cities or entire states. Researchers working for the U.S., Canadian and British governments have already sniffed out "back doors" in the digital relays and control room technology that increasingly direct electricity flow in North America. With a few focused keystrokes, they say, they could shut the computer...

New York Times Hacker Says Willing to Surrender 2 hours, 40 minutes ago SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A 22-year-old hacker known for breaking into corporate networks and publicly exposing the security holes said he is prepared to surrender to federal authorities looking to arrest him for computer crimes, including breaking into The New York Times network last year. Adrian Lamo did not reveal his whereabouts in a telephone interview on Saturday with Reuters, but did say he plans to turn himself in with the help of the Federal Public Defender's office in Sacramento, California, near where his parents live. The...

<p>His parents, Bob and Rita Parson, spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday on the "Today" show, and said their son was an ordinary teenager....</p> <p>MINNEAPOLIS — A high school senior charged with modifying a version of the Internet worm (search) that crippled computer networks worldwide said the government has exaggerated its case against him, and disputed media coverage that portrayed him as a computer-savvy loner.</p>

MINNEAPOLIS, Sep 02, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A high school senior charged with modifying a version of the Internet worm that crippled computer networks worldwide said the federal government has exaggerated its case against him, and disputed media coverage that portrayed him as a computer-savvy loner. "I have a very supportive, close group of friends. I'm not reckless, I don't do drugs, smoke or drink. This is the first time I have ever had a run-in with the law. It's hurtful to see the accounts of me. I'm not depressed, embarrassed about my weight, or a misfit," Jeffrey...

    Hacking-by-subpoena ruled illegal By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocusAug 29 2003 7:59PMIssuing an egregiously overbroad subpoena for stored e-mail qualifies as a computer intrusion in violation of anti-hacking laws, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, deciding a case in which a litigant in a civil matter subpoenaed every single piece of e-mail his courtroom adversary sent or received. Alwyn Farey-Jones was embroiled in commercial litigation with two officers of Integrated Capital Associates (ICA) when he instructed his attorney, Iryna Kwasny, to send a subpoena to the company's Internet service provider -- California-based NetGate. Under federal civil rules, a litigant...