The hacker’s war with the hackers

The cyber attack war has got at its new chapter, of hacker’s attack. The A-Team, a group of electronic intruders made public the names, email addresses, phone numbers and personal details like the girlfriends’ names and family of their main hacking competitors from Lulz Security, the group responsible for some very important intrusions like the CIA, IMF, Google or Sony ones.

Hackers Unite

The thieves who made off with more than $2.5M from Citibank and caused the bank to issue 100,000 replacement bank cards have highlighted an alarming trend. Hackers are evolving. And, they are organizing and uniting. They even have a Twitter account. Before the advent of the Internet, we called these hackers "robbers" or "criminals" or the "mafia." However, now that the Internet has provided a way to enter the front door through the digital underground, hacking has evolved in to a disastrous enterprise.
I'm seeing the evolution of four kinds of hackers emerging into cohesive groups that we need to pay close attention to.

Mobsters: The hackers who attacked Citibank are probably "mobster" hackers. Mobsters are hackers who

Reclusive and Dangerous: A Behind The Scenes Look Into The Fight Between Hacker Ryan Cleary And "Anonymous"

Two weeks ago, police officers from Scotland Yard arrested a 19-year-old Internet hacker named Ryan Cleary at his mother's home in Wickford. In the pictures that the authorities took of his bedroom, the only visible window is covered with tinfoil. Cleary's mother later said that her son had not left the room since Christmas - except to go to the bathroom.
Ryan Cleary barely existed in the physical world. He lived his life on the Internet, where he was not Ryan Cleary but an alternate version of himself called ViraL.
Cleary seems to have been an almost absurdly exaggerated version of the hacker loner, but as ViraL, he was allegedly one of the "key figures" in one of the most famous organisations in the digital underworld. He was

Facebook unveils deal with Skype as battle with Google hots up

Facebook announced a deal with Skype that will add live video chat to the social-networking site - marking the latest step-up in the battle against Google.
Founder of the social networking site, Mark Zuckerberg said it was an 'awesome' development for Skype as his company takes on the might of the internet search engine.
Google recently launched its Google+ service which also has a feature that allows video calls and the two companies are now locked in a head-to-head technological race.

'Something awesome': Mark Zuckerberg said that it's video chat service with
Skype will lead the way with social networking

Until now Facebook users have been limited to instant text chat and the move to incorporate Skype takes their game to the next level.

Gone in 60 seconds: 168 million emails, 700,000 Google searches... a mind-boggling snapshot of what happens on the Internet in just ONE MINUTE

We all know that the internet is a busy place, but computer wizards have worked out that it’s actually a lot busier than we ever thought. So busy, in fact, that it will make your head spin.

In just 60 seconds Google will deal with nearly 700,000 queries, 168,000,000 emails will be sent and 98,000 tweets tweeted on Twitter.

And that’s just for starters. The infographic below, produced by Go-Globe.com, gives a mind-blowing snapshot of 60 seconds in the life of the internet. Just where do we find the time to do it all?

Staggering: If this is what happens in just one minute on the internet, imagine what happens over a year

'A-Team' Turns in LulzSec Members; Hackers' Identities Revealed

By IB Times Staff Reporter | July 6, 2011 11:41 AM EDT

The dark and intriguing world of hacking just got murkier, as a group of hackers called the "A-Team" revealed the details of the famed LulzSec hackers in an apparent spite attack.
Hackers do shop fellow hackers to llaw enforcement, one reason why the world of hacking is particularly dangerous. However, in the latest instance, data regarding an entire team of hackers that had the world terrified for several weeks has supposedly been revealed.

The A-Team has published the names, aliases, e-mail addresses,

Massive botnet 'indestructible,' say researchers

4.5M-strong botnet 'most sophisticated threat today' to Windows PCs

Computerworld - A new and improved botnet that has infected more than four million PCs is "practically indestructible," security researchers say.

"TDL-4," the name for both the bot Trojan that infects machines and the ensuing collection of compromised computers, is "the most sophisticated threat today," said Kaspersky Labs researcher Sergey Golovanov in a detailed analysis Monday.

"[TDL-4] is practically indestructible," Golovanov said.
Others agree.

CIA website hacked; Cyber criminals rule the World?

Washington, Jun 16: Just after a day the US Senate website hacked, cyber criminals attacked the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) website and forced to shut down the site for few hours on Wednesday, Jun 15.

The hacker group Lulz Security, which was allegedly behind the attack on SonyPictures, Senate website, video game company Bethesda Softworks and many other government websites around the world, claimed the responsibility for hacking the CIA website.

Claiming the credit for CIA site hacking, a tweet in Lulz Sec Twitter account, which has more than 158,000 followers,

Oh sorry, Facebook CEO is surely a thief: Winklevoss Twins

California, Jun 27: It was just a silence before the blast! The Winklevoss Twins, who decided not to move the US Supreme Court against Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have filed a fresh lawsuit against Zuckerberg.

In the fresh petition filed in the US District Court of Massachusetts, the identical twins, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, and their Harvard classmate Divya Narendra claimed that Zuckerberg hid critical information from them during the settlement in 2008.

Meanwhile, Facebook rejected the fresh claims saying that these are just "baseless allegations".

China says no Cyber War with United States

Beijing, Jun 23: Amid speculations of a possible cyber war between China and United States, a Chinese top official said there is no stranded relationship with US over the allegations of hacking.

China's Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said both China and US were facing cyber attacks, but they were in no way directed by either government. He added that both countries were already discussing the issue during their regular strategic consultations.

"I want to clear something up: there are no contradictions between China and the United States" on the issue of hacking, Cui said.

Terorrism on terrorists! Hackers attack Al-Qaeda networks

London, Jul 1: Terrorists also face terrorist attacks! An unknown hacker group has hacked Al-Qaeda's internet network and caused interruption in their ability to communicate via internet.

An anti terror expert said that hackers have attacked Al-Qaeda's online communications and forced them shut down the service. The service has been out of order and Al-Qaeda does not have a single trusted distribution channel available on the internet.

Facebook hires Sony PlayStation hacker Geohot

California, Jun 28: Is Facebook planning for cyber attacks? The world's largest social networking website, Facebook has hired the notorious Sony PlayStation hacker George Hotz, who is widely known as Geohot.

Various technology reported Facebook's hiring of George Hotz, who is popular for his hacking of the Sony PlayStation 3 console and Apple iPhone jailbreak. Later Facebook confirmed the news and said that George Hotz was working with them.

Bloggers added that Sony hired George Hotz to create an official Facebook app for the iPad. Earlier, we reported Facebook is planning to launch an exclusive iPad app. With Hotz in kit, Facebook can protect its products from future cyber attacks.

George Hotz rised to stardom with his Sony PlayStation 3 hack. In Jan, 2010, he announced that he had successfully hacked the PlayStation 3 OS by enabling himself read and write access to the machine's system memory and having hypervisor level access to the machine's processor.

Review: Google+ a clean, intuitive mobile experience so far

Amy Gahran says the Google+ user interface is less
potentially misleading than Facebook's.

Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- Google on Tuesday unveiled its attempt to rival Facebook, a social-networking product called Google+.

I received an invitation from a friend and have been putting this nascent service through its paces --                                                                               especially on my Android phone.

Here's my experience so far:
(Do you want a Google+ invitation? Sorry, you may have to wait.)

Google faces 'wire tapping' case over Street View

Google's Street View cars took snaps and scooped up data from wi-fi networks

Google could be sued for scooping up data from open wi-fi networks after a US court ruling.


A judge in San Francisco decided that the company's actions may have violated federal laws on wire tapping.
Google had tried to have the class action lawsuit thrown out, claiming that anyone could have intercepted the wireless signals.

Google Enters the Ring for Social Smackdown, Round 2

Last year, Google took a swipe at the social networking scene by launching Buzz, which was quickly burned to a crisp by critics who blasted its apparently lax privacy protections. Now the search engine leader has returned with Google+, its latest attempt to break into the social scene. Challenging a rival the size of Facebook will be difficult, but Google's size and existing infrastructure may prove useful.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) took a second stab at social networking Tuesday with the launch of Google+, a program designed to interactively connect users and challenge worldwide social networking king Facebook.

The search engine giant failed with its first attempt at an online social network, last year's Google Buzz, which encountered difficulties in

Spotify, Facebook in talks on music service

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has teased the public about the launch of something "awesome." Is it a new music service?

Spotify may have found an American friend in Facebook.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg yesterday set off a wave of speculation by telling reporters that the social network has plans to "launch something awesome" next week.
Some have speculated whether Zuckerberg might roll out the kind of music service GigaOm outlined in a story on June 19. The blog reported that Facebook was working on some kind of music feature that incorporated multiple music services, including Spotify, Europe's top streaming-music service.
Facebook and Spotify have indeed held discussions recently about integrating the music service into Facebook in a significant way once Spotify launches in the United States, multiple sources in the music industry told CNET. One source said that it appears the parties have reached an agreement but that could not be confirmed.

Justin Timberlake an investor in MySpace buy

MySpace investor Justin Timberlake.

If there were any concerns about whether MySpace will continue to live on as a service that's tied to music culture, the new owners are trying to put that to rest. One of them being pop star Justin Timberlake.
Specific Media, which earlier today purchased MySpace from News Corp., announced Timberlake's involvement as both an owner and shaper of where the company plans to take the social network.
"As part of the deal, Emmy and Grammy winning artist Justin Timberlake will also take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward," Specific Media said in a follow-up release. "Specific Media and Timberlake plan to unveil their vision for the site in an exclusive press conference later this summer."
In the meantime, the company says MySpace will become "the premiere digital destination for original shows, video content, and music."