Not to be left out in the old boys club of the Great Chinese Hacking Scandal of 2013, the Wall Street Journal included themselves with the New York Times as being hacked by Chinese operatives. That’s two big name dead tree media organizations getting hacked by China. Who’s next? More »
Amazon.com homepage is inexplicably down for us. When you navigate to Amazon.com we’re getting a series of errors. Initially the page only read “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable,” but we’ve been getting the failure page above, as well as straight-up browser fails. We’ve confirmed the problem on both the east and west coasts. More »
An Oviedo, Florida family was woken up by police with guns surrounding their house in the middle of the night. This terrifying and potentially scarring event is brought to you by Microsoft Xbox. More »
The New York Times has revealed that over the last four months, Chinese hackers have repeatedly attacked the company’s computer system, something it says coincides with an investigation it published on Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s relatives. With the aid of security experts, the company has stopped the attackers, but not before they managed to get data on reporters and employees.
The security personnel hired by the New York Times identified that the attacks were originating from China, and that they were similiar to those that have been linked to the nation’s military. The attacks were pushed through breached universities throughout the U.S. in an effort to hide where they were originating from. The breach on the Times’ computer system was achieved via malware.
Once access to the computers was achieved, the hackers then gathered passwords for all Times’ employees, and via those managed to gain access to 53 personal computers. At the end of it all, the hackers then gained access to the email accounts of David Barboza, the New York Times’ bureau chief in Shanghai, as well as Jim Yardley, its previous bureau chief in Beijing. The hackers were not successful in accessing any data that was of a sensitive nature about the Wen family investigation, however.
The investigation in question concerns information showing that the Prime Minister’s family has a several billion dollar fortune that it has amassed via “business dealings.” Customers don’t need to worry, with the Times reporting that security experts say only information related to the Wen family investigation was sought. When questioned, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense called the accusations unprofessional, and said that such activity is against Chinese law, completely avoiding a straight “no” response.
[via New York Times]
New York Times repeatedly attacked by Chinese hackers is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
In the wake of Aaron Swartz’s suicide, your friendly neighborhood cyber-vigilantes Anonymous have been lashing out. It’s mostly been DDOSes and cyber-vandalism, but their most recent project is a bit more fun, and lets you play Asteroids with a Nyan Cat spaceship that blasts up sites. More »
Since Aaron Swartz’s suicide two weeks ago—an incident largely blamed on the charges being levied against him—the ‘net has been grieving. And Anonymous has been doing that in its own special way: tearing shit up. In the latest of several attacks, they took down the U.S. Justice Department’s Sentencing Commission site and left behind a video threatening more cyber-carnage. More »
The death of Aaron Swartz, as many of you already know, is something that has Anonymous upset, and today the hacker collective is doing something about it. Two weeks after Swartz committed suicide, Anonymous has taken over the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s website, leaving a message for visitors and threatening to release government documents it has uncovered. At the time of this writing, the U.S. Sentencing Commission hasn’t made a statement about the attack.
The message said that “a line was crossed” with the death of Swartz and lambasted the current state of the justice system in the United States, claiming “law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain.” In the time since Anonymous took over the website, the U.S. government has taken it offline. There’s no word on when the website will return, but you can bet that the government will be looking for the hackers who carried out this attack.
Those who did hack into the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s website need to tread carefully, because lately we’ve been seeing quite a few hackers get arrested for their actions. Just yesterday, a group of Anonymous hackers were arrested for their involvement in the attacks on PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa. Still, Anonymous members have never seemed too concerned about the repercussions of their actions in the past – they just want to get their message across.
Anonymous is upset over the treatment of Aaron Swartz, who allegedly downloaded millions of papers from JSTOR. Swartz was facing a fine of as much as $1 million and could have been hit with 35 years of jail time. These penalties were seen by many as extreme, and after his passing, we’re seeing blowback from a lot of Internet activists. Stay tuned for more information.
[via CBSNews]
Anonymous hacks U.S. Sentencing Commission site after Swartz death is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Earlier this week, a sophisticated, capable, and seemingly freelance cyber-spying operation called Red October burst onto the scene. Well, it’s probably been around for years, but we all only just found out about it. Now, it’s already disappearing. After having the light shined on it, it’s darting back into the shadows. More »
There are plenty of cyberweapons floating around out there, like Stuxnet, Flame, and that whole gang. Now, Kaspersky has turned up a cyber-espoinage operation its dubbed “Red October,” and it’s up there in the big leagues. But unlike its cohorts, it doesn’t look state-sponsored. This is a freelance job, and it’s professional grade. More »
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