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Criminals running an ATM card-skimming scam made a big mistake this week: They tried to hit the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas. As the conference was kicking off a few days ago, attendees noticed that an ATM placed in the Riviera Hotel, which plays host to the annual event, didn't quite look right, according to a senior conference organizer who identified himself only as Priest. "They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera," he said. "It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC." The...

Glenn Beck exposes a privacy agreement on the "Cash for Clunkers" website that in part reads: "This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government."

Beck just showed an eyefill. The Government's Cash for Clunkers Website requires user to click on "accept" for a disclaimer. What a disclaimer! If you click "ok" it says in fine print that your computer is now considered the property of the Federal Government, including all content on your computer, and gives access to both the US and foreign governments. I am not making this up. Beck's computer froze because of heavy website use.

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

A HACKER has broken into the RAAF's website, leaving a message warning the Australian Government to halt racist attacks against Indian students. The hacker identified himself as Atul Dwivedi, saying that unless the Government complied "I will pawn all your cyber properties like this one". The incident follows a series of attacks on Indian students in Australia, attracting global media coverage and strong condemnation from within India. A defence spokesman confirmed the break-in took place some time in the period July 13-14, forcing it to take the entire RAAF website offline for some seven to eight hours. It was replaced...

A man who hacked into NASA computers will on Tuesday launch a last-ditch effort in Britain's High Court to avoid extradition to face charges in the United States. Gary McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, has admitted to hacking into 97 US computers from his London home in 2001 and 2002 following the September 11 terror attacks. The 43-year-old claims he was looking for evidence of UFOs and aliens on the high-security computer systems belonging to the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Department of Defence. Former home secretary Jacqui Smith granted requests for McKinnon's extradition in October 2008, with...

The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than initially realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange. Other targets of the attack included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post, according to an early analysis of the malicious software used in the attacks. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained computer assaults. The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts analyzing the attacks. It was not immediately clear...

Should a federal court dismiss charges against the college student who hacked into Gov. Sarah Palin’s e-mail account? Yes No, but 25 years seems like an excessive potential sentence No, and throw the book at him

PORTLAND, Ore. – Hackers defaced the home page of the Oregon University System, posting a caustic message telling President Barack Obama to mind his own business and stop talking about the disputed Iranian election. Attempts to access the university system's Web site were automatically redirected to another page, where readers viewed a message said to be from Iran that asserted there was no cheating in the election. That message was up for 90 minutes before university system technicians intervened Wednesday morning.

A recent computer intrusion that forced the FBI to shut down its computer network and disrupted FBI operations was traced to an e-mail containing malicious code that originated in China, according to FBI officials. The forced shutdown of the network affected one significant FBI operation -- the May 20 arrest of homegrown terrorism suspects in New York, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. "The Chinese shut down our network," said one FBI official familiar with assessments of the attack.

The US government has appointed a well-known hacker to its Homeland Security Advisory Council. Jeff Moss founded the DefCon and Black Hat hacking conferences - he is one of the world's most famous professional hackers, operating under the alias of the Dark Tangent. But he has always worked for corporations rather than targeting them. Before joining the council Moss was a security consultant hired to test company's systems, and a director at the Secure Computing Corporation, where he helped established the professional services department for the US, Asia and Australia. He has also worked for consulting firm Ernst & Young...

Musicians from such diverse groups as Pink Floyd and Boyzone have joined forces in a last-ditch campaign to halt the extradition to the US of north London computer hacker Gary McKinnon. The family and friends of McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, are hoping that a campaign also supported by well-known names including Terry Waite, Boris Johnson, Sting, Lord Carlile and Jane Asher, will finally bear fruit. Next month, McKinnon is due to have what is likely to be his final legal appearance in a judicial review over the decision of home secretary, Jacqui Smith, to send him to stand trial...

As a cyber space race looms, the military is looking for a few good geeks. High school hackers, crackers and digital deviants: Uncle Sam wants you. As part of a government information security review released as early as Friday, White House interim cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway likely will mention a new military-funded program aimed at leveraging an untapped resource: the U.S.' population of geeky high school and college students. The so-called Cyber Challenge, which will be officially announced later this month, will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of...

E-Mail Hack Lawyer Makes Creative, But Ultimately Futile, Argument By Videmus Omnia Mel has been following the court case of David Kernell, the man who hacked into Governor Palin's e-mail account last fall, invading her privacy and publishing her private correspondence and private family photos.

Hackers have broken into the air traffic control mission-support systems of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration several times in recent years, according to an Inspector General report sent to the FAA this week. In February, hackers compromised an FAA public-facing computer and used it to gain access to personally identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, on 48,000 current and former FAA employees, the report said. Last year, hackers took control of FAA critical network servers and could have shut them down, which would have seriously disrupted the agency's mission-support network, the report said. Hackers took over FAA computers in...

$10M ransom payment, or hackers will post Virginians' private files The FBI is on the trail of hackers who claim to have accessed the personal information of millions of Virginians. They're holding the information hostage, and are threatening to dispurse the sensitive data on the Internet if they don't receive a $10 million ransom. The hacker or hackers posted the ransom note on "Wikileaks," a Web site that allows for anonymous tips about leaks of government information. The note claims that the personal information came from a raid on a state agency's computer database, and that the hackers are now...

COVERT RADIO SHOW http://covertradioshow.com # http://covertradioshow.com/podcast.cfm?pid=187 Covert Radio Daily Blast May 7 North Korea has hackers working round the clock on cyberwarfare. Could they have been behind recent attacks on the Alaskan Air Traffic Control system? Are we prepared for Cyber Warfare? Narco Traffickers are declaring war on our cops, and the latest in the coming war between Georgia and Russia.

Note: The following text is a quote: Swedish National Charged with Hacking and Theft of Trade Secrets Related to Alleged Computer Intrusions at NASA and Cisco Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka "Stakkato," 21, a Swedish national, was indicted today on intrusion and trade secret theft charges. The five-count indictment includes one intrusion count and two trade secret misappropriation counts involving Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco), of San Jose, Calif., which is a provider of computer network equipment and producer of Internet routers. According to the allegations in the indictment Pettersson intentionally committed an intrusion between May 12, 2004, and May 13, 2004,...

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents. Wikileaks reports that the Web site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program was defaced last week with a message claiming that the database of prescriptions had been bundled into an encrypted, password-protected file.

A FRENCH computer hacker is thought to have tapped into Twitter's internal system, gaining access to millions of accounts including that of US President Barack Obama. The hacker, under the name "Hacker Croll", posted a series of screenshots showing him viewing internal website settings and the private details of user accounts. The screenshots show Croll looking at the behind-the-scenes details for the account of US President Barack Obama, including the IP address of the last person to use it. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed unauthorised access was gained by an outside party during the week, but said only 10 individual...