hackers

Unlocking Ma Bell: How phone phreaks came to be

Imagine a day when it cost an arm and a leg to use the phone, especially for long-distance calls. Then imagine that buried deep within the telephone network infrastructure was a flaw -- a hole that allowed those who were aware of it, and capable of exploiting it, to make all the free calls they want.

These days, phone calls are free -- or nearly so -- and hackers put their energies into computer networks, jailbreaking iPhones, and other more modern pursuits. But back in the 1950s and 1960s, a new group of people emerged, people who were fascinated by … Read more

Hackers said to hit Bush family, exposing sensitive information

Private Bush family information, including correspondence from both President Bushes, is said to have been compromised by a hacking attack.

According to The Smoking Gun, hackers broke into several email accounts owned by members of the Bush family.

The Smoking Gun wrote:

In e-mail exchanges with the person who claimed responsibility for the hack, the individual claimed to have swiped "a lot of stuff," including "interesting mails" about George H.W. Bush's recent hospitalization, "Bush 43," and other Bush family members.

Included in the hacked material is a confidential October 2012 list of … Read more

Twitter hack may have targeted elected officials, journalists

Although Twitter hasn't revealed who may have been victimized in last week's suspected massive account hack, an analysis suggests that accounts with high levels of influence may have been among those affected.

Within days of accusations that hackers in China were responsible for network breaches at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the microblogging site revealed Friday that about 250,000 accounts might have been compromised. In e-mails to affected users, Twitter said it reset passwords for accounts it suspected of being compromised after identifying unauthorized attempts to access Twitter user data.

"This attack … Read more

Twitter considers implementing two-factor authentication

Twitter may have two-factor authentication in the works for its micro-blogging platform to increase its security.

According to a job advertisement first spotted by The Guardian, Twitter is looking for a software engineer to fit in to its product security division.

One of the responsibilities for the new engineer will be to "design and develop user-facing security features, such as multifactor authentication and fraudulent log-in detection." The job listing also says that the new engineer's work will "directly impact the security of hundreds of millions of Twitter users."

Other companies have been gradually introducing multi-factor … Read more

Wall Street Journal: China hackers hit us, too

The Wall Street Journal said today that it's been the target of Chinese hackers stemming from its coverage of China, echoing reports from other news organizations.

Hackers infiltrated the newspaper's computer system through its Beijing bureau in order to monitor the paper's coverage of China, according to the report. Paula Keve, chief spokeswoman for the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, issued a statement that said the hacks "are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information." The company completed a "network overhaul" on Thursday to increase security.

The … Read more

Chinese hackers said to wage cyberwar on The New York Times

After a lengthy newspaper investigation on China's prime minister, The New York Times claims, the newspaper's computer systems were infiltrated and attacked by Chinese hackers.

The attacks began four months ago and culminated with hackers stealing the corporate password for every Times employee, according to the paper. The personal computers of 53 of these employees were also broken into and spied on.

The Times discovered the attacks after observing "unusual activity" in its computer system. Security investigators were then able to get into the system and track the hackers' movements, see what the infiltrators were after, … Read more

Anonymous launches attack on Mexico's Defense Department

Anonymous has set its sights on Mexico's Department of Defense.

The group's Mexican legion has claimed responsibility for waging a distributed-denial-of-service attack on the government site, rendering it inoperable for several hours yesterday, according to the Associated Press.

During the attack, the group posted a statement on the media section of the government's Web site. The statement claimed that a "bad government" was running the country.

"Our struggle is for life, and our bad government offers death as the future," the statement read, according to Spanish language tech news site Web Adictos. "… Read more

Graph Search highlights Facebook's unwillingness to bend to Wall Street

Facebook bends to no one, particularly not bankers and investors looking for perfection. That's the message Wall Street received with the beta release of Graph Search, the social network's first milestone launch since becoming a public company.

Graph Search is Facebook's experimental take on search and alters the social-networking experience to support discovery through natural language queries on people, photos, places, and interests.

Graph Search is so significant in scope and purpose that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg anointed the product a "third pillar," which makes it as core to Facebook as Timeline and News Feed. … Read more

Anonymous hacks MIT after Aaron Swartz's suicide

Just hours after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pledged an investigation into its role in events leading up to the suicide of Aaron Swartz, online hacktivist group Anonymous defaced the school's Web site.

Swartz, who championed open access to documents on the Internet, committed suicide on Friday. The 26-year-old was arrested in July 2011 and accused of stealing 4 million documents from MIT and Jstor, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. He faced $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison if convicted.

After MIT President L. Rafael Reif issued a statement this afternoon … Read more