Botnet hacker pleads guilty at I got Spam?!

CNN: Jeanson James Ancheta, of Downey, California, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to four felony charges for crimes, including infecting machines at two U.S. military sites, that earned him more than $61,000, said federal prosecutor James Aquilina. [cut] Ancheta and SoBe signed up as affiliates in programs maintained by online advertising companies that pay people each time they get a computer user to install software that displays ads [...] Read More


Hacker Admits to Creating Botnets at I got Spam?!

A Los Angeles hacker who worked as a information security consultant by day has admitted to writing and distributing malware to over a quarter of a million computers, creating a botnet that stole Paypal login information and allowed him to empty unsuspecting user's bank accounts. Prosecutors say John Schiefer, 26, was known as "The Botmaster" in the underground world of hackers he belonged to. He pled guilty to 4 counts of [...] Read More


BotNet Hitting Networks Hard at I got Spam?!

This past week saw a new botnet attack, increasing spam traffic by 600 percent. The botnet responsible is believed to have over 5 million nodes and interesting enough, only works from 9-5. It appears to originate in Poland. It's attack is so over the top experts are considering it akin to Denial of Service Attack. "The current spamming tactic is to gently deliver spam in a manner that closely resembles legitimate [...] Read More


Psychology of the internal hacker at The CIO Weblog

New developments are emerging this morning in the case of the IT engineer who allegedly shanghaied San Francisco's high speed fiber network by installing his own backdoor passwords in the system and was arrested last week. In a low-key, one-on-one visit to the imprisoned engineer's cell, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was able to talk the engineer into providing the actual password he used to lock down the system-the previous [...] Read More


Georgia Tech: Mobile Phones Highly Vulnerable to Hackers at The Wireless Weblog

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto Georgia Tech researchers have warned in a new report that mobile phones are extremely vulnerable to hackers. "Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology believe mobile phones could be turned into 'botnets' and be used to bring down important websites or organisations, and with the nascent nature of mobile internet, handsets could be easier to infect," writes TechRadar's Gareth Beavis. "Mobile phone botnets could be used in a [...] Read More