hactivists

Verizon: Hacktivists stole 100 million+ records in 2011

Financially motivated criminals were behind most of last year's data breaches, but hacktivists stole almost twice as many records from organizations and government agencies, according to the Data Breach Investigations Report being released by Verizon today.

While more than 80 percent of the data breaches in 2011 were due to organized criminal activity, the number of records pilfered from activist groups represented 58 percent of the total, the report finds.

In particular, hacktivists targeted corporations and big agencies, and consumer data. Activist groups accounted for more than 22 percent of the data breaches targeting large organizations. Meanwhile, 95 percent … Read more

Anonymous urges PayPal boycott, condemns FBI

Anonymous is lashing out today at the FBI and especially at PayPal, urging users of the electronic payments site to dump their accounts.

In its latest "official communique" on behalf of itself and Lulz Security, the hactivist group condemned the FBI for its recent arrests of those charged in connection with hacking attacks by Anonymous in December against PayPal and a host of other companies.

Complaining that the Anonymous "suspects" may face a fine of $500,000 and a possible 15 years of jail time, the group criticized the FBI for equating "adding one's … Read more

WikiLeaks app yanked from Apple's App Store

Apple has removed a WikiLeaks app from its App Store just a few short days after its release.

Launched on December 17, the $1.99 WikiLeaks App offered access to the whistleblower site and the @wikileaks Twitter stream and was described as providing "'instant access to the world's most documented leakage of top secret memos and other confidential government documents," according to a Google cached version of the site provided by TechCrunch. The app was created by a third-party development firm called Hint Solutions, which lists Igor Barinov as its general manager.

But as of late last … Read more

WikiLeaks supporters attack MasterCard site

Activists fighting on behalf of WikiLeaks brought down MasterCard's Web site today, according to the BBC and other sources.

The hacking group Anonymous is taking responsibility for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the credit company's site in retaliation for MasterCard's decision on Monday to block donations and payments to WikiLeaks, which was first reported by CNET.

MasterCard's main site was at times either offline or extremely slow to load this morning. Ping requests to the site also timed out, an indication that the site was unreachable.

Early this morning, the Anonymous group, which … Read more