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The authorities in Chile have arrested four people who the police say are members of one of the world's most successful groups of computer hackers. The men are accused of breaching more than 8,000 websites, including that of US space agency Nasa. One of the men, who has used the alias "Net Toxic", is alleged to be one of the most prolific hackers in the world. The men were detained in simultaneous raids in three cities in Chile, including the capital Santiago. The Chilean police carried out the operation in co-ordination with Interpol and intelligence services from the US, Israel...

Home PCs could be under attack from hackers over 50 times a night, suggests a BBC News Website experiment. The BBC News Website team set up a ‘honeypot’ PC – a computer that looks like a normal PC online but records everything that's done to it – in order to find out the dangers facing web users. Every single time the 'honeypot' was put online it was attacked. In one of the busiest nights of malicious online activity, the computer was attacked 53 times: 1 hijack attempt. PC suffered buffer overflow attempt to subvert web server built into Microsoft Windows....

Chinese computer hackers target US Commerce Department Oct 06 2:41 PM US/Eastern via AFP Computer hackers based in China have launched sustained attacks on the computers of a US Commerce Department technology export office, a department official said. The official, who requested anonymity, said the attacks had originated from websites registered with Chinese Internet service providers. Chinese-based hackers, especially in the Chinese province of Guangdong, have mounted systematic efforts to penetrate US government and industry computer networks in order to access secret information, according to computer security experts. The experts and some US lawmakers believe the attacks are sanctioned by...

NEW WEBSITE INCITES ELECTRONIC JIHAD Internet Jihad Update from Global Terrorism Analysis: The latest criticism of Islam being a violent religion, which was sparked by incendiary comments made by Pope Benedict XVI, has caused internet jihadis to launch a new website called Electronic Jihad, located at http://www.al-jinan.org. The purpose of the website is to help organize an electronic jihad against websites that insult Islam and Islamic sacred figures. The site has been well publicized on more established jihadi websites. Jihadi forums are posting quotes from the Quran in order to encourage and convince jihadis and regular Muslims of their duty...

As it turned out, all of those involved in the infamous leakage of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recorded -- albeit private -- remarks about the proclivities of Republican legislators sullied themselves. For those who have been out of touch for the past week -- or tuned out -- the Los Angeles Times published excerpts from a private conversation Schwarzenegger had last spring with some aides in which, among other things, he speculated about GOP Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia's ethnicity and added: "I mean, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part...

Los Angeles -- Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides on Thursday maintained his campaign did nothing wrong when it downloaded an audio tape of a private meeting from the governor's Web site. Instead, the state treasurer sought to steer the debate away from the legal or ethical questions of obtaining the file and focus attention on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comments. The governor was overheard on the tapes, during a private meeting with staff members last March, remarking about the fiery temperament that results from the mixing of "black blood" and "Latino blood." "As I understand it, this audiotape was downloaded from...

That sound you hear is the backfire coming from Phil Angelides' gubernatorial campaign for its on-the-sly release of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comments about "hot"-blooded Latinos. The Angelides folks would like everyone to believe that there's more embarrassing material on the tapes the Democratic campaign obtained from a governor's Web site -- which may or may not have been secure -- but that the firestorm over the affair is making it impossible for them to circulate other remarks. "That's the real irony here," said one Angelides insider, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. "These two guys (campaign staffers)...

California Highway Patrol officials have opened a criminal investigation into "multiple" breaches and illegal downloads by outside hackers into the computers of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, after an embarrassing private taped conversation was leaked last week to the Los Angeles Times, administration officials told The Chronicle. "There is an investigation conducted by the California Highway Patrol on how the tape obtained by the L.A. Times was acquired," said a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This is a criminal matter that has been turned over to the CHP." The governor was criticized last week after the Times reported...

STOCKHOLM (AFX) - Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party has reported hundreds of incidents of unauthorized computer access to the police, and alleges that 'someone linked to the Liberal Party' had hacked into its internal network, reported Dagens Industri. The hacking enabled unauthorized people to view secret Social Democrat (SD) information about strategies and plans for the forthcoming Sept 17 election campaign. snip --- 'We are now looking into whether we can find out any information via our network about what has been claimed, I have asked anyone in the Liberal Party who has information about this to come forward,' he...

See for example this thread first. Mohammed Ahmedijenad has a blog--or should I say "had"? The website got hacked defaced, and attacked (but by the wrong folks). That's just sad!

The old business model was smashed to rubble in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Although soundly defeated and on the run, AlQaeda and their Taleban hosts were able to disseminate the closely guarded secrets and methods of the AlQaeda Encyclopedia to more tech-savvy true believers and would-be jihadists. Now, all the AlQaeda 2.0 needs is a willing mind, and an internet connection. In the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs Evan Kohlmann said: Al Qaeda and similar groups rely on the Internet to contact potential recruits and donors, sway public opinion, instruct would-be terrorists, pool tactics and knowledge, and organize...

Cyberwars? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new personal Web site has come under attack by Israeli hackers intent on crashing it, Ynetnews reports. The ahmadinejad.ir site was announced Sunday and allows Internet users to post comments and questions for the president in Farsi, Arabic, English or French. But by Monday afternoon, Israeli bloggers claimed they had organized an effort by thousands of Israelis to enter the site simultaneously, causing it to crash, Ynet said. The site was down for several hours late Monday but UPI found it functional early Tuesday morning. Ahmadinejad has posted his biography on the site, along with...

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site remained offline Thursday, and federal and state authorities were investigating why it crashed on the eve of this week's defeat in a high-profile primary. The site, Joe2006.com, appeared to have suffered from a so-called "denial of service" attack, in which computers overwhelm a site with fake traffic so real visitors can't get through, said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant in Brookline, Mass. The Lieberman campaign denied speculation among liberal Web pundits that the centrist Democrat's Web site had simply crashed because it used a low-budget Web host unable to handle the...

Hackers are taking a page from the open-source playbook, using the same techniques that made Linux and Apache successes to improve their malicious software, according to McAfee Inc. Nowhere is this more apparent than within the growing families of "bot" software, which allow hackers to remotely control infected computers. Unlike viruses of the past, bots tend to be written by a group of authors, who often collaborate by using the same tools and techniques as open source developers, said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager with McAfee's Avert Labs. "Over the last year and a half, we've noticed how...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department is recovering from large-scale computer break-ins worldwide over the past several weeks that appeared to target its headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, The Associated Press has learned. Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the widespread intrusions and the resulting investigation. The break-ins and the State Department's emergency response severely limited Internet access at many...

<p>Hackers have penetrated internet banking facilities and gained access to the accounts of clients of three major banks, the Cape Times reported on Tuesday.</p> <p>Its website said hackers had in the past three months gained access to the online accounts of clients from First National Bank, Standard and Absa banks.</p>

Excerpt - A security researcher with expertise in rootkits has created a working prototype of new technology that is capable of creating malware that remains "100 percent undetectable," even on Windows Vista x64 systems. Joanna Rutkowska, a stealth malware researcher at Singapore-based IT security firm COSEINC, says the new Blue Pill concept uses AMD's SVM/Pacifica virtualization technology to create an ultra-thin hypervisor that takes complete control of the underlying operating system. Rutkowska plans to discuss the idea and demonstrate a working prototype for Windows Vista x64 at the end at the SyScan Conference in Singapore on July 21 and at...

Hackers are trying to lure people to a malicious Web site using cell phone text messages, a security company has warned. The blended attack uses social engineering techniques in its attempt to trick people to the site, security vendor Websense said in an advisory. An SMS text message is sent to the targets' cell phones, thanking them for subscribing to a fictitious dating service. The message states that they will be automatically charged a fee of $2.00 per day via their phone bill, unless their subscription is cancelled online. The same message has also been sent multiple times to the...

Hackers on Sunday broke into a part of Microsoft's French Web site, replacing the front page with online graffiti. The intruders were able to access the server that was running "http://experts.microsoft.fr/," Microsoft confirmed Monday. The attack was claimed by Turkish hackers using the handle "TiTHacK," according to Zone-H, a security Web site that keeps an archive with screenshots of defaced Web sites. The attackers were likely able to penetrate the server running the Web site due to faulty configuration, Microsoft said in a statement Monday. "Microsoft took the appropriate action to resolve the issue and stop any additional criminal activity,"...

The Web site of Sweden's national police was shut down after a hacker attack that investigators on Friday said could be a retaliation for a crackdown on a popular file-sharing site called The Pirate Bay. Meanwhile, the government faced allegations that police had acted under pressure from U.S. authorities when they targeted the file-sharing site in raids earlier this week. The police Web site was closed late Thursday after a so-called denial of service attack, in which hackers overload a single network by directing massive traffic to the site, police spokesman Lars Lindahl said. He did not rule out that...