UPDATE! LulzSec Leader Arrested In Australia

The self-proclaimed leader of international hacking group Lulz Security has been arrested by AFP – Australian Federal Police – on the New South Wales central coast. The AFP says the 24-year-old man was arrested in the Gosford suburb of Point Clare yesterday.

He has been charged with two counts of unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment and one count of unauthorised access to a restricted computer system. The AFP says he claims to be in charge of Lulz Security, or LulzSec, which has previously claimed responsibility for high-profile hacking attacks, includinga DDS attack that took the CIA website offline, and a hack which caused some serious headaches for Sony Corp.

AFP is alleging that the 24 year old IT worker hacked an Australian Government website site last month, the man has been bailed to appear in court later this year.

In June last year the hack-group allegedly broke into Australian Government departments, universities and schools. Some of the targets included AusAid, Victorian Government departments and local councils in Victoria and New South Wales. The group bragged over the Aussie hack, saying in a Twitter post,  ”Releasing 62,000 possible account combinations is the loot for creative minds to scour; think of it like digging a very unique mineshaft.” At the time LulzSec claimed more than 5,000 people had downloaded the leaked files.

Passwords for email accounts within eight Australian universities were leaked, along with the log-ins for two high schools in Queensland and Melbourne. The 24-year-old man is the first alleged member of the group to be charged by the AFP UPDATED :: Read the full article »»»»

UPDATE! Chinese Military Hack Attacks Might Originate in NORTH KOREAN

Last month we reported that security experts from Mandiant believed a Chinese military unit was responsible for multiple hack attacks on US companies. Mandiant released a report that identified ‘Unit 61398′ as the most likely source of attacks on at least US 141 organisations, “across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006″.

“The nature of ‘Unit 61398′s’ work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful ‘Computer Network Operations’,” Mandiant said in the report. ”It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat that threat effectively.”

The Mandiant report said that Unit 61398 is located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, China’s financial and banking hub, and staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in English as well as computer programming and network operations.

There are now suspicions that the facility might be shared with North Korean backed hackers? An unnamed source from South Korea’s presidential office was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying the discovery of the IP address indicated Pyongyang was responsible for the attack on Wednesday. A previous attack on a South Korean newspaper that the government in Seoul traced back to North Korea also used a Chinese IP address :: Read the full article »»»»

APPLE HACKED

The consumer electronics and technology behemoth that is Apple, has confirmed that it’s the latest victim of a malicious hack attack.

However, the tech-giant says the invaders malware was repelled before any data was able to be plundered. Apple says a “small number” of its computer systems were infected, but they were isolated from it’s main network.

Apple is working with law enforcement to hunt down the hackers, who appear to be tied to a series of recent cyber attacks on US companies.

The malicious software, or malware, took advantage of a vulnerability in a Java program used as a “plug-in” for web-browsing programs :: Read the full article »»»»

Chinese Military Hack Attacks

Computer security experts from Mandiant say they believe a Chinese military unit is responsible for multiple hacking attacks against US companies.

The secretive security company has released a rare report that identifies ‘Unit 61398′ as the most likely source of attacks on at least 141 organisations, “across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006″.

“The nature of ‘Unit 61398′s’ work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful ‘Computer Network Operations’,” Mandiant said in the report.

“It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat that threat effectively.”

The report says Unit 61398 is located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, China’s financial and banking hub, and staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in English as well as computer programming and network operations.

The unit had stolen “hundreds of terabytes of data”.

Clients including The New York Times have hired Mandiant to clean up their systems after cyberattacks :: Read the full article »»»»

Facebook Hacked

Facebook says its computer system has been targeted in a series of attacks by an unidentified hacker group, however, the social media behemoth has stressed they don’t believe there is any evidence that user data has been compromised.

The company says the malware came from the infected website from a mobile developer.

“Last month, Facebook security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack,” the company said in a blog post.

“The attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised. We remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day.”

The social network, which says it has more than 1 billion active users worldwide, said it was not the sole target. Facebook’s announcement follows recent cyber attacks on other prominent websites :: Read the full article »»»»