How You Get Hacked at Starbucks - Infographic

via mashable.com

For those who frequently use the free public Wi-Fi in coffee shops such as Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, you're likely already aware of how easy it is for hackers to steal your personal and financial information over the shared network.

But what you may not realize is how cybercriminals could gain access to sensitive data in other ways that might not be on your radar.

According to ThreatMetrix, a provider of cybercrime prevention solutions, some hackers even leave malicious USB drives on tables for curious customers to plug into their devices. This allows them to retrieve personal information and even social network passwords. Although this may seem unlikely, ThreatMetrix says the scenario actually occurs...

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Google Glass Has Already Been Hacked By Jailbreakers

via forbes.com

With a name like Glass, it was just asking to be cracked.

Just days after its release to developers, Google’s Glass headset has already been hacked to give users full control of its Android operating system, according to Jay Freeman, a well-known Android and iOS developer who tested a known exploit for Android on Glass yesterday and announced his success on Twitter Friday afternoon. The “root” or “jailbreak” technique Freeman found would potentially remove any restrictions Google might place on Glass, though it’s not yet clear exactly what those restrictions might be in consumer versions of the device...

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LivingSocial Has Been Hacked

via businessinsider.com

LivingSocial has been hacked, reports All Things D.

An internal memo to employees said that the company noticed “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers."

Just how much data? More than 50 million customer names, email addresses, birth dates, and encrypted passwords...

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Hackers Attack 90,000 WordPress Blogs

via mashable.com

Keeping the default settings on any Internet-connected service is just asking for trouble. It's easy enough to scoff at people whose brilliant "12345" password fell victim to hackers, but it's just as simple to target usernames. A number of WordPress bloggers discovered this the hard way, when their "admin" accounts became part of a hostile, exploitative botnet.

The attacks began last week, and have affected more than 90,000 blogs so far. The hackers behind the attacks have combed through WordPress accounts and attempted to guess passwords via brute force.

Their program cycles WordPress accounts through 1,000 common passwords. While this tactic is useless against savvy users, enough people utilize easy-to-guess passwords to make it worthwhile for the hackers.

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Anonymous Hacks North Korea's Twitter, Flickr Pages

via mashable.com

Hackers claiming affiliation with Anonymous took credit Thursday for defacing official North Korea-run Twitter and Flickr pages. The pages, which normally post pro-government propaganda aimed at outsiders, are now posting messages and pictures promoting Anonymous and insulting North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.

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US may consider military action, financial sanctions as repercussions for cyber attacks

via thenextweb.com

Today at the RSA cybersecurity conference, the White House’s cybersecurity leader Michael Daniel stated that the United States has a range of options under consideration for responding to cyber incursions.

According to The Hill’s Jennifer Martinez, the list of possible actions includes “financial sanctions, visa restrictions and military action.” TNW parses that as meaning that no method of possible deterrence has been removed from possibility. This is the proverbial ‘all options on the table’ moment.

Cybersecurity, long a simmering issue in American politics and policy, has reached a new plane of intensity following both first-hands reports by media and technology companies of hacking, but also a report by Mandiant, a security firm, published in the New York Times that indicated that a Chinese military unit was committing aggressive acts of hacking that infringed on American corporate interests and infrastructure points.

That report was corroborated in no small way recently when Senator Dianne Feinstein stated the following: “I read the Mandiant report. I’ve also read other reports, classified out of Intelligence, and I think the Mandiant Report, which is now unclassified, it’s public, is essentially correct.”

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A basic guide to getting hacked

via techi.com

Despite our desires, hacking happens every day. It’s quickly becoming the most widespread crime in the world as far as reach with over half a billion victims last year. Sometimes there are no ways to completely prevent getting hacked, but there are definitely ways to make it harder.

This infographic from BotRevolt comes to us from Visually and breaks down some basic information about hacking.

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Microsoft Hacked, Just Like Facebook and Apple

via allthingsd.com

On Friday evening, Microsoft announced via its security blog that it, too, had been the victim of a cyber attack, comparing its situation to the likes of Facebook’s and Apple’s recent security breaches.

“During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations,” wrote Matt Thomlinson, General Manager of Trustworthy Computing Security, in a company post.

Microsoft claims no evidence of customer data being compromised.
The security breach of the Redmond-based software company is just one in a series of high-profile tech company hacks, starting earlier this month with Twitter’s announcement that the data of some 250,000 user accounts could potentially have been compromised.

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Apple Falls Victim To Same Hackers That Attacked Facebook

via readwrite.com

On the heels of Facebook's announcement Friday that its machines were infected by a sophisticated malware attack, Reuters is reporting that the same hackers have also attacked Apple computers. No data was compromised, according to the company.

While it was to be expected that more companies might be targeted by the malware, since Facebook announced that it was not alone in this attack, it is surprising that Apple, a company with very little history of cybersecurity breaches, has been hit.

The announcement of the breach follows a report Tuesday morning from The New York Times revealing that a large number of Chinese cyberattacks on the U.S. can be traced back to a single building operated by the military in Shanghai. This is leading some to believe that World War III is already on our doorstep, being fought through cyberwarfare on the U.S.'s most influential, powerful and profitable institutions.

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Cyberwar With China Is Here, Like It or Not

via allthingsd.com

“Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.” Benjamin Franklin wrote that.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote that.

Both come to mind as the world is waking up a newly disclosed body of evidence from the Internet security firm Mandiant, publicly illustrating, in the starkest terms yet, how wide, deep and pervasive computer hacking attacks from China have become. As reported on the front page of today’s New York Times, numerous attacks on American, Canadian and British companies, dating as far back as 2006, have been carried out by a single unit of the China’s People’s Liberation Army. Mandiant, a firm based in Alexandria, Va., has identified it as Unit 61398, operating out of a single building just walking distance from the point in outer Shanghai where the Huangpu and Yangtze Rivers meet.

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Cyber Attacks Against Journalists Are On The Rise, Says Advocacy Group

via techcrunch.com

More journalists are now the target of cyber attacks, said the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney said cyber attacks on individuals and news organizations have increased notably over the past few years and that the practice serves as easy and inexpensive censorship. In a press conference with reporters, Mahoney cited the recent attacks on The New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal by Chinese hackers, but said other news organizations and journalists in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other regions had also been subjected to cyberattacks.

Attacks by hackers have ramped up so much that in a report last June, the CPJ said that it’s now “open season on online journalists,” with nation-states using customized software to exploit security flaws on personal computers and consumer Internet services in order to spy on users. Countries suspected in spying include the U.S., Israel and China. Journalists working in the latter country reported receiving regular warnings on their Gmail that their account had been targeted by what Google said was a “state-sponsored attack.”

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The Federal Reserve Said It Was Hacked

via gizmodo.com

The Federal Reserve said that one of its internal websites had been hacked today. It's unclear who did the hacking but the Feds say that the hackers were not able to do any serious damage. Reuters says that, "no critical functions of the central bank were affected by the intrusion."

The internal website that the hackers breached was a contact database for banks to use during a natural disaster—basically, execs used it to update the Federal Reserve on whether or not their operations have been damaged in a disaster. It was not a public website. A Fed spokeswoman said...

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World War III Is Already Here - And We're Losing

via readwrite.com

Every day the Pentagon is attacked 3 million times. They’ve infiltrated our banks. They’ve ransacked our technology industry. They’ve breached the networks of the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve read our email by taking down one of America’s pre-eminent technology companies, Google. It’s already World War III, people. And all we do is smile at the enemy.

Last Wednesday, The New York Times announced that its computers had been hacked. That passwords had been stolen. That its private networks had been traversed with impunity by a bunch of brazen hackers. We’re not talking Anonymous here nor a bunch of ethical hackers. No we’re at war with China.

To paraphrase on old newspaper joke, “what’s black and white and red all over?” The Chinese Red Army, that’s who.

How do we know that? As William Gibson might bark, “Pattern Recognition!” Computer security experts consulting with The New York Times identified the malware “as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China.”

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Twitter Has Been Hacked: 250,000 Twitter Accounts Compromised

via gizmodo.com

Twitter has been hacked. If you have a Twitter account (and who doesn't these days), it's probably a good idea to make sure everything is in order and/or reset your password with something strong. Twitter says that approximately 250,000 users may have been affected by the hack, with the hackers gaining access to usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted version of passwords. Not good.

Twitter discovered "unusual access patterns" this past week that led it to identify unauthorized access attempts to Twitter accounts. They shut one live attack down but discovered that around 250,000 users may have been compromised. Twitter says...

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Anonymous Threatens To Leak Sensitive Records If The Feds Don't Reform An Anti-Hacking Law

via businessinsider.com

Hactivist group Anonymous has hacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the name of Aaron Swartz, threatening to leak sensitive government documents if the feds don't reform the justice system, CNET reports.
The collective posted a manifesto regarding "Operation Last Resort," along with a set of encrypted files that it claims have "enough fissile material for multiple warheads."

Anonymous won't specify the contents of the files at issue but said it would start leaking the documents, with heavy redactions, to one media outlet "at a regular interval commencing today," according to CNET.

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Anonymous Declares War on the US Government

via theverge.com

Hacktivist group Anonymous took over the United States Sentencing Service's website earlier today to announce its intention to expose government secrets in response to the US Department of Justice's treatment of Aaron Swartz. The group says Swartz's indictment was a "twisted and distorted perversion of justice," and claims to have hacked government organizations in retaliation. Anonymous hasn't revealed the nature of the "sensitive" information it's uncovered, but says that "everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public." It's gathered all the information into a "warhead:" a file called U S - D O J - L E A - 2013 . A E E 256.

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Android Tips & Hacks To Maximize Your Phone’s Capabilities

via andysowards.com

If you’re a free soul and don’t want to be chained down by pointless limitations, chances are you’d prefer an Android-based phone over any other smartphone. And if you’re really adventurous, you might want to hack into your droid for personal customization.

If you’re an android owner and haven’t yet gone under-the-hood, this is a good starting point to start modding!

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The Insidious Virus Plot [Comic]

via howtogeek.com

Exactly what is it that this fiendishly evil virus is supposed to do?

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It Happened To Me: My Small Business Was Hacked!

via readwrite.com

Last September, shortly after the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, a company tweeted me that they were going to make our site, SmallBizDaily.com, their “small business resource of the day.” My joy was short-lived when the next morning they tweeted that my site had been hacked.

I quickly checked (it was still early morning on the West Coast, where we’re located) and sure enough, instead of the usual array of small-business content I was greeted by an unfamiliar image of a Middle Eastern-looking man, Arabic lettering and a video about the glories of Allah. I blinked, gulped more caffeine and reloaded the page. No luck — the image was still there. “We’ve been hacked,” I muttered, still not believing what I was seeing.

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When is a cyberattack an act of war?

via washingtonpost.com

On the night of Oct. 11, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stood inside the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, housed in a former aircraft carrier moored at a New York City pier, and let an audience of business executives in on one of the most important conversations inside the U.S. government.

He warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” evoking one of the most tragic moments in American history, when Japanese bombers unleashed a devastating surprise attack on a U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, killing 2,402 Americans and wounding 1,282 more. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy” as he asked Congress for a declaration of war.

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