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Hector Hernandez, a High school student pawned his parent's jewelry worth $100,000 in just $1,500 to pay Blackmailers who allegedly hacked his computer at home and took a video of him in an 'embarrassing' situation. The said Hackers who reportedly situated in the Philippines, threatened this 17-year old student of Detroit, Michigan to leak the said video to his family, friends and his school if he won't send the said amount.

Hector Hernandez in Fox News Interview

The website of the Philippine Information Agency or PIA was hacked Sunday afternoon with Chinese Flag above center as the home page with the words “Hacked by 7z1" and “Black Matrix team 0x.oday@Gmail.com" could be seen in the government website as of 4:40 p.m. By 7:00 PM, the site was then fixed.

A screenshot of PIA site during the hacking period, source: www.gmanews.tv

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The hacking incident came a week after the Hostage taking of HK people which brought 8 killed people.

Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said tighter Internet security measures are already in place to ensure the protection of websites of PIA and other government agencies from cyber attacks.

I just hope this is not related to the Hostage taking and I hope hackers are not filipinos, because if they are, then they are irresponsible.

Are you a fan of having textmates and giving up your mobile numbers to the persons who you dont know and plugging it up on Wanted Pangga (Cebu's FM radio program) or dialing some numbers? I bet, after you will read this post, you will change your mind.



Recently, it was a buzz in Trust Digital. An attacker with correct and right toolkits and skill could hijack anyone's phone remotely by just sending SMS (short Message Service) to the device. With the Trust Digital demo on Youtube, a hijacker sends a text message to the prey phone which opens up a web browser and downloads an executable file that directs it, steals data off the phone and send an SMS to the predator's phone.

This strategy is commonly known a "Midnight Raid Attack" since it is very effective when the prey is asleep, the predator then could send a text message to the phone without the owner's knowledge.

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If Paris Hilton has its House of Wax well, we, hackers (am i included? lol) has our very own HOUSE OF HACKERS network. The site was run by GNUCITIZEN Think Tank.



According to the site, since its launched earlier this week, it has now signed up to about 1000 members (it includes me, again!).

The network was built for everyone's benefits. Hacking here is not used in negative side, they use it to elevate cooperation to all security researchers for the common good.

"House of Hackers stands strong behind the true meaning of the words hacker, hack and hacking. To the community, they should all express admiration for the work of the most skilled, creative, clever, unique, provocative, intelligent, intense, intriguing and interesting people among the human society."

Here is my newbie HOH profile..

Charlie miller hacked Macbook air at around 2 minutes in a famous PWN 2 OWN (pawn to own) hacking contest. The organizers offered three laptops namely; Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810, and the MacBook Air as a prize for the said event. Contestants can owned the said laptops if they could hack each system.

On the first day of the contest, nobody can do the hacking. But on Thursday, miller did it with just the said time span. He won the Macbook Air laptop and a cash prize worth $10,000. He was the first contestant attempted to hack the system and was successful. He then signed a Non Disclosure agreement and he is not allowed to discuss anything.

Charlie Miller is the hacker behind Apple Iphone last year.

Posted by bug IT s:

February 23, 2008 (Computerworld) Hackers are actively exploiting an Internet Explorer plug-in that's widely used by Facebook Inc. and MySpace.com members with a multi-attack kit, a security company warned Friday.

The exploit directed at Aurigma Inc.'s Image Uploader, an ActiveX control used by Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites to allow members to upload photos to their profiles, is just one of five in a new hacker tool kit being used by several Chinese attack sites, said Symantec Corp.

Attacks begin when users receive spam or an instant message with an embedded link, said Darren Kemp, the Symantec analyst who authored the advisory. The link takes users to a bogus MySpace log-in page, which tries to steal members' credentials as it also silently probes the their computers for vulnerabilities in Uploader, Apple Inc.'s QuickTime, Windows and Yahoo Music Jukebox.

Although the Windows and QuickTime bugs were patched eight and 13 months ago, respectively, the Uploader and Yahoo vulnerabilities were made public and fixed only within the past few weeks. Kemp noted the hackers' fast reaction times. "[This demonstrates] how quickly attackers are leveraging new vulnerabilities," said Kemp. "It is unlikely that attackers will stop trying to leverage this vulnerability any time soon."

The Aurigma bug was disclosed at the end of January by researcher Elazar Broad. Shortly after that, a spokeswoman for Facebook and MySpace claimed that the social networking sites were alerting members of the danger. New bugs cropped up a week later, however, forcing Aurigma to again patch the ActiveX control. Not until Feb. 13 did the company claim "Image Uploader is safe again!"

Yahoo Inc. plugged a pair of holes in Music Player on Feb. 6, two days after Broad published attack code for both.

Symantec has been tracking attacks against the Aurigma vulnerabilities most of the month. More than three weeks, ago, for example, another of its analysts reported seeing evidence of a new multi-exploit hacker tool kit -- presumably the same one analyzed by Kemp -- that included an Image Uploader attack.

Exploits against ActiveX controls are nothing unusual; scores of bugs in the Microsoft-made technology were uncovered and exploited in 2007, according to Symantec. It counted 210 ActiveX vulnerabilities in the first half of last year alone, a prime factor in making IE a popular attack target.

In fact, after the Uploader and Yahoo Music Jukebox vulnerabilities were disclosed, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, recommended that IE users disable ActiveX.

Kemp, however, saw the social networking angle as just as important. "Given the growing popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, attacks leveraging vulnerabilities in their client-side components are not surprising," he wrote in the warning.

Symantec urged users to update the Image Uploader ActiveX control to Version 4.5.57.1.

Original Post: Computerworld, by Gregg keizer