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The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs "the worst consumer scam to date." Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K. But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam -- and scandal -- has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks,...

Online Stores Are Caught In Jihad Web By HOWARD ALTMAN Published: Feb 20, 2006 When Stacey Turmel placed an order online with Davida, an English motorcycle accessory company, she was looking for protective gear with style and comfort. But after plunking down $255 for a two-tone Deluxe Jet helmet, she found herself dragged into the shadowy world of global jihad. Turmel, a St. Petersburg lawyer, has learned that she was among several Davida customers whose personal and credit information was placed on a public Web site - 3asfh.net. The site, hosted temporarily by a Tampa-based Web-hosting company, has been used...

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA -- A US computer hacker on Monday pleaded guilty to hijacking around 400,000 computers, including military servers, and infecting them with malicious software. In the first such prosecution of its kind, "botmaster" Jeanson Ancheta, 20, admitted infecting the computers with software that caused them to send spam, show ads and launch crippling attacks on Internet sites. In federal court in Los Angeles, Ancheta admitted conspiring to violate both the Computer Fraud Abuse Act and an anti-spam law, to causing damage to US defense computers and to hacking into computers to commit fraud. His plea comes after...

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, a security institute says. A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute has said. The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity. ?These attacks...

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment as the first state in the nation to bring legal action against SONY for illegal "spyware." The suit is also the first filed under the state’s spyware law of 2005. It alleges the company surreptitiously installed the spyware on millions of compact music discs (CDs) that consumers inserted into their computers when they play the CDs, which can compromise the systems. The Attorney General’s lawsuit alleges the New York-based company violated a new Texas law protecting consumers from the hidden spyware. The company accomplished this by using...

PARIS - A Paris-based media watchdog has released a free guide with tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past Internet censors in countries from China to Iran. Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French Foreign Ministry and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can be downloaded in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French. "Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Julien Pain, head of...

Somewhere out on the Internet, an Electric Bong may be in danger. The threat: a well-crafted Google query that could allow a hacker to use Google's massive database as a resource for intrusion. "Electric Bong" was one of a number of household devices that security researcher Johnny Long came across when he found an unprotected Web interface to someone's household electrical network. To the right of each item were two control buttons, one labelled "on," the other, "off."

/begin my translation 40,000 Chinese Hackers  to Attack Japan via S. Korean Servers...on Aug. 15  Chinese hackers reportedly plan a massive hacking attack against various Japanese Internet sites on Aug. 15,  using S. Korean servers as 'intermediaries' for their offensive. S. Korean servers, which Chinese hackers will use to elude the tracking of their own IP addresses, include not only servers in S. Korean universities, but also in some government institutions, which would surely raise a major concern. Wen-hui-bao in Hong Kong reported on July 2, "Zhong-guo Hong-ke-lian-meng(Zhong-hong-meng,) one of the five largest hacking organization in the world, plans to launch...

Mark Hacking will spend at least 30 years in prison for the murder of his wife before the state parole board even considers a possible release date for the 29-year-old man. "This is just a hearing," said Mike Sibbett, chairman of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. "There is no guarantee that he will ever receive a release date." Mark Hacking pleaded guilty to shooting his wife, Lori Kay Soares Hacking, in their Salt Lake apartment on July 18 and disposing of her body in a Dumpster at the University of Utah. News of the 2035 initial hearing date...

/begin my translation China: The Biggest Hacker Group Plans Massive Attack Against Japan 2005-07-02 Chinese hacker organization, 'Hong-ke-lian-meng', the largest in China and the fifth largest in the world, announced that they would mount massive hacking attack against anti-Chinese sites in Japan between this month and September, according to Hong Kong daily, Wen-hui-bao. The paper reported that this attack would be larger than the one in last April when massive anti-Japanese protests erupted all over China.  It is rather unusual that the hacking plan was publicized beforehand. It reflects the serious anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese, due to Japan's offensive remarks on...

A British man appeared in court today over allegations that he hacked into the US military computer system causing damage worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.Gary McKinnon, 39, faces extradition to the US over claims that he accessed 97 government computers over a one-year period. District judge Christopher Pratt granted him bail to reappear for an extradition hearing on July 27.He was ordered to provide £5,000 security, report to his local police station, not to apply for any international travel documents and not to use any computer equipment allowing him to access the internet as bail conditions. "On one instance,...

A Laguna Creek High School senior says he's innocent. But the school district says he hacked into the school computer to change his grades. Today, the student takes the district to court to win the right to graduate with the class of 2005. "It is the completion of four years of hard work. It is a rite of passage," said Alexander Ochoa, an honors student who plans to be in Sacramento Superior Court today to persuade a judge to allow him to receive his diploma with the rest of his class in Wednesday's ceremony. Graduation for Ochoa is the first...

Fret About PC Zombie Threat? Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service Fri May 27,12:00 PM ET LONDON-- Worried about zombies? Internet users concerned about the number of virus-infected PCs ready to launch an attack over the Web can at least keep track of how afraid they should be--and satisfy their curiosity--by visiting CipherTrust Inc.'s new ZombieMeter resource. The security company added the ZombieMeter to its Web site this week, offering visitors hourly information on the global activity of new zombies by tracking data it receives through its IronMail e-mail security appliances. Zombiesare Internet-connected computers that have been infected by malicious code...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online "vigilantes" have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them. These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say "Warning - This was a Scam Site," or "This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed." The efforts by the self-proclaimed "hero hackers" come amid a surge in online schemes known as "phishing" in which victims are lured to fake...

Apple's Dashboard Hacked May 9, 2005 1:50PM What makes the issue particularly difficult to deal with, according to Stephan.com, is Apple's decision not to provide a documented way to remove Widgets once installed. In fact, Apple's Mac OS X Help files state specifically that "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order."   A developer has demonstrated a Dashboard exploit in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" that a malicious Web site owner could use to install Widgets you might not want on your Mac. Writing under the name of Stephan.com, the developer said that a...

1000s of computer systems serving U.S. military, NASA, prominent research labs have been penetrated by 'single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe'... MORE... Spokeswoman for White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico confirmed there has been 'unauthorized access'... Developing...

INCREASED MAC OS X HACKING ACTIVITY Current Assessment: Hype Current Assessment Date: 04/06/2005 Executive Summary: The attention devoted to the non-existent Mac OS X malicious code "problem" during the past several days is not warranted. However, it is possible to configure or use a system running Mac OS X in such a way as to make it vulnerable to malicious attackers. Proper configuration and use is critical with all Internet-connected devices. Threat: Low Vulnerability Prevalence: Low Cost: Medium Details: The past several days have seen a rash of technology press stories regarding Mac OS X ("ten") malicious code (malcode) and...

Still trying to find something in English to properly confirm all the details about this, but apparently a French court has ruled that adding anti-copying mechanisms to a DVD violates the rights consumers have to make private copies of media that they’ve bought and paid for. Reportedly the court has given the company that released the film in question one month to provide the guy who sued them with an unprotected DVD; it’s not entirely clear whether this ruling applies to every DVD sold in France or just that one copy of Mulholland Drive this guy was trying to dub....

Mark Hacking Pleads Guilty to Murder , April 15, 2005 SALT LAKE CITY — Mark Hacking (search) has pleaded guilty to charges of murdering his wife. The Utah man admitted shooting his wife, Lori Hacking (search), and dumping her body in a garbage bin. There was speculation after Hacking was arrested that he would plead innocent by reason of insanity, after revelations of a series of bold lies he had told his family and a bizarre incident after he reported his wife missing that led to a stay in a psychiatric hospital. Local newspapers reported that none of the possible...

Millions of wireless access points are spread across the US and the world. About 70% percent of these access points are unprotected—wide open to access by anyone who happens to drive by. The other 30% are protected by WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and a small handful are protected by the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard. At a recent ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) meeting in Los Angeles, a team of FBI agents demonstrated current WEP-cracking techniques and broke a 128 bit WEP key in about three minutes. Special Agent Geoff Bickers ran the Powerpoint presentation and explained the attack,...