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The stars are out on the playing field already -- even though the World Cup soccer matches haven't quite started. These are the midfielders and strikers of e-mail spam -- malicious messengers, and hooligan hackers -- who are hitting headers aimed at the nearly 1 billion people around the globe who will be desperate in the coming weeks for news and tidbits about their favorite players, whether it's Francesco Totti in Italy or Tomasz Kuszczak in Poland, sources tell UPI's The Web. Nearly 12 times more viewers are expected to follow the World Cup on the Internet and TV than...

Hacker Indicted In January of last year, the hacker group collectively known as the "Internet Liberation Front" gained illegal access to the ProtestWarrior server, stealing thousands of credit card numbers in order to commit massive credit card fraud. The following month, ProtestWarrior discovered the identity of the perpetrators: Jeremy Hammond and a ring of hackers recruited through his criminal front at hackthissite.org. ProtestWarrior performed a forensic analysis of the intrusion and contacted the FBI, which immediately launched an investigation. With the collected evidence, the FBI was able to execute a search warrant on Jeremy's residence on March 16, 2005. PDF...

KMBC's Jere Gish reported that is is called Caller I.D. spoofing, and it is readily available online at Web site such as SpoofCard.com and TeleSpoof.com. The Web sites allow people to chose any number they want to pop up in someone's Caller I.D. Computer hackers have been able to do this with special equipment for years. But only recently have Web sites popped up to offer it to anyone. Just log in, sign up, pay with your credit card and you're ready to go. All of this is legal. Gish reported that it is often used by debt collectors. A...

CHICAGO, May 1 (UPI) -- Computer-security professionals at the weekend were working on what is being described as a just-emerging IT problem -- the kind which, if the pros are correct, potentially could imperil all e-commerce across the globe. Hackers have apparently compromised the computer server of a Russian bank and set up a fake subsite to "phish" for credit-card information and other personal financial details, experts tell UPI's Networking. This is a new kind of phishing scam, as computer criminals usually set up sites that simply look and feel similar to the site they are attacking. But in this...

For the second time, the forum section of the Save Our State organization website has been hacked. The hackers have changed the SOS website's controls to NOT allow any Save Our State posters, members, or visitors to access the site's information. Co-incidentally this site's hacking occured today May 1st, the very day when the illegal immigrant forces are rallying in the US. This hacking has happened previously under similar suspicious circumstances. The other hacking occured in the past when the Save Our State national organization had organized their national rally day to publicly protest the continuing un-enforcement of illegal alien...

BLOGS DOWN: HACK ATTACK By Michelle Malkin · April 28, 2006 11:51 AM Many Hosting Matters-hosted blogs are down--including Instapundit, Power Line, and tons of others large and small. Hosting Matters' own website is also down. Blogger Chuck Simmins e-mails: Denial of service attack on Hosting Matters. Most, if not all, their hosted sites are down. Attack is originating internationally. Haven't been able to confirm. But stay tuned.

Group of ultra-orthodox hackers erases Israeli porn sites, replacing them with photo of the Lubavitch Rabbi Do you like visiting porn sites? The "ultra-orthodox sex commando" will do whatever it takes to stop you. A group of ultra-orthodox hackers, shocked by the obscenity of some porn sites, has launched an internet campaign in a bid to cause such sites to crash. The hackers, already named at some internet forums the "ultra-orthodox sex commando," or the "ultra-orthodox electronic underground," focus their efforts at this point on Hebrew sites. The first target was the Hebrew porn site www.sexhack.tk – a mid-sized, not...

CHICAGO, March 17 (UPI) -- A botnet -- or robotic network -- sends an instant message to your smart phone. You think it is from a friend and open the IM. But it's not a chatty note at all, as the automated message fraudulently scans the system, looking for your credit-card numbers, bank-account statements and secret passwords. Experts tell United Press International's Wireless World that computer criminals are now using these "botnets" to attack consumers and businesses via text messaging, adding to the threats and problems created by the new, emerging mobile technology.

Claims of Mac OS X being hacked in under 30 minutes are not quite what they seem, according to Dave Schroeder, Senior Systems Engineer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. A recent ZDNet article told the story of a Swedish man who setup his Mac mini as a server and invited people to try to break into the system and gain root control. Having root control of a computer allows you do install applications, move or delete files. Within hours of the challenge going live, it was over as a hacker gained root control of the Mac mini. However,...

[Editor’s Note: Michelle Malkin is experiencing problems with her weblog after being the target of cyberattacks. While they last, Pajamas Media will host her posts here] The cyberjihad continues. Zone-H, which monitors Internet hackers, reports that “the Moroccan hacker known as Yanis was arrested” in Paris on Tuesday: Yanis is accused of having defaced several French important websites (university of Strasbourg and Toulouse, website of the city of Lyon etc..), but his activity as defacer is far more complex: Zone-h, the independent observatory of cyber-crime, have monitored nearly 3000 notifications of intrusions in the last month related to the Prophet...

Muslim computer-hacker gangs have launched a massive attack on Danish and Western Web sites as part of the mass protests across the Arab world over the publication of cartoons making fun of the Prophet Mohammed. The cyber-crime monitoring group Zone-H.org said in a statement that more than 1,000 Danish, Israeli and European sites were defaced or shut down by Islamic hackers in the last week. And experts fear that's just the beginning of what could be a massive cyber-jihad stretching from the Middle East and Europe to the United States and dominating cyberspace for weeks, costing millions of dollars. "We...

Last Tuesday, during or immediately after my appearance on Fox News Channel to discuss the Mohammed Cartoons, this blog was hit by a large, foreign-based denial of service attack. Last night, my hosting service notified me that it is receiving ongoing threats from individuals vowing to take down this site--and others along with it--which will presumably continue until I take down the cartoons. For now, we are on guard and continuing with business as usual. But you should know there's something much wider and deeper going on: I. Security Pro News reports on the latest Islamist hacker attacks spurred by...

Two decades ago, Brain, the first boot sector virus which infected personal computers via the floppy disk, was detected. While Brain itself was relatively harmless, it marked the genesis of the world of computer viruses. This year marks the 20th year of the existence of viruses after Brain was detected on January 19, 1986. Boot sector viruses, now long extinct along with the floppy disk, held a relatively long reign from 1986 to 1995. Since transmission was via disk from computer to computer, infection would only reach a significant level months or even years after its release. This changed in...

LONDON - A Web site that earned an enterprising British student $1 million suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers. Alex Tew, 21, said Wednesday that his Million Dollar Homepage was targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his university studies. Tew had sold 10,000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site for $100 each, achieving his target in four months. His initiative spawned several copycat sites. But Tew said that on Jan. 7, he received a threat from an organization calling itself "The Dark Group," demanding that he pay them $50,000 within...

It seems some poor soul has decided to do a DOS (Denial of service) attack on my site. Being resolved as I am writing this, please be patient and lets hope this saddo gets bored.

CHARLOTTE COUNTY — Managing your money on-line can be a risky proposition. One Southwest Florida family found out the hard way after losing more than $50,000 to computer hackers. A simple login in to a familiar web site revealed a nightmare. "We looked at the account and instead of having $119,000, there was only $56,000. At that point I said what's going on?" said Jeanette Miller of Port Charlotte.

Details of a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program have been put up for sale on eBay, with the seller offering a starting price of 1 US cent. At the time of writing, the bidding had reached $US60 ($A79). Zero day means information that is not publicly available and is used to describe security vulnerabilities exploits which are unknown to security professionals. The seller said the vulnerability had been discovered on December 6 and the details had been sent to Microsoft. "All the details were submitted to Microsoft, and the reply was received indicating that they may start working...

In late January, I uncovered a password-protected Arabic-language website, Barsomyat.com, that was frequented by Middle Eastern Muslims, predominantly Egyptians. The purpose of Barsomyat.com was to systematically track Christians who were active in religious debates against Muslims on the internet chat service PalTalk. Barsomyat featured pictures of these Christians (some of which were obviously obtained by hacking into the Christians' computers) along with death threats and attempts to track down the subjects' physical addresses. Even Barsomyat.com's banner showed the website's intentions toward Christians, as it pictured a sheep--obviously intended to represent Christianity--getting its throat slit.

China's economy continues its incredible growth, but the IT infrastructure at all the new offices, research parks and other projects isn't keeping pace and is increasingly imperiled by hackers and other Internet predators, experts tell UPI's The Web. The IT problems -- hackers, viruses, worms, malware -- are so severe in China that entire enterprises are at risk, and doing e-business with companies with such shoddy Internet security could pose a threat to U.S. companies. By Gene Koprowski

Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen, says Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek. "There is endless debate among security experts about whether the paucity of successful assaults on Apple's OS X is attributable to better security or attackers' lack of interest in an operating system whose share of the market is in single digits. I think it's some of both." Wildstrom says one reason Mac OS X offers inherently better security is that it was designed with relatively little concern for compatibility with earlier...