Nintendo’s tumultuous relationship with pirates just took a sharp turn with recent news that it is banning cards believed to have been used by hackers. Noted hackers are reporting that their access to online features through physical games has been rescinded by Nintendo with error 0x1F727C — 2124-4025, rendering online play through cartridge useless. Traditionally, hackers have used...
When I think about who might be responsible for nearly two million attacks on websites and services costing companies millions of dollars, I'm not sure who I picture. But it's not Adam Mudd, the teen responsible for 1.7 million attacks on services like Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. According to The Guardian, Mudd has been sentenced to two years in prison for his hacking-related...
If you couldn't get your Xbox or PlayStation online this Christmas, it wasn't just you; Xbox Live and PlayStation Network were both down for the majority of Christmas Day, allegedly thanks to a group of malicious hackers making good on their threats. Earlier this month, a group called Lizard Squad threatened to bring down the gaming services on Christmas and it seems it was successful...
A massive Sony Pictures hack that allowed attackers to steal an estimated 11 terabytes of data has been followed by the online release of a number of upcoming movies. Fury, Annie, and Mr. Turner are among the films thought to have been uploaded by a group that calls itself the Guardians of Peace. Sony is no stranger to system hacks, but this one is almost certainly its worst yet. Last...
In the last few weeks, services and games like League of Legends, Dota 2, Steam, and Twitch.tv have gone down for minutes or even hours as a result of denial of service attacks. What are attackers doing to bring these large services down, and how does it work? Last year, attackers were using something called DNS reflection and amplification attacks. This year, attackers have moved onto...
Millions of Adobe users rely on weak passwords Adobe suffered a major security breach last month that compromised at least 38 million user accounts. In the wake of that attack, however, the top 100 passwords used by millions of Adobe account holders have come to light, and it doesn’t look pretty. If you’re in a scolding mood, you could say that many Adobe users compromised themselves by...
LivingSocial was recently the target of a massive security attack that left the hackers with identities of more than 50 million users, according to AllThingsD and an internal memo obtained by the news outlet. The identifying information includes names, birthdays, email addresses and passwords. The company maintains that the passwords were encrypted, so it sounds as if the hackers will...
As mobile device sales continue to multiply, so do the hack attacks to get into their valuable data cores. We may not know where the hacks originate, but we do know who the target is: the phones and the platforms with the greatest users. A new study from Sourcefire delineates the number of vulnerabilities – or software flaws – in the smartphone industry over the last 25 years. The...
The source code for Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 2006 was published to The Pirate Bay late Thursday, ZDNet reports. Activists associated with the loosely organized hacker collective Anonymous “proudly” announced the news via Twitter, with code to the software’s consumer version, corporate edition and files for Windows, Unix and NetWare being made available. The group has for months...
Following recent cyber attacks on News Corp, Sony, and even the Pentagon, I'm sure you're already aware of the "hacktivist" group known as Anonymous. Its next attack, named "Operation Facebook" and scheduled for November 5, promises to "destroy" the world's largest social network and the "medium of communication [we] all so dearly adore." Its reason for targeting Facebook, according to...