A member of Anonymous, a loose coalition of hackers, was sentenced yesterday in New York Criminal Court in connection with a Jan. 8, 2009, attack on the Church of Scientology of New York. Last January, a shirtless Mahoud Samed Almahadin, aka Matt Connor, covered in Vaseline and toenail clippings entered a Manhattan-based Church of Scientology [...]
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Bill O’Reilly, Paris Hilton and Sarah Palin have one thing in common, apart from being celebrities: They have all been victims of hacking. Although the media spotlight hit all three public figures, it was Palin’s bad fortune that got the most attention. Right before the presidential election in 2008, a hacker gained unauthorized access to [...]
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GoogleSharing, a recently released anonymization service, has had its legs cut out from under it when Gandi.net, a French based registrar, revoked GoogleSharing’s secure sockets layer certificate. Gandi.net, which bills itself as a “no bullshit company,” claimed that the certificate was revoked “due to multiple and deliberate serious breaches” of the terms of service. The [...]
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From Googling to emailing to social networking, every day millions of Americans unknowingly leave behind digital breadcrumbs while surfing the web, sometimes at the risk of compromising their anonymity. But while there is technology available to stay anonymous in a time of surveillance, experts say policies and legislation won’t protect web users from privacy invasion [...]
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Cyber experts in the United States consistently bemoan the dearth of skilled cyber professionals to fill the ranks as ‘cyber warriors.’ The Department of Homeland Security has advertised positions for cyber professionals via their website since the end of last year. The Australian government is experiencing a similar shortage of skilled cyber professionals. The Australian [...]
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The South Korean government is preparing to make a bid to host a UN run cybersecurity organization, according to an article on JoongAng Daily. An anonymous source in the Ministry of Public Administration and Security told the paper that Korea is currently researching cybersecurity issues and is looking to make a bid for the organization. [...]
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In protest of proposed censorship regulations by the Australian government, hacktivists launched a distributed denial of service attack against Australian government websites. Operation Titstorm, launched Wednesday, disrupted access to the sites of the Australian parliament and government, www.australia.gov.au and www.aph.gov.au. The attacks included pornographic images, which were slated to be censored. The proposed filtering would [...]
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The advent of smartphones has helped to propel Internet use across the globe. In countries in the developing world, most users access the Internet exclusively via cellphones. However, these smartphones bring forth a host of new opportunities for cyber criminals to exploit. The iPhone, Apple’s smartphone, has a number of vulnerabilities that can be exploited [...]
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Brian Thomas Mettenbrink has signed a plea admitting that he took part in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the Church of Scientology website last year. Mettenbrink stated that he downloaded the necessary software from a message board run by Anonymous, an anti-Scientology group. The plea agreement stated “Defendant used that software to, [...]
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