VOGH Exclusive: Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration, Not Hacker Attack

Microsoft Said Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration During Routine Maintenance, Not Hacker Attack 

Xbox Live -one of the world's most popular and usually very reliable gaming network which rarely has unexpected outages, nor does Microsoft ever take it down for any extended period of time. But accident occurs, and it happened in last Sunday. The software giant and the developer of Xbox - Microsoft has reported a significant Xbox Live outage, rendering the service unavailable since earlier last 13th afternoon, smack in the middle of the peak weekend usage period. The outage is preventing users from signing in to Xbox Live, blocking access to the online services normally available through the console. While acknowledging the issue, on their official Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “There is still an issue members are having signing in to Xbox LIVE, we greatly appreciate you sticking it out with us while we work as hard as we can to get this problem fixed. Keep checking back here every 30 minutes for another update on our progress.” This update came from Microsoft at 3:30 Pacific time on 13th of April. As soon as this story get spotted, several hikes rises. Among this buzz, it was a few unnamed hacker who took credit of the Xbox outage, while declaring that a cyber attack. Another buzz which just got spread so quickly, was that the outage of Xbox Live network has been caused by hacker collective Anonymous.  Here we must have to say that those buzz have some solid reasons as couple of months ago Windows Azure faced an organized cyber attack which effected the service of Azure storage, Xbox Live and 52 other. And that outage or in other word service interruption stays for 12 long hours. But unlike earlier, this time the issue get resolved immediately. Within one hour all the service get restored and came back to its normal order. On the same Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “If you were one of the members who was having issues signing in to Xbox LIVE, good news! This issue has been fixed! Thank you so much for your patience during this time, feel free to go enjoy your favorite games and content!”

So far we have discussed about the story of the outage and it's restoration. Now we will talk about the cause of this interruption. As I have said earlier that the rumor of hacker's attack was there which was claiming responsibility of the Xbox Live outage. But in reality it was not due to cyber attack but some internal network problems. In their official respond of the situation and those buzz Microsoft completely dines all those rumors and said  "The Xbox Live service outage on 13 April resulted from networking misconfiguration during routine maintenance and was in no way related to false claims of hacking the service." 

While talking about Xbox outage, we would like to remind you that - another world famous gaming console 'PlayStation' had fallen victim to cyber attacks. It was Anonymous who hit Sony PSN and caused massive outage, data leak and many other devastating damages. 

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Unpatchable Security Hole in PlayStation 3 Leading The "final hack" Also LV0 Cryptographic Keys Revealed

Unpatchable Security Hole in PlayStation 3 Leading The "final hack" Also LV0 Cryptographic Keys Revealed

We all are very much aware that Sony along with its product's were always been a very hot favorite target of hackers. But here there are few twists, so the word 'Hack' will be be the appropriate one to describe of what happened to Sony. According to a report on Eurogamer Sony's PlayStation 3 is facing a new security threat - one it hasn't seen since the system was cracked via the PSJailbreak in 2011. The PS3 has been hacked before, but Sony was able to inhibit the hack with an update to its own firmware. This is much like the history of jailbreaking on Apple's iOS. But the latest PS3 break is being dubbed unpatchable and the final hack. That's because this hack isn't giving you an exploit to use against a programming hole. It's giving you Sony's so-called LV0 (level zero) cryptographic keys. 

A decryption key that is reported to be circulating on the net is said to remove the final protective barrier on some models of Sony's PlayStation 3 consoles. In the long run, the release of the key will probably allow unsigned software such as homebrew games, Linux distributions, or pirate copies of software to run on some PS3 consoles. Allegedly, the private key can be used to modify and sign the "LV0" (Level 0), for example to disable its security checks. When the PS3 system boots, from version 3.60 of the PS3's firmware, the LV0 is directly launched by the bootloader (bootldr) that is built into the system's hardware – which means that the chain of trust is broken at a very early stage. As Sony won't be able to update the bootloader with a software update, the hacker community considers this the "final hack" of the PS3 in its current forms. Eurogamer says that these keys may not have been released at all if not for a Chinese hacking outfit called "BlueDiskCFW," who gained access to the keys and planned to charge for new custom firmware updates it would create. The original group that created the LV0 had no plans on releasing them, but eventually they were leaked onto the Internet in some limited fashion. Seeing that someone was going to profit on them, the group known as "The Three Tuskateers" decided to release them into the wilds of the Internet. 

In a statement the hacker group says that "You can be sure that if it wouldn't have been for this leak, this key would never have seen the light of day, only the fear of our work being used by others to make money out of it has forced us to release this now," 

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A Tribute to The 10 Most Infamous Student Hackers of All Time

A Tribute to The 10 Most Infamous Student Hackers of All Time

Since last two years, we the VOGH team has been covering all the latest cyber security updates. But today lets do some thing different. One of our frequent reader and fan Katina Solomon has requested us to share a fantastic article. Everyday VOGH draws headlines of hackers around the world and their activities. While trying to maintain speed with time, we usually forgot our past. Today we will take you into the past, where we will discuss about those heroes, who are always been ill treated by the society & the system while revamping those heroes into cyber-criminals or infamous hackers. Its our question to our humanity "Did the system has done justice with them??" 

Hacking has always been inherently a young person’s game. The first usage of the word “hacker” was to describe pranksters meddling with the phones at MIT. Many hackers have cited boredom, a desire for change, or the thrill of going somewhere one is not supposed to go as their motivation for hacking, all of which could apply to scores of common activities on college campuses. While today’s hacking scene is dominated by large hacking groups like Anonymous and Masters of Deception, many of the greatest hacks ever have been pulled off by college, high school, and even middle school kids who rose to infamy armed only with a computer and the willingness to cross the bounds of legality.

1. Sven Jaschan: In the words of one tech expert, “His name will always be associated with some of the biggest viruses in the history of the Internet.” The viruses: the Sasser and NetSky worms that infected millions of computers and have caused millions of dollars of damage since their release in 2004. The man behind the viruses proved to be not even a man at all, legally. Seventeen-year-old hacker Sven Jaschan, a student at a computer science school in Germany, claimed to have created the viruses to become a hero by developing a program that would eradicate the rampaging Mydoom and Bagle bugs. Instead he found himself the subject of a $250,000 bounty courtesy of Microsoft, for which some of his classmates turned him in.
   
2. Jonathan James: In 2000, at the age of 16, James, or “C0mrade” as he was known in the hacker community, infamously became the first juvenile federally sentenced for hacking. The targets of his notorious hack jobs were a wing of the U.S. Department of Defense called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NASA, and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. (By hacking the latter James gained the ability to control the A/C in the International Space Station.) All of these were pulled off “for fun” while James was still a student at Palmetto Senior High in Miami. Unfortunately, the fun ran out when James was tied into a massive identity theft investigation. Though insisting he was innocent, James took his own life, saying he had “no faith in the justice system.”
   
3. Michael Calce: Yahoo. CNN. Ebay. Amazon. Dell.com. One by one in a matter of days, these huge websites crashed at the hands of 15-year-old Canadian high school student Michael Calce, aka “MafiaBoy.” Armed with a denial-of-service program he called “Rivolta” that overloaded servers he targeted, the young hacker wreaked $7.5 million in damages, according to court filings. Calce was caught when he fell victim to a common ailment of teenage boys: bragging. The cops were turned on to him when he began boasting in chat rooms about being responsible for the attacks. On Sept. 12, 2001, MafiaBoy was sentenced to a group facility for eight months on 56 counts of cybercrime.
   
4. Kevin Mitnick: Before performing hacks that prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to declare him “the most wanted computer criminal in United States history,” Kevin Mitnick had already made a name for himself as a hacker in his school days, first at Monroe High School in LA and later at USC. On a dare, Mitnick connived an opening into the computer system of Digital Equipment Corporation, which some fellow hackers then used to steal proprietary source code from the company before ratting on him. While still on probation for that crime, Mitnick broke into the premises of Pacific Bell and had to go on the run from police in the aftermath, during which time he hacked dozens of systems, including those of IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and Fujitsu.
   
5. Tim Berners-Lee: “Scandalous” is a synonym for “infamous,” and for this legendary computer scientist, knight of the British Empire, and inventor of the World Wide Web to have been a hacker in his school days is certainly a juicy factoid. During his time at Oxford in the mid-’70s, Sir Tim was banned from using university computers after he and a friend were caught hacking their way into restricted digital areas. Luckily by that time he already knew how to make his own computer out of a soldering iron, an old TV, and some spare parts. And also luckily for him, he will always be revered as the father of the Internet.
   
6. Neal Patrick and the 414s: In the early ’80s, hacking was still a relatively foreign concept to most Americans. Few recognized the enormous power hackers could hijack with a few strokes on a keyboard, which explains why a young group of hackers known as the 414s (after a Milwaukee area code) were virtual celebrities after they hacked into the famous Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and elsewhere. While today hacking a lab where classified nuclear research is conducted could earn you a one-way ticket to Guantanamo, the 17-year-old ringleader and high school student Neal Patrick was on the cover of Newsweek. The group members got light sentences but prompted Congress to take a stronger role in cybercrime.
   
7. Robert T. Morris: The first ever Internet worm, the Morris Worm derived its name from Cornell grad student Robert Tappan Morris. In 1988, Morris released the worm through MIT’s system to cover his tracks, which would seem to contradict his claims that he meant no harm with it. But that’s exactly what resulted: the worm spread out of control, infecting more than 6,000 computers connected to the ARPANET, the academic forerunner to the World Wide Web. The damages reached as high as an estimated $10 million, and Morris earned the ignominious distinction of being the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris got community service but was apparently not considered too infamous to be offered his current job as a professor at MIT.
   
8. George Hotz: To some, George Hotz (aka “geohot,” aka “million75,” aka “mil”) is a public menace, a threat to electronic businesses everywhere. To many, Hotz is a hero. The high-schooler shot to fame/infamy in 2007 at the tender age of 17 by giving the world its first hacked, or “jailbroken” iPhone. He traded it for a new sports car and three new iPhones, and the video of the hacking received millions of hits. Apple has had to grudgingly come to terms with jailbreaking, seeing as the courts have declared it legal, but Sony Corp. is definitely not OK with such tampering. When Hotz hacked his PlayStation 3 and published the how-to on the web, the company launched a vicious lawsuit against him. In turn, the hacker group Anonymous launched an attack on Sony, stealing millions of users’ personal info.
   
9. Donncha O’Cearbhaill: According to the FBI, this 19-year-old freshman at Trinity College Dublin is one of the top five most wanted hackers in the world. Well, he was; now that he’s been arrested he’s not really “wanted” anymore. The Feds contend the young man is a VIP member of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups that have already been mentioned and whose targets have included the FBI, the U.S. Senate, and Sony (in the Hotz backlash). It seems “Palladium” (O’Cearbhaill) took the liberty of listening in on a conference call between the FBI and several international police forces who were discussing their investigations of the hacking groups. He could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted for that hack alone.
   
10. Nicholas Allegra: Just as George Hotz moved on from the Apple hacking game, Brown University student Nicholas Allegra is also hanging up his jersey. “Comex,” as he is known to millions of rooted iPhone fans, created the simple-to-use Apple iOS jailbreaking program JailbreakMe in 2007 and has since released two newer versions of it. However, Comex seems to have gone over to the dark side, accepting an internship with the very company whose products he became famous exploiting. Still, Allegra’s hacking skills are so advanced (one author puts him five years ahead of the authors of the infamous Stuxnet worm that corrupted Iran’s nuclear facilities) and so many people availed themselves of his talents, he will forever live in hacking infamy.
    

We want to dedicate the above post to the legendary hacker, who left us -Jonathan James aka “C0mrade”. Also the post is a tribute to all the so called 'infamous hackers'. You are our heroes and inspiration, you will always be there in our soul. Team VOGH salutes you...... 

-Thank you Katina & Online Degrees

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Wikipad -Android Based Gaming Tablet Coming on October For $499

Wikipad -Android Based Gaming Tablet Coming on October For $499

The long awaited gaming tablet with detachable controls based on Android  is set for release on October 31st. The mobile gaming tablet is named 'Wikipad' will be available for $499. Online retailing store, GameStop which has tied-up with Wikipad, has already started taking pre-orders for the Tegra-3 based tablet. Furthermore, those who pre-order a Wikipad will receive value added extras, including one issue of the GameStop-owned Game Informer digital magazine, and "full-length titles." Though these games were not announced, but GameStop plans to reveal them soon. The Wikipad will support games downloadable through PlayStation Mobile, Nvidia's Tegra Zone, Google Play and other forthcoming platforms.

Wikipad sports a 10.1-inch IPS display and will have a 1280×800 resolution. It is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor clocking at 1.4GHz. It will come with 1GB RAM and 8GB on-board storage expandable to 64GB. To put your game face on, just attach the gaming controller which features multiple buttons and analog joysticks.

Wikipad has also partnered with Gaikai for streaming video games. Gaikai, previously known as the Sony Cloud service, was bought by the company for $380 million. Gamers will be able to stream Gaikai's library of titles to their Wikipad, including big titles like Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3 and Saints Row: The Third. 

About Wikipad:- Wikipad Inc. is a leading developer and designer of video game console tablets and devices. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Wikipad Inc. is uniquely positioned as pioneers and innovators in the mobile entertainment world. Wikipad is leading the way with its accessible and comfortable consumer devices focused on video game content while enabling traditional functions such as productivity, web, education, media and music content.

For Pre-Order Booking Click Here

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PSN Hacked Again By Anonymous! 10 Million Users Affected [Sony Denis The Hack]

PSN Hacked Again By Anonymous! 10 Million Users Affected [Sony Denis The Hack]

Oh! no again Sony Play Station Network faced cyber attack. Guess who was behind this??? Yes this time also hacker collective Anonymous have breached the PSN and stolen more than ten million account details (Email-id & encrypted passwords). Anonymous announced the hack on its Twitter account on Wednesday (though that tweet has since been removed). 

That tweet has claimed that yet again Anonymous have broken into PlayStation Network and has a 50 gigabyte database of email accounts and their passwords – this would put more than ten million accounts at risk. This would be a huge blow to Sony if Anonymous has in fact completed a successful PSN hack and PlayStation Network breach. If PSN has been breached millions of users personal information, including credit cards, would be in the hands of potentially malicious users.

However note that Sony completely denies the hack. The official twitter account of PSN says- "We can confirm that the recent claim that PSN was illegally hacked & that customer PWs and email addresses were accessed is completely false".

According to Kotaku reports that the list in the Pastebin doc is a copy of a seemingly unrelated list of email addresses from March 2012, called "Email accs! // universe security sucks." The PSN hack, in other words, appears to be a rumor that didn't turn out to be true.But still we have to wait for Sony's official response about the whole matter. 

Since last year the battle between hacktivist Anonymous, Lulzsec and Sony is running. Hackers have penetrated Sony's PSN network and stolen millions of user personal information. Later Sony was forced to shutdown its entire network & apologized for the whole massacre. Not only PSN, also Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures, Several Sony's official website from different countries fallen victim to the hackers. 

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Department of Homeland Security & U.S. Navy Hires Company To Hack Into Video Game Consoles

Department of Homeland Security & U.S. Navy Hires Company To Hack Into Video Game Consoles 

The U.S. government has hired a California-based company to hack into video game consoles, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to watch criminals, especially child predators, and learn how to collect evidence against them. The $177,000 contract with Obscure Technologies of San Rafael, Calif., is being executed by the U.S. Navy on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security because of the Navy’s expertise in the field, officials said. Under the contract, Obscure Technologies will purchase used gaming systems from abroad that are believed to hold “sensitive information from previous users” and try to hack into them. Obscure’s experts will then report back on how they gained access to the systems, provide instructions to obtain users’ chat room activity, and even report back on the data gleaned, according to the contract and tasking documents. Obscure will also purchase new systems and construct a device that can capture data and activity, the documents state.
Over the past few decades, video game systems have grown in sophistication and capabilities by leaps and bounds. Consoles like the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Xbox can be found in many U.S. households and are popular among servicemembers, with Internet access and hard drives that rival personal computers.
With these advances, Garfinkel said, the systems have become a playground of illegal activity for criminals. In 2008, law enforcement agencies contacted the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate and requested help in analyzing gaming systems seized during court-authorized searches, Garfinkel said. While some tools exist to extract data from gaming consoles, the consoles are hard to crack as they are designed with copyright protection systems, he said. Navy and DHS officials declined to comment on whether the gaming consoles of Americans will ever be hacked and monitored. They also declined to comment as to whether the system manufacturers had been approached about this research.

-Source (Stars & Stripes)

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2 Hacker From UK Get Busted For Stealing Michael Jackson Back Catalog From Sony

2 Hacker From UK Get Busted For Stealing Michael Jackson Back Catalog From Sony

Two hacker from UK have allegedly been arrested for illegally downloading more than 50,000 tracks from Sony's collection of world's famous pop star Michael Jackson's back catalog. James Marks, 26 and from Daventry, and 25-year-old James McCormick from Blackpool, were arrested last May and are due to stand trial in January 2013.

Sony purchased the rights from the Jackson estate in 2010 for $200 million to complete 10 projects over seven years. The actual crime happened last April when the Sony PlayStation Network was hack and shut down for 23 days due to hackers breaching the company's servers. Personal data from about 77 million customers were compromised in the cyber attack, including names, home addresses, birthdays, usernames and passwords. Sony apologized to customers and offered free identity theft protection services.

-Source (BBC)

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FreeBSD & PC-BSD 9 Released !!

Hello BSD user I have 2 good news for you and that is both Free BSD & PC BSD 9 has been released. 

Brief About FreeBSD:-

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for modern server, desktop, and embedded computer platforms. FreeBSD's code base has undergone over thirty years of continuous development, improvement, and optimization. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. FreeBSD provides advanced networking, impressive security features, and world class performance and is used by some of the world's busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices. For more information about this release click here.

Some Highlights:- 

• The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on stable/8 and adds many new features.
• A new installer, bsdinstall(8) has been added and is the installer used by the ISO images provided as part of this release
• The Fast Filesystem now supports softupdates journaling
• ZFS updated to version 28
• Updated ATA/SATA drivers support AHCI, moved into updated CAM framework
• Highly Available Storage (HAST) framework
• Kernel support for Capsicum Capability Mode, an experimental set of features for sandboxing support
• User-level DTrace
• The TCP/IP stack now supports pluggable congestion control framework and five congestion control algorithm implementations available
• NFS subsystem updated, new implementation supports NFSv4 in addition to NFSv3 and NFSv2
• High Performance SSH (HPN-SSH)
• Flattened device tree (FDT), simplifying FreeBSD configuration for embedded platforms
• The powerpc architecture now supports Sony Playstation 3
• The LLVM compiler infrastructure and clang have been imported
• Gnome version 2.32.1, KDE version 4.7.3

To Download FreeBSD 9 Click Here

******

Brief About PC-BSD:-

PC-BSD is a user friendly desktop Operating System based on FreeBSD. Known widely for its stability and security in server environments, FreeBSD provides an excellent base on which to build a desktop operating system. PC-BSD uses a host of popular open source window managers and uses a custom-tailored application installer that puts popular applications in easy reach of users. For more information click Here

Some Highlights:-

• Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE
• Support for installing a variety of Window Managers, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and more!
• Improved PBI system, allows library sharing, binary diff updating, custom repositories, digital signing and more!
• Support for "freebsd-update" via the System Update GUI.
• New Control Panel, providing consistent configuration options across various Window Managers.
• Improved networking utilities, including wifi quick-connect.
• Enhanced "Life-Preserver" utility for doing off-site rsync backups of user data.
• New VirtualBox / VMware disk images, with integrated guest tools.
• Support for UFS+Journaling out of box
• New graphical boot options page
• Support for installation to BootCamp partitions on OSX systems.
• And much more!

To Download PC-BSD 9 Click Here

*****

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Anonymous Gave Warning To Sony (#OpBlackout, #OpLulzxmas, #OpMayhem)

Earlier we have told that Anonymous has reacted against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) reconvenes by the US Senate. This bold protest of Anonymous continues. Recently the have posted a YouTube video declaring that they will hack Sony again. If Sony doesn't stop their support of the Stop Online Piracy Act. They have specifically said they are not hacking the PlayStation Network. "We're hacking the SONY network and exploiting its servers. NOT PLAYSTATION NETWORK" 

Video Release Of Anonymous:- 

According To The Video:-

"Your support to the act is a signed death warrant to SONY Company and Associates," Anonymous said in the video. "Therefore, yet again, we have decided to destroy your network. We will dismantle your phantom from the internet. Prepare to be extinguished. Justice will be swift, and it will be for the people, whether some like it or not. Sony, you have been warned."

A Message From Anonymous To Sony:- 

Brief About SOPA:-
The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. The bill will increase the power of the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders.  The bill "would expand the ability of federal law enforcement to shut down foreign Web sites and services that that use counterfeited or pirated content created by U.S. firms."

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Sony is Going to Release "PlayStation Vita" (Portable Video Game Player)

Sony is planning to release the PlayStation Vita, a portable video game player, on February 22, 2012, in the United States, Canada and Europe, the company announced at a technology conference on Tuesday.

The Vita will succeed the PlayStation Portable, or PSP, and PlayStation Go, a smaller version of the hand-held device. The Vita has a touchscreen and a touch-sensitive pad on the back of the device, along with the buttons and control sticks gamers expect to see on controllers.

Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Jack Tretton and a Sony spokesman demonstrated a sequel to a popular PlayStation 3 game called "Uncharted: Golden Abyss." Players can use the standard controller or manipulate the character using touch controls, as the spokesman showed onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit. The game looks very attractive -- but when shown on the big screen, not as sharp as a console game.

Sony previously announced pricing for the Vita, with a version that connects to the Web via Wi-Fi costing $250 and another that has 3G wireless data connectivity for $300.

Nintendo made deep price cuts to its portable 3DS system just five months after a strong launch when sales began to slow.

Analysts expect Sony will struggle to sell consumers a dedicated hand-held game machine now that smartphones and tablets have become powerful enough to handle powerful games.

"The advent of smartphone gaming is quite additive to what we're trying to accomplish," Tretton said. People may look to the Vita when they want to graduate from more simplistic games sold on phones, he said.

The Vita will first hit stores on December 17 in Japan, where Sony's portable systems have fared better.

-News Source (Sony & CNN)

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Sony Again Under Massive Attack, 93K Accounts Compromised

Sony's online services have been the target of another large-scale attack. In a press release, Sony said that attackers made multiple attempts to intrude into users' Sony online service accounts. Apparently, the attacks targeted the Playstation Network (PSN), the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) between 7 and 10 October. 

According to Official Press Release of Sony:-

"Sony Network Entertainment International LLC and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) have detected a large amount of unauthorized sign-in attempts on PlayStation®Network (PSN), Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) services. We discovered these attempts and have taken steps to mitigate the activity.
Less than one tenth of one percent of our PSN, SEN and SOE consumers may have been affected. There were approximately 93,000 accounts (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts’ valid sign-in IDs and passwords, and we have temporarily locked these accounts. As a preventative measure, we will be sending email notifications to these account holders and will be requiring secure password resets or informing consumers of password reset procedures.
Credit card numbers associated with these accounts are not at risk as a result of these unauthorized attempts. Only a small fraction of these 93,000 accounts showed additional activity prior to being locked. We are continuing to investigate the extent of unauthorized activity on any of these accounts.
These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or sources. These were unauthorized attempts to verify valid user accounts on our services using very large sets of sign-in IDs and passwords. Between October 7 - 10 US Pacific Daylight Time, we confirmed that these were unauthorized attempts, and took steps to thwart this activity. "

-News Source (Sony Corporation)

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Top 5 DDoS Attacks of 2011, Exclusive Report By Corero Network Security

Corero Network Security (cns:LN), the leader in on-premises Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Defense Systems for enterprises, data centers and hosting providers, named its list of 2011's Top 5 DDoS attacks. Corero's findings show an increase in newer, intelligent application-layer DDoS attacks that are extremely difficult to identify "in the cloud," and often go undetected until it is too late. Corero also found an uptick in attacks against corporations by "hactivists" DDoS-ing sites for political and ideological motives, rather than financial gain. Attacks against Mastercard, Visa, Sony, PayPal and the CIA top Corero's list.
"The cat-and-mouse game between IT administrators, criminals and hactivists has intensified in 2011 as the number of application-layer DDoS attacks has exploded. Coupled with an increase in political and ideological hactivism, companies have to be extremely diligent in identifying and combating attempts to disable their websites, steal proprietary information and to deface their web applications, " said Mike Paquette, chief strategy officer, Corero Network Security.

Corero's 2011 Top 5 DDoS Attacks:-

1. Anonymous DDoS Attacks on WikiLeaks "Censors" Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. The most significant DDoS attack so far this year, the WikiLeaks-related DDoS attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal were both Anonymous' "coming out" party, and the first widespread example of what has been dubbed "cyber rioting" on the Internet, with virtual passersby joining in the attack voluntarily.

2. Sony PlayStation Network DDoS. A shocking wake-up call for many gamers, customers and investors, the Sony Playstation Network DDoS attack began a series of cyber attacks and data breaches that damaged Sony financially and hurt its reputation.

3. CIA and SOCA Hit by LulzSec DDoS Attacks. The appearance of LulzSec on the cyber attack scene, highlighted by bold DDoS attacks on the CIA and the U.K. Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), made us wonder if anyone was safe on the Internet.

4. WordPress DDoS. A massive DDoS attack disrupted one of the world's largest blog hosts--some 18 million websites. The huge attack hit the company's data centers with tens of millions of packets per second.

5. Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This DDoS attack had a major impact on the financial world, disrupting stock market trading in Hong Kong. This was a highly leveraged DDoS attack, potentially affecting hundreds of companies and individuals through a single target.

For all the pain and suffering DDoS attacks have caused, there are a number of best practices that companies can implement to reduce their risk. The most effective defense against DDoS attacks requires expert preparation of defensive resources, ongoing vigilance and a rapid, organized response.

-News Source (Corero Network Security)

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Sony Released Head Mounted Display Equipped With High Definition OLED Panel (Personal 3D Viewer, HMZ-T1)

 

Sony Corporation announced the launch of Head Mounted Display “Personal 3D Viewer” ‘HMZ-T1’, a device that offers a spectacular new style for viewing both 2D and 3D content. Simply slip the device onto your head to experience the movie theater-like virtual screen (equivalent to a 750-inch screen*2) expand before your eyes.*3
It is equipped with the newly-developed 0.7-inch (diagonal 18.0mm) high definition OLED panel (1280 x 720), which have been realized through Sony’s unique expertise in both OLED display and semiconductor silicon drive technologies. The ‘HMZ-T1’ achieves HD picture quality that makes full use of the OLED display’s high contrast, color reproducibility, and fast response. In addition, the device adopts the ‘Dual Panel 3D Method’ which consists of separate panels for the left and right eye in order to display independent HD picture quality to each eye, which realize 3D vision. The viewer can enjoy natural and bright 3D picture quality that is crosstalk-free. Furthermore, we have achieved a wide horizontal viewing angle of 45 degrees by incorporating an optical lens that thoroughly suppresses unwanted elements such as aberration and distortion. Viewers can now enjoy watching video on a movie theater-like big-screen (750-inch virtual screen, virtual viewing distance approx. 20m)*2. Sony has also adopted its original virtual surround signal processing technology. Combined with the high-resolution 3D picture quality, viewers will be able to fully enjoy powerful acoustics equivalent to a maximum of 5.1ch through the left and right headphones alone.

 Sony group has offered a wide range of 3D products and 3D content production systems, from industrial 3D filming and editing equipment and movie theater systems through to its “BRAVIA” LCD TVs, home projectors, Blu-ray™ Disc devices, Personal Computer VAIO and “PlayStation 3” while its “Handycam” and “Cyber-shot” cameras even enable people to film 3D video themselves. And now, this new 3D viewing style provided by ‘HMZ-T1’ will enable users to enjoy the movie theater-like experience whilst relaxing on their living room sofa, thus further expanding Sony’s 3D world.

Main Features:-

1. The high definition OLED panel delivers HD picture quality.
2. The ‘Dual Panel 3D Method’ delivers natural and bright 3D picture quality that is crosstalk-free.
3. Optical lens which realize wide 45-degree horizontal viewing angle (750-inch virtual screen, virtual viewing distance approx. 20m)*2 which is equivalent to a movie theatre screen, while the shielding construction creates a deep feeling of immersion.
4. ‘5.1ch Virtual Surround Technology (Virtualphones Technology)’ for realistic and expressive sound.  

Demo:-

 

 

For more information & to see the official press release by Sony click Here

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Facebook Launches Security Bug Bounty

Facebook is set to announce today a bug bounty program in which researchers will be paid for reporting security holes on the popular social-networking Web site.

Compensation, which starts at $500 and has no maximum set, will be paid only to researchers who follow Facebook's Responsible Disclosure Policy and agree not to go public with the vulnerability information until Facebook has fixed the problem.

Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told that "Typically, it's no longer than a day" to fix a bug,

Facebook's Whitehat page for security researchers says: 

"If you give us a reasonable time to respond to your report before making any information public and make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of our service during your research, we will not bring any lawsuit against you or ask law enforcement to investigate you."

The compensation program is a good way to provide an incentive and show appreciation to the research community for helping keep Facebook safe for users, according to the company's security team. Up until now, researchers received recognition on the Facebook Whitehat page, maybe some "swag," and--if they were lucky--a job.

"Some of our best engineers have come to work here after pointing out security bugs on our site," like Ryan McGeehan, manager of Facebook's security response team, said Alex Rice, product security lead at Facebook. (Facebook also recently hired famed iPhone jailbreaker and Sony PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, who works on security issues.)

Meanwhile, Facebook is allowing security researchers a way to create test accounts on Facebook to ensure they don't violate terms of use or impact other Facebook users, Rice and McGeehan said.

Facebook is following in the steps of Mozilla, which launched its bug bounty program in 2004, and Google, which offers a bug bounty program with payments ranging from $500 to more than $3,000 for finding Web security holes, as well as a program specifically for Chrome bugs.

Microsoft has offered bounties of $250,000 for information leading to the arrest of virus writers, but does not pay researchers who find bugs in its software. However, other companies do, like TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative.

Researchers typically are paid more for finding bugs in desktop software, which can take much longer to fix and to update software on computers than bugs in Web-based software, which can be fixed much more quickly.

According To FACEBOOK:- 

Eligibility

To qualify for a bounty, you must:

• Adhere to our Responsible Disclosure Policy:
  

  ... give us a reasonable time to respond to your report before making any information public and make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data and interruption or degradation of our service during your research ...
• Be the first person to responsibly disclose the bug
• Report a bug that could compromise the integrity or privacy of Facebook user data, such as:
  

  • Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF/XSRF)
  • Remote Code Injection
• Reside in a country not under any current U.S. Sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Libya, Cuba, etc.)

Our security team will assess each bug to determine if qualifies.

Rewards

• A typical bounty is $500 USD
• We may increase the reward for specific bugs
• Only 1 bounty per security bug will be awarded

Exclusions

The following bugs aren't eligible for a bounty (and we don't recommend testing for these):

• Security bugs in third-party applications (e.g., http://apps.facebook.com/[app_name])
• Security bugs in third-party websites that integrate with Facebook
• Security bugs in Facebook's corporate infrastructure
• Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
• Spam or Social Engineering techniques

                                                                                                                                                                     -News Sourec (FACEBOOK & Cnet)

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19 Years Old Guy get Busted by London Police in Sony Hacking Case

A teenager has been arrested near London in connection with the hacking of Sony, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday. The 19-year-old is suspected of hacking into systems and mounting denial of service attacks against "a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies," police said. Naming suspects who have been arrested in Britain is illegal. Sony's PlayStation Network went down on April 20 after what Sony said was a massive data breach. It had more than 70 million subscribers at the time. It began coming back on line in mid-May. The PlayStation Store did not reopen until June 2.

The company estimated the cost of that attack will total $171 million. Hackers later broke into Sony Pictures website, compromising the accounts of over 1 million users, and the gaming company SEGA, stealing nearly 1.3 million users' details via a British subsidiary of the Japanese company. SEGA makes games for PlayStation and other gaming systems. The suspect's computer "will now be examined for ties to any potential group, including LulzSec," a police spokesman told CNN, declining to be named in line with custom. "This link has not been established yet as it is still early days," the spokesman said. The hacker group LulzSec claimed recently to have attacked the CIA website, and took credit for hacking into the website of the American public broadcaster PBS and posting a fake story saying the rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. He was killed nearly 15 years ago. It's unclear whether LulzSec members played a role in the Sony PlayStation Network breach. But they have posted on their website what they claim is proprietary information from Sony Pictures and other Sony properties' websites. On Friday, on the occasion of their 1,000th tweet, the group posted a manifesto of sorts in which they said people, including their targets and advocates of Internet freedom, should be thankful. "The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that ... our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you," the group wrote. "But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing... ."

They seemed to suggest that by making their attacks public, they'll push websites to increase security. They said they're sitting on account information for 200,000 players of the online game Brink, but moments later said that releasing people's information is worth doing sometimes because it's fun. 

"Yes, yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011," they wrote. "This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining."

Analysts said the group appears to be some sort of spin-off of "Anonymous," the loose coalition of hackers that grew to prominence through their support of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.

But while Anonymous has its own set of moral codes and is largely politically motivated, LulzSec seems to be random.

For every hack like the one on PBS, which the group said came out of anger over a documentary about WikiLeaks, there's the cracking of porn site pron.com -- and a subsequent public list of members' e-mail addresses and passwords.

LulzSec has not yet posted a comment on the arrest of the teen in Essex, outside London, which police said was "intelligence-led."

The suspect was arrested Monday night and police are now examining a "significant amount of material," they said.

The Suspect Details:- 

Name: Mr Ryan Cleary
Alias: viraL
Age: 18-19
Address: 10 South Beech Avenue Wickford SS11 8AH
Phone Number: +447510557265

-NEWS SOURCE (CNN)

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After #opTurky, 32 Anonymous get busted by Turky Police

After hacker group Anonymous' apparently successful Operation Turkey to protest Internet censorship, the country's authorities have detained 32 people in connection with the attack on Turkish government Web sites.

After Friday's attack, Turkey's telecommunications authorities investigated and took the people into custody, according to a report today by Turkey's state news agency. Eight of those detained were under 18 years old, the report said.

The arrests come just days after Spain said Friday it arrested three Anonymous hackers in connection with attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network, governments, banks, and others. Retribution followed quickly, with an Anonymous attack that reportedly took a Spanish police off the Net.

The attacks take the form of a distributed denial of service (DDoS), which involves a coordinated flooding of a Web site with traffic with specially crafted network tools.

Security firm Sophos, though, said the Turkish attackers apparently used an attack tool called LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) that isn't terribly anonymous.

"LOIC...doesn't do a very good job of covering your tracks--making it potentially easy for computer crime authorities to track those behind the attacks," said Sophos' Graham Cluley.

A loose group of angry hacktivists is only one force spotlighting the Net's vulnerabilities today. The International Monetary Fund suffered what was reported over the weekend to be a major network breach. Google said it disrupted a plan the company said originated from China to break into Gmail accounts. It's open season for hackers.

One person's illicit hacker might be another person's sanctioned military authority, though. The United States and United Kingdom increasingly talk of cyberwar as just a facet of ordinary war.

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3 Anonymous suspects get busted in Spain

Police in Spain have arrested three cyber criminals who are suspected to be members of the online ‘hactivist’ group, Anonymous. The group has been in the news recently with their attack on the Sony PlayStation Network, the Indian army website as well as the Indian government website - NIC.According to the Spanish police Twitter feed, the hackers were arrested in Spanish cities of Barcelona, Alicante and Almeria and a server hosted in Gijon was seized, as well. They also claim that they have dismantled the Anonymous hacker group in Spain who were responsible for attacking the PlayStation Store. The police said that these individuals have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks. They also claim that the group has the ability to coordinate DDoS attacks to collapse Web sites around the world and are considered a threat by NATO.
According to a report, these arrests were made after investigation which began in October 2010. The Spanish police say that the arrests were made after going through millions of lines of chat logs to discover who was behind the group’s activity. The report goes on to say that some of the attacks made by the group’s members used a web based tool called Loic to fill the targeted sites with the required data.

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