DEFCON Kids Returns, Now With 0-Day
DEFCON is inviting the kids back again this year for the second edition of DEFCON Kids, and this time, there’s zero-days involved.
Hacks
Rash Identity Theft Sweeps Small Kentucky Town
Dozens of individuals from Winchester, a small Kentucky town east of Lexington have been targeted by hackers, according to a report earlier this week in the Lexington Herald-Leader. The newspaper claims between 50 and 100 diners at Puerta Grande, a small Mexican restaurant, were hit with bank fraud at some point in the last two weeks.
Password Leaks Continue: Billabong, NVIDIA Accounts Compromised
UPDATE: A string of high-profile hacks against online forums and companies continued on Thursday, with news that forums hosted by the technology firm NVIDIA as well as the surf-ware vendor Billabong.
Passwords as a defensive measure are complete rubbish. There’s no two ways about that. The fact that high-value services such as online banking, corporate email and data storage use simple passwords as the only real security mechanism is a sad commentary on the state of defensive technologies. But, as the continued parade of password leaks of late proves on a daily basis, users who believe these companies are protecting their passwords are sadly mistaken.
An online forum for Android fans and developers was compromised and user account details stolen, according to a notice posted online on Tuesday.
Followers and supporters of Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama were the targets of an e-mail borne attack that used news of the spiritual leader’s birthday to trick recipients into installing a surreptitious monitoring program on their computers.
UPDATE: Residents in two Illinois communities are settling their nerves after civil defense sirens blared for around 30 minutes last Saturday – an incident that authorities say may be the result of hacking.
Here’s the good news on America’s birthday: the last year has seen the U.S. emerge as an undisputed global leader in the use of offensive cyber operations. Averting another “Sputnik” moment, the nation’s longest running and most successful democracy blazed new trails in non-kinetic warfare, effectively ending speculation that the world’s lone superpower was asleep at the wheel as nations like China and Russia dashed ahead in the cyber realm. Now for the bad news: we’re screwed.
A new version of the Sykipot Trojan is being pushed to unsuspecting users in a wave of online attacks, including targeted attacks on attendees of an international aerospace conference, according to researchers at the security firm AlienVault.
TeamP0ison hacker and newly minted 18 year-old Junaid Hussain of Birmingham, England – a.k.a “TriCk” pleaded guilty last week to hacking charges for a string of attacks on some of the U.K.’s leading political figures, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to a published report in The Sun.
