World Cup DDoS blackmailer sentenced to jail

A court in Düsseldorf, Germany, has convicted a man who extorted money out of online gambling websites in the run-up to the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa.

The Frankfurt man, who has not been identified, successfully blackmailed three online betting sites (and attempted to extort money from three others) by threatening them with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks which could have blasted them off the internet.
According to German media reports, the blackmailer hired a botnet for $65 per day and told the betting firms that he would make their websites unavailable during July 2010 - the month of the World Cup - if they did not pay him 2,500 Euros ($3,700). When three of the sites refused to pay any money, the man reduced the ransom to 1,000 Euros.

http://news.hitb.org/content/world-cup-ddos-blackmailer-sentenced-jail

Network Solutions Fights Off Multiple DDoS Attacks:

Two attacks on consecutive days left Web host and domain name registry Network Solutions' customers unable to access their Web sites and servers.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was carried out against Network Solutions on yesterday afternoon, and again this morning, according to a post on the company's official blog by spokesman Shashi Bellamkonda.
"Our engineers worked quickly to mitigate the attacks and services are in the process of being restored," he wrote. "We continue to monitor this situation, as potential risk still exists for these attacks to recur."
Some customers complained of outages and said they could not reach the sites hosted by Network Solutions, and were having trouble accessing their e-mail and reaching their servers as of Tuesday afternoon. The company's Twitter feed was still saying that employees were working on bringing its network back online.

http://news.hitb.org/content/network-solutions-suffers-two-ddos-attacks

Hackers attack 1,500 Vietnamese websites

 

Foreign hackers have attacked an estimated 1,500 Vietnamese websites, including the online forum for white-hat hackers, since early this month.

The list of hacked websites ranges from government sites to sites dealing with real estate and electronics. In the latest case, Kon Tum Province’s Department of Education and Training's website was disrupted on Wednesday.
On June 5, www.hvaonline.net, a popular forum for legitimate web security technicians (aka white-hat hackers) fell prey to a staunch attack.
The hackers allegedly deployed a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack (DDoS attack).
The website’s service provider announced that most of the hackers had Chinese IP addresses.
Shortly after the website was restored, on June 12, it was hit by another DoS attack.
The Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam)'s site, petrotimes.vn, and a website used by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs were also hacked.
IT experts said the DDoS attacks did not cause huge losses to Vietnamese websites because they could not change the content of the websites.
The hackers used the attacks just to show what they are capable of, they said.
According to commenters in a number of popular IT forums, a number of Vietnamese companies and agencies were poorly equipped to deal with the online assault. “Foreign hackers are launching organized and deliberate attacks on Vietnamese websites,” said Vo Do Thang, director of Athena Network Security Center in Ho Chi Minh City.

http://www.i-policy.org/2011/06/hackers-attack-1500-vietnamese-websites.html

Hack Attack Exposes 1.3 Million Sega Accounts

LulzSec says to watch your Facebook, Gmail, and Skype passwords, though no one has claimed responsibility for the Sega breach.

Another day, another hacked website belonging to a video game manufacturer. On Friday, Sega confirmed news reports that attackers had compromised its systems, exposing data on 1.3 million users. Sega took the hacked Sega Pass system, which is both a newsletter and account management system for the company's online games, offline on Thursday. It gave no estimate for when the service would be restored. Despite the passwords having been encrypted, Sega reset all users' Sega Pass passwords. It also cautioned that "if you use the same login information for other websites and/or services as you do for Sega Pass, you should change that information immediately."
The attack against Sega follows comments made by Sega West CEO Mike Hayes to Eurogamer last month, in which he said that the PlayStation Network (PSN) hack, which resulted in over 77 million user accounts being compromised, was "an interesting wake up call for all of us." In particular, it led Sega to conduct an immediate security audit. "Fortunately we seemed pretty solid so we didn't have to do too many additional changes," he said.

According to a message posted on the Sega Pass website, "we had identified that unauthorized entry was gained to our Sega Pass database." Attackers stole Sega Pass members' email addresses, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords. "None of the passwords obtained were stored in plain text," said Sega, although it didn't detail the encryption technique used.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/231000042

'LulzSec suspect' arrested by New Scotland Yard

New Scotland Yard has confirmed that it has arrested a 19-year old suspected hacker in Essex, UK, in connection with a series of hacks and denial-of-service attacks against a number of organisations.
It is being widely speculated that the arrest is in connection with the high-profile attacks by the LulzSec hacking group, which has claimed amongst its victims Sony, the CIA, the FBI, and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).
Officers from the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) arrested the man last night at approximately 10:30pm, on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act, and searched a house in Wickford, Essex, where they seized computer equipment which will undergo forensic examination.
The FBI and local Essex police worked in co-operation with the PCeU to investigate the case. The arrested man, who has been named as Ryan Cleary in many media reports, has been taken to a London police station for questioning.
It's important to note at this point that it has not been confirmed that the arrested man is suspected by the authorities of being involved with LulzSec. But many observers are speculating that that could be the case.

The controversial LulzSec group have been playing a dangerous game as they targeted "big players" such as the crime-fighting agencies around the world. Inevitably the authorities were not going to take kindly to that, and would put man-power to work seeking out intelligence as to who could be involved.
Seemingly drunk with the popularity of their Twitter account (which has more than 220,000 followers) they have becoming increasingly vocal in the messages they have made public, and embarrassed computer crime authorities and large organisations around the world with their attacks.
One had to wonder if all of this bragging could lead to the group's downfall. It would, after all, be hard to keep a secret from friends and peers if you were a member of LulzSec.
There has been much speculation recently regarding who might be behind LulzSec - if the police believe that they have cracked the group then a strong messaage will be sent to others considering engaging in illegal acts such as malicious hacking and denial-of-service attacks.
It will be interesting to see if LulzSec's Twitter account is updated, or has anything more to say about the arrest. Will it be a case of "who lulz last, laughs longest?"


http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/21/lulzsec-suspect-arrested-scotland-yard/

Soca website taken down after LulzSec 'DDoS attack'

The UK Serious Organised Crime agency has taken its website offline after it appeared to be a victim of an attack by hacking group Lulz Security.

Soca said it had taken its website offline to limit the impact attack on clients hosted by its service provider.
Soca.gov.uk had been unavailable for much of Monday afternoon, with an intermittent service restored later.
Lulz Security has said it was behind the denial of service attack which had taken the website offline.
Earlier on Monday, as the agency launched an investigation, LulzSec tweeted: "Tango down - in the name of #AntiSec".
The group has hit a number of high-profile websites in recent weeks, including the CIA and US Senate.
Soca appeared to be the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where large numbers of computers, under malicious control, overload their target with web requests.
In a statement given to BBC News, a Soca spokesman said: "Soca has chosen to take its website offline to limit the impact of DDoS attack on other clients hosted by our service provider.
"The Soca website is a source of information for the general public which is hosted by an external provider. It is not linked to our operational material or the data we hold."

Embarrassment

Earlier on Monday, a LulzSec Twitter posting seemed to confirm the nature of the attack.
"DDoS is of course our least powerful and most abundant ammunition. Government hacking is taking place right now behind the scenes," it said.
The latest attack will come as an embarrassment for Soca, which is tasked with investigating cybercrime.
"It is not going to please the boys in blue one bit," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos.

Mr Cluley added that it was wrong to confuse DDoS with the kind of hacking that can lead to confidential information being stolen.
However, he warned that LulzSec was capable of both types of attack.
"They have in the past broken into websites and stolen e-mail addresses and passwords, so there is a lot of harm can be done."



Big Lulz
When Lulz Security first appeared in May, the group portrayed itself as a light-hearted organisation, bent on creating online fun and Lulz (laughs).
Soon after, details of its hacking exploits began to emerge.
The first involved stealing and publishing a database of US X-Factor contestants, including their e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
It followed up with a mixture of website denial of service attacks and intrusions where data was taken and made available on the internet.
On June 19, LulzSec declared that it would begin targeting government systems, calling the campaign Antisec.
"Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including e-mail spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments," said a post on the group's website.
The reason for LulzSec's greater focus on government is unclear, although it appears to have recently ended a feud with the more politically-motivated group Anonymous.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13848510

CIA website and FBI hacked by LulzSec

Hacking collective LulzSec has decided to stop giving online gaming sites a hard time and instead put its efforts into taking down the CIA's website and the FBI's phone network.
Last week the group managed to DDoS the CIA's homepage and along with it the FBI's phone network in Detroit.
As per usual LulzSec kept everyone updated with its hacking shenanigans on Twitter, posting on the site: "Tango down – CIA.Gov- for the lulz.".
According to reports, it wasn't just the CIA and the FBI, either - the US Senate's website was also a target, but the group failed to compromise the site.

Love hack
LulzSec has been extremely busy over the last few weeks, but it has mostly targeted gaming sites. Its Titanic Takeover Tuesday campaign saw the group hack into Eve Online, Minecraft, League of Legends and FinFisher.
Even though LulzSec seems to be infiltrating websites just to show how poor the security is, this latest wave of hacks will have the US government keeping more than a close eye on it.

 http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/cia-website-and-fbi-hacked-by-lulzsec-966715#ixzz1PzhuXoHY