Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom Has Been Hacked by Anonymous

Anonymous, who has been trying to go after Israel, has swallowed a big fish: Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom. Anon has hacked his Facebook account and replaced the cover photo with a Free Palestine picture. Pretty embarrassing for a high ranking official! More »

Anonymous Is Losing Its War Against Israel

While shells and interceptor missiles started flying between Israel and Gaza, Anonymous did what it does best: swore vengeance against a superpower. It had some swagger at first. But as the days go by, we’re seeing a weak, confused Anon, not a group of Internet freedom fighters. More »

Here’s How Easy Hacking an Apple ID Used to Be

As we learned when our friend Mat Honan got hacked earlier this year, Apple’s customer support line was dangerously susceptible to hackers. With a little coaxing, Apple representatives would hand over a customer account after a hacker offered very little information. Luckily, Apple has closed up this hole, but here’s a terrifying play-by-play of how easy it used to be to steal your life. More »

Infamous 15-Year Old Hacker Banned from Internet for Six Years

Cosmo the God, teen leader of a hacker collective that fell second only to Anonymous in terms of notoriety, just got a whopper of a court sentence: six years without any computers or Internet. More »

Hackers Replace NBC Sites With Smörgåsbord of Hacker Cliches (Updated)

Those in search of SNL and 30 Rock clips over at NBC’s videos page have been met with something quite different: a hacked page of weirdness with a surprisingly catchy soundtrack. It’s most prominent website hack we’ve seen in a while, and also one of the least coherent. More »

Hacker accesses 3.6 million South Carolina tax returns

On October 10, the Secret Service notified South Carolina state officials that an international hacker had gained access to approximately 3.6 million state tax returns, as well as 387,000 credit and debit card numbers. The breach happened when the hacker infiltrated the South Carolina Department of Revenue’s computer system, where state returns from 1998 to present resided containing unencrypted social security numbers and 16,000 unencrypted credit and debit card numbers. According to the Secret Service, it’s possible the hacker got into the system as early as the end of August.

Said South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, “In the past two weeks, state and federal law enforcement along with the Department of Revenue have come together and done everything they need to make sure those [security] holes have been plugged and we no longer have any holes we are aware of at this point.” The security breach was “completely closed” by October 20. State officials stated that it did not appear much damage had occurred between the discovery on October 10 and the repaired system ten days later.

The hacker failed to access all of the tax information on the system. State officials revealed that the hacks originated from an international IP address, but did not specify the country. In addition to the involvement of the fed, Mandiant, a private information security company, has been brought in to investigate the matter.

When questioned about why residents weren’t notified of the security breach earlier, Gov. Haley responded with, “This is the difference between finding the person and how they did it. We need to find the person.” Anyone who has filed taxes in South Carolina from 1998 to present, whether via paper or online, has been asked to call 1-866-578-5422.

[via Myrtle Beach Online]


Hacker accesses 3.6 million South Carolina tax returns is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Hackers Just Stole Over 3 Million Social Security Numbers

If you’ve filed tax returns in South Carolina sometime since 1998, you might be in a little bit of hot water. An unidentified, foreign hacker has gotten into the state’s Department of Revenue, pilfering around 3.6 million social security numbers, and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers. In other words, no small haul. More »

Meet the Arduino Due, the 32-bit board that’ll let your projects fly (really)

Meet the Arduino Due, the 32bit board thatll let your projects fly really

As much as we love the Arduino Uno, it’s not the most powerful of hobbyist microcontrollers. Fortunately, the folks in Turin have just put the finishing touches on a 32-bit upgrade with buckets of potential. At the heart of the Arduino Due is an 84MHz Atmel CPU, based on ARM’s Cortex M3 Architecture, which is capable of being the brains inside your own flying drone or homemade 3D printer. It should start trickling out onto shelves from today, setting you back $49, but hey, that’s a small price to pay to automate your drinking adventures.

Continue reading Meet the Arduino Due, the 32-bit board that’ll let your projects fly (really)

Filed under:

Meet the Arduino Due, the 32-bit board that’ll let your projects fly (really) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Anonymous cuts ties with Wikileaks over new “paywall”

Once upon a time, Wikileaks and Anonymous were best friends. Wikileaks would get bullied by “the man,” and Anonymous would bring down government websites in retaliation. They seemed to make a good pair, like chocolate and peanut butter or Mario and Yoshi (sorry Luigi). Today, however, it seems that Anonymous wants out of this relationship, despite the fact that Wikileaks could use a lot of help right about now.


It isn’t much of a secret that Wikileaks and founder Julian Assange are strapped for cash these days. Assange is facing a lot of legal bills, and Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal all decided cut off service to Wikileaks a couple years back, which did a lot to block funding to the site. Needing to raise cash quickly, Wikileaks imposed a paywall on October 10, which blocks out the page users are trying to view with an overlay requesting donations. Once users donate, they gain access to the site, although disabling Javascript will get rid of the overlay as well.

This paywall has Anonymous – once one of Wikileaks’ biggest allies – angry. In a new statement, Anonymous says that it has been concerned about the direction of Wikileaks for some time now, but this paywall is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Anonymous has apparently had enough of Wikileaks, saying that it can no longer be associated with the site it fully supported in the past:

Anonymous has had enough. The conclusion for us is that Anonymous cannot support anymore what Wikileaks has become. We will NOT attack the web assets of WikiLeaks, as they are media. We do not attack media. Any future attack on the WikiLeaks servers attributed to Anonymous is a lie. But what we will do is cease from this day all support of any kind for WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. No longer will Anonymous risk prison to defend WikiLeaks or Julian Assange from their enemies. No longer will Anonymous risk prison to supply material for WikiLeaks disclosures. Anonymous turns it’s back on WikiLeaks.

And just like that, Wikileaks has lost the support of an organization that has come to its aid many times in the past. Anonymous members have been arrested while attacking government websites in the name of Wikileaks and Assange, but it’s clear from this statement that Anonymous members won’t be willing to put themselves in harm’s way for Wikileaks any longer. Anonymous says that it will have a more detailed statement on its history with Wikileaks coming in a few days, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for that. Stay tuned.

[via Ars Technica]


Anonymous cuts ties with Wikileaks over new “paywall” is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Anonymous attacks Sweden for Pirate Bay Justice

Anonymous is at it once again, this time launching what is being called “the biggest thing to ever happen in Anonymous history.” The group posted a video to YouTube yesterday in which is calls for Anonymous supporters to help it attack a number of Swedish government sites for the perceived slights against The Pirate Bay and controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Today, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that, sure enough, a number of Swedish websites have been taken offline after being flooded with traffic.


That includes the websites of the Swedish Security Service, the Swedish Prosecutors’ Office, and the Swedish Central Bank. It sounds like these sites were all taken down by DDoS attacks, which has become the trademark weapon of Anonymous throughout the years, in a way. In all, over 20 Swedish sites have been taken down this week, though authorities can’t say at this time if all of those attacks are related.

It’s clear that Anonymous is behind at least some of them, however. This new operation is being called #OpPRQ #OpPirateBay, and though some were claiming this was a honeypot – essentially a government-organized setup to catch these Anonymous members in the act – the AnonNCarolina2 Twitter account said earlier today that there isn’t any evidence that a honeypot is being carried out.

Interestingly, The Pirate Bay has been down for a few days now, and we’re not really sure why. Earlier this week, The Pirate Bay’s former host, PRQ (the same service mentioned in the name of this operation) was raided by police, but The Pirate Bay Facebook page says there’s no relation between the raid and the site outage. Instead, the outage seems to be the result of “power problems,” though we aren’t getting anything in the way of specifics. Whatever the reason, those who run The Pirate Bay expect the site to be back up tomorrow, and it appears that this Anonymous operation will be ongoing, so we’ll share any new details that surface. Stay tuned.

[via PCMag]


Anonymous attacks Sweden for Pirate Bay Justice is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.