-
crime
Sarah Palin Craves 'Hacking' Justice, Endless Martyrdom
After enduring vicious hate attacks by David Letterman, Barack Obama and random Photshop-wielding bloggers, Sarah Palin caught a moment to remind everyone, via Twitter, that tomorrow her email "hacker" stands trial in Tennessee. Remember him? He was so terrible! More » -
trendwatch
Server Trouble? Blame Iran
Is your company's Web server hosed again? Give your beleaguered sysadmins and programmers a break and blame hackers. Preferably Iranian hackers. It's all the rage! Just ask The Atlantic and Boing Boing. More » -
hackers
Did Someone Hack Into the New York Times Twitter Account?
Earlier tonight I received an email from Gawker's eagle-eyed publisher Nick Denton (Seriously, nothing gets by this guy!) with an iPhone screengrab that contained an ad for naked webcam action on the Times' Twitter feed. More » -
politics
Why Can't Obama Find a Good Geek?
The White House has tapped two D.C.-area techies to run the government's tech infrastructure. His CIO, Vivek Kundra, turned out to have a rap sheet. Now his CTO Aneesh Chopra, has a drug problem. More » -
hackers
The Latest Facebook Scam
Oh no! There's a site which tricks you into handing over your personal information for its own nefarious, moneymaking schemes! It's called Facebook. Oh, also, people are all upset because FBstarter.com is stealing their passwords.
More » -
leaks
Salma Hayek's Hacked Emails Reveal Celebrity's Quotidian Existence
Hackers have broken into Salma Hayek's email, revealing the actress's iPhone-app obsession, designer-clothes habit, travel plans, and more. (Her billionaire husband, François-Henri Pinault, who's throwing a second wedding for her this weekend, pays the bill!) More » -
Media Crack
Oh Just Let 4Chan Run The News
In your hacked Wednesday media column: Rachel Maddow's less fascinating, 4Chan's smarter than Time, online news fails, and newspaper layoffs reported not in newspapers: More » -
flackery
Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books
After gay-themed titles disappeared from Amazon.com's search results this weekend, everyone looked for someone to blame. One hacker took credit. Some faulted an Amazon engineer in France. One source thinks it was the Conficker worm.
More » -
-
censorship
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage
Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank. More » -
hackers
Conficker Worm Spams People Too Stupid to Download Antivirus Software
For months, we've wondered what the makers of the Conficker worm, which was set to activate on April 1, were up to. An evil plot to destroy the world? Nah — they just want money. More » -
hackers
Electronic 'GhostNet' Spy Ring Linked to China
GhostNet, a "cyber espioniage network," has broken into 1,295 computers in 103 countries. Canadian researchers have traced the operation to China. The Dalai Lama and NATO were among its targets. -
hackers
'Anarcho-Transexual' Hacker Returns with New Scam Site
Hoan Ton-That, the parodically Left Coast-y San Francisco coder linked to an earlier virus, appears to have resurfaced with a new website, Fastforwarded.com, which aims to coax passwords from users. More » -
sarah palin
Palin Email Hacker Faces Three New Charges
That poor dumb kid who "hacked" Sarah Palin's email by guessing her "security question" answers? Yes, well, he has three new federal charges: More » -
crime
Jason Calacanis's Felony-Friendly Hiring Practices
Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo, the world's largest compendium of rewritten Google search results, claims he hired a computer hacker because he never bothered to Google him. Now his employee is headed to jail. More » -
field guide
Was an 'Anarcho-Transexual Afro-Chicano' Behind the IM Worm?
Yesterday's ViddyHo worm, which spread over Google Talk and Gmail, has been linked by some to Hoan Ton-That, a San Francisco software developer. A very San Francisco software developer.
More » -
oh no
Government Job Database Hacked
Were you looking for a job, maybe with President Obama? Hah, you just got identity thefted! USAJOBS, the government's online job database, has been hacked. More » -
twitterati
The Twitterati Are Not as Awesome as They Think They Are
Today on Twitter: Media people being pretentious, from Bonnie Fuller to Wired's Chris Anderson and beyond! More » -
celebritards
ParisHilton.com Infected, Cue the STD Jokes
That's hot. Paris Hilton's official website is unsafe for browsing, computer-security researchers have declared, playing host to software which tries to hijack her fans' bank accounts. Doesn't the heiress have enough money? More » -
blogodrama
Liberal Blogosphere Proves Trivially Easy to Destroy
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. After hackers took down SoapBlox, a one-man blog-hosting company which runs local political websites, a silenced liberal commentariat found out how true that was. More » -
macworld 2009
Hackers Post Faked Report of Steve Jobs's Death
MacRumors, one of the many sites which cover Apple's annual Macworld product launches, has had its live coverage infiltrated, with someone adding the false news of Steve Jobs's death to the blow-by-blow reports. More » -
hackers
Twitter Hacking Epidemic Claims Britney Spears, Barack Obama
Whats going on with Twitter? First Fox News gets hacked, then Britney Spears. Is no one safe from this epidemic? -
hackers
Fox News Twitter Hacked By Bill O'Reilly
This is currently the lead post on the official Fox News Twitter page. Hackers are cool again. -
facebook
Why the Koobface virus spread so fast
A long-dormant virus aimed directly at Facebook struck Thursday, spreading quickly via the social network. What's surprising isn't that Koobface hit Facebook so hard. It's that it took so long to do it. -
hackers
YouTube users in virus panic
Hasn't YouTube always seemed too good to be true — all those video clips, for free? We must be getting away with something. That's why rumors about a new YouTube virus have spread so far, so fast. -
tweeter
Proletarian Revolutionaries Hack Web Page
Bankrupt electronics retailer Tweeter closed all its stores yesterday and fired its employees without warning. But it appears some naughty ex-employees have had their revenge on Tweeter's executives—by hacking the company's web page and placing a humorously profane photo and message upon it for all the public to see! Oh ho! It seems the tables have turned, eh? Click through for a screengrab of the shocking political metaphor that has promptedTweeter to pay all its employees what they're oweda few people to chuckle, then hit the bong again: More » -
hackers
Credit-Card Hackers in New Attack
It's the last thing cash-strapped banks need right now: Holders of credit and debit cards are reporting an epidemic of unauthorized charges on their bills. It could be the sign of a massive card-fraud operation in the making. A company called Adele Services, based in Melville, N.Y., has been charging cards small amounts — 21 to 29 cents. Such charges are usually attempts by card fraudsters to test whether a particular card number is valid. -
Tim the IT Guy
Traffic engineers pull a "Die Hard 4" on Los Angeles
Who pays attention to unions anymore? A bunch of carpenters picket your office because of a grievance with a contractor who works for the facilities department of the company on the floor below you. They might as well stencil WE ARE POWERLESS on their placards. But a couple of Los Angeles traffic engineers who work for that city's Automated Traffic Surveillance Center found a way to make "strike" an active verb again: They disabled four traffic lights at major intersections a couple of hours before a job action. The red-light gridlock lasted four days until the PHBs figured out how to reprogram things. Gabriel Murillo, 39, and Kartik Patel, 36 admitted to felony hacking as part of a plea bargain. I'm sure it sucked for commuters, but at least they didn't turn all the lights green. (Photo by AP/Nam Y. Huh) -
Tim the IT Guy
PDFs now as rock-solid secure as ActiveX
It's a verified bug: PDF files can be used to take over your PC. Adobe's mistake was adding support for ever-sloppy JavaScript inside the once-benign PDF format. Core Security, the company that outed the vulnerability, says, "An attacker could put malicious code in JavaScript embedded in a PDF and [...] could manipulate the program's memory allocation pattern and trigger the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user." Great. I can hardly wait to reinstall Paul's PC after he pretends to read another of those ethics-in-journalism PDFs. -
software as a disservice
Vista is so secure, no one uses it
Pity the poor Microsoft employees in charge of protecting Windows from third-party apps with security holes. The only code they can fix is Microsoft's. But as John Markoff reports this morning, Microsoft's boldest move to protect Windows Vista users totally backfired: More » -
Tim the IT Guy
Microsoft saves my job for the weekend
Hooray — another zero-day patch! The financial sky is falling! The only good news is I'm used to hedge fund managers throwing themselves out the windows. If you're as familiar with zero-day patches as collateralized debt obligations, let me explain the difference to an IT guy. A CDO means I'm fired. A zero-day patch means I'm working. All weekend. More&



































