University officials discovered the problem in early July after noticing someone bragging on a hackers’ Web site about accessing the journalism school site. It took several weeks for technology experts to understand the extent of any potential problem. (SF Gate)
A Los Angeles hacker received a slightly reduced sentence Monday of 55 months in prison for participating in a multi-million computer fraud scheme, after a federal judge took into account the man’s diagnosis with Asperger’s Syndrome. Viachelav Berkovich, 34, received five months less than the minimum recommended by the probation office and prosecutors, and 23 [...]
Interesting to note that last week’s Twitter attack may have originated in a struggle to either propagate or suppress news and views on the Russia-Georgia dispute over the far-away Abkhazia region. Wouldn’t be the first in recent times that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, have been on the front lines of a technological arms race between [...]
A top operational official in charge of protecting civilian government computer networks has resigned, dealing another blow to the federal effort to enhance cybersecurity. Mischel Kwon, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, submitted her resignation letter this week. “Moving on is a hard step for me, but one [...]
David Leopard of Richardson has devoted a good part of his retirement to helping seniors guard against identity theft. But even this former FBI agent and corporate security executive isn’t sure what to make of a research team’s claim that it can predict most, and sometimes all, of an individual’s nine-digit Social Security number from [...]
After a deranged student’s shooting rampage killed 32 classmates on a spring morning two years ago at Virginia Tech University, one of Randy Marchany’s first priorities was accounting for the seven students who worked in the school’s information security office. Marchany, director of the Virginia Tech IT Security Testing Lab, was able to confirm that [...]
Braving triple-digit heat, mean hangovers and an incredibly hostile network, roughly 10,000 hackers, security experts, feds, spies and various other “computer enthusiasts” took over the Riviera last weekend for the world’s largest hacking convention, DefCon. (Wired)
One day after reports of vulnerabilities in XML libraries, an analyst is warning companies not to ignore the danger of attacks that exploit those flaws. “Hackers are moving up the stack to the application level,” says Neil MacDonald, a vice president at research firm Gartner. XML-based attacks can be expected to be “the next big [...]
he Army National Guard is warning 131,000 members that the recent theft of a laptop could compromise their personal information. Guard officials say the data loss happened when a personal laptop owned by one of their contractors was stolen. (Chicago Tribune)
Both sites have lately become attractive targets for online crooks who try to trick users into installing malware on their PCs. Malicious tweets or Facebook messages might promise some great new video, but instead install fake security software. Kaspersky today posted about the most social engineering attacks used by the “Koobface” malware against Facebook and [...]
