New Tech Support Scam Targets English-speaking Countries

In the wake of a string of hacker stunts, some crooks are going old school by using phone directories and calling landlines to gain access to victims’ computers and steal their money.

According to a new survey by Microsoft Corp, scammers posing as computer security experts call people at home to tell them they are vulnerable to…

LulzSec Releases Massive Data Dump, Shuts Down Thousands of Australian Sites

Prankster hacker group LulzSec has steered its Lulz Boat and quest for mischief toward “down under,” breaking into Australian domain registrar and web host Distribute.IT, and crippling access to thousands of websites, according to media reports.

The Register reports that the among the Australian data dump were details from Australian universities and government departments, including AusAID, the Victorian Department of Childhood and Early Education and several local…

Former Microsoft Exec Joins CIBER Board of Directors

Jean-Francois Heitz has been appointed to CIBER’s (NYSE: CBR) board of directors and will serve as an independent director and a member of the audit committee.

“The strength of our board rests on its members,” said Paul Jacobs, CIBER chairman. “With his deep financial…

Germany’s Cyber Defense Center Goes Live

Germany’s interior minister today announced the opening of a new cybersecurity center to protect the country’s infrastructure from what he said was a growing menace posed by hackers, AFP reports.

“Protecting critical infrastructure is at the core of cybersecurity,” Hans-Peter Friedrich said. “We are forced to admit that…

Texas Man Sentenced to 24-Months Jail Time for Hacking NASA Servers

A 26-year-old Texas man has been sentenced to two years in prison after admitting to hacking into computer networks at a Minnesota business and at NASA, the FBI’s Minneapolis office announced.

In his plea agreement, Jeremey Parker of Houston, Texas, admitted to breaking into computer network of SWReg, Inc., a subsidiary of the cyber-based company Digital River, Inc., to steal approximately $275,000. He also confessed…

McAfee CSO Predicts New Cold War in Cyber Domain, ‘Hackers for Hire’

Although the Cold War between the United States and Russia ended two decades ago, a former counterintelligence specialist says a new conflict between the United States and China together with North Korea has emerged in cyberspace.

McAfee Chief Security Officer Brett Wahlin, an ex-NATO counterintelligence agent, told Computerworld Australia the

Payroll Processor Latest Victim of Cyber Crooks Targeting Financial Firms

The world’s largest payroll processor announced yesterday it had become the latest big financial company attacked by cyber criminals, following attacks on Citigroup and the International Monetary Fund, Reuters reports.

New Jersey-based Automatic Data Processing Inc is investigating a data breach affecting one of its corporate clients and said it is “taking measures to address the impact” of the breach.

“The intrusion, which…

HP Enterprise Services’ Jeff Bergeron Joins CLOUD2

HP Enterprise Services Public Sector Chief Technologist Jeff Bergeron has been named a commissioner for TechAmerica Foundation’s Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud, also known as CLOUD2.

Bergeron and a team of other cloud experts will work to provide the Obama administration with…

CIA Website Hacked; LulzSec Claims Responsibility

The public website of the CIA went down yesterday evening as hacker group Lulz Security announced on Twitter it had launched an attack, Reuters reports.

The site initially could not be accessed from multiple locations around the world, and service continued to be sporadic later in the evening.

LulzSec, which promises “high-quality entertainment at your expense,” has recently gone on a hacking spree, defacing websites, posting…

Australian Government Agencies Susceptible to Social-engineering Scams

More than a dozen West Australian government agencies lack adequate systems to detect or respond to a cyber attack, the state’s auditor general revealed in a recent report.

The Office of the Auditor General hired a university to launch external attacks on 15 government agencies, including the health, transport, mine and gas departments.

While these intrusions were “deliberately hostile,” only one of the agencies detected the attacks.

“In some…