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hack attack


Huffington Post Recommends Personal VPN to Encrypt All Online Activity, Personal Security

Posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 by

As an in-depth Huffington Post article points out, it’s no wonder celebrities are often victimized by hackers. The reality is, it’s just not that hard to hack celebrities — or anyone else, for that matter.

Indeed, among the five security tips shared in the article, two are suggestions that this website has repeatedly recommended and warned about over the years. For example tip #4 warns about the dangers inherent in wireless networks and tip #5 warns about malicious spyware that can infect your computer and compromise security: Read More

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Hackers Work for ‘Highly Lucrative Payout’

Posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Several interesting details have emerged from the “Global Risks for 2012″ report — which shows cyber attacks on governments and businesses are considered to be one of the top five risks in the world. Be it cybercrime, cyber-espionage or cyberwarfare — they are on a steady rise.

The reason, according to this article, are the “highly lucrative payout hackers get from stealing data.” Read More

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Finding the Cleanup Crew After a Messy Hack Attack

Posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 by

The New York Times says being hacked is like someone invading your home, and more than anything else, time is of the essence. Read More

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Researchers Release Attack Tool That Cripples Secure Websites

Posted on Monday, November 7th, 2011 by

SSL — the security layer used by banks and online retailers to secure communications between the website and the user — is coming under fire yet again. A new report from Wired says there is a new hacking tool that exploits a known flaw in the SSL protocol by overwhelming the system with secure connection requests. As the article says, this quickly consumes server resources. Read More

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CNN: Massive Hack Hit 760 Companies Including IBM, Intel, Google

Posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 by

CNN reports that more than 760 organizations — including IBM, Intel, Facebook, Amazon, and Google — had a breached “command and control” server, the name for a machine that hackers use to direct the fleets of compromised PCs that they have gained control over. As the CNN article notes, most companies don’t like admitting that they’ve been compromised, but the fact is most companies are likely just finding out they’ve been hacked at all. Read More

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Hollywood Hackers Stealing Nude Pics, Movie Scripts, and More

Posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 by

An even less-ethical TMZ? Have you heard of Hollywood Leaks, a new band of hackers that has been breaking into entertainment industry insiders’ email accounts and leaking what they find, including nude photos, phone numbers, and movie scripts? The hackers aren’t particularly skilled, according to this article on Gawker, which says they’ve broken into accounts mostly by guessing bad security questions. Read More

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Over 43,000 Yale Faculty, Staff And Students Get Hacked

Posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 by

According to Business Insider, Yale University has become a victim of Google hacking — also known as Google dorking — when cybercriminals use Google search functions to access data on the Internet. The article explains that students and faculty at the Ivy League institution had their personal data — including names and Social Security numbers — available online for nearly 10 months. This sensitive information was stored on an FTP server accessible through a simple Web search. Read More

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Why Hackers Are Snooping on Drivers Who Text

Posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 by

Computer hackers can force some cars to unlock their doors and start their engines without a key by sending specially crafted messages to a car’s anti-theft system. They can also snoop at where you’ve been by tapping the car’s GPS system. Find out why this is possible in this Yahoo! Finance article, which also says such attacks are possible on a variety of other devices that use wireless communications chips. Those include ATMs, medical devices, and even traffic lights. Read More

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Distressingly Fragile: Digital Information and Things That We Trust That We Shouldn’t

Posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 by

It might sound crazy, but it’s actually rather simple for some cyberpunk to drive to where you live or work, park out front, and put up cellphone antenna aimed at your home or office to hack your cell phone conversations, text messages, even emails. Think it’s not so simple? Think again, says CEO Kent Lawson, in this special post from May that we’re publishing again as part of our “Best of…” series. Click above to read all of Kent’s thoughts on a few “distressingly fragile” mobile trends you need to know about. Read More

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A Hacker Speaks: How Malware Could Ruin Your Laptop

Posted on Friday, August 5th, 2011

Malicious hackers with access to your laptop could load small spyware programs onto your battery chip, where they would become undetected by any antivirus software. PC World interviews a “good” hacker and security researcher who points out “there’s definitely a risk that malware could brick your battery so it never works again. I don’t know why someone would do that, except just to be mean.” Read More

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