In late 2012, an Anonymous member who went by the handle “KYAnonymous” quickly rose through the ranks of the hacktivist collective, at one point helming Anonymous’ biggest Twitter account, @YourAnonNews. He also helped to launch a slew of operations on behalf of his Anonymous offshoot #Knightsec, including those against Westboro Baptist Church and revenge porn proprietor Hunter Moore. Read More
On March 14, 2013, the indictment came down: 26-year-old Matthew Keys, a celebrated social media journalist, Twitter power user and full-time editor at Reuters, had been charged in a federal criminal case. In the indictment document, published by Politico, the Department of Justice alleged that Mr. Keys had conspired with the hacktivist collective Anonymous to gain access to the Los Angeles Times’ website by providing some of the group’s members with the usernames and passwords that allowed them to deface at least one story posted there. Read More
A virus is draining bank accounts on Facebook — and NFL fan pages appear to be helping spread the malware.
The Trojan horse, called Zeus, has infected millions of computers, most of which are in the U.S., according to the New York Times. Zeus stays dormant until a victim logs into a bank site, Read More
Vine rolled out its Android version early yesterday, but the real Internet rite of passage didn’t occur until the afternoon, when an intrepid teen Rickroll’d the six-second-video-sharing app.
Developer Will Smidlein, 16, was messing around with the app yesterday when he decided to confuse his friends by hacking Vine and creating a post that lasted longer than six seconds, he wrote in a blog post. Once he figured out how, he used his powers for good and posted what any self-respecting Internet-loving teen would: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Read More
Back in April, the hacktivist collective Anonymous raised almost $55,000 to go towards building a news site that could extend its coverage of current events and breaking news beyond its popular Twitter account, which is followed by over a million people. Yesterday, more info about just what the site will encompass was released on–of course–Pastebin. Read More
Everybody knows you shouldn’t get into a car with a stranger. And if hackers can find a way to mimic the work of three Georgia Institute of Technology researchers, you may want to reconsider using a stranger’s iPhone charger, too. Read More
The things you miss when you keep regular hours! The Daily Dot reports that late last night, the trolls of Rustle League briefly gained the ability to post whatever they wanted to @YourAnonNews. Naturally, they used the opportunity for bragging and, yes, lulz. Read More
Well, here’s some not-particularly-reassuring news about one of New York’s finest: An NYPD detective named Edwin Vargas has been arrested for “computer hacking crimes.”
The feds say Mr. Vargas shelled out $4,000 to an email hacking service to get log-in credentials for at least 43 email accounts belonging to at least 30 different people (21 of them affiliated with the NYPD). He’s also alleged to have accessed the National Crime Information Center database. Read More
Recent months have brought a flood of stories about cyber attacks originating in China, many of them state-backed. But, according to the New York Times, it’s not just the military. While you get scary letters from lawyers if you so much as expose an existing security hole here in the U.S., hacking is apparently no big deal in China.
Guccifer strikes again! And from the latest target, we’re starting to suspect the mysterious, celeb-targeting hacker is actually a frustrated 20-something gossip blogger. Gawker reports that Sex and the City scribe Candace Bushnell got it this time, and the opening pages of her new book are now available on Google Drive for all the world to see.
This is exactly the kind of thing that would have happened to poor Carrie. Read More
