Latest Hacktivism Stories

A 19-year-old British man was arrested on Wednesday in Scotland as part of an investigation into the hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec.The man, who authorities believe used the online nickname "˜Topiary', is suspected of being a prominent player in a number of cyber attacks by the two hacking collectives.The groups have claimed responsibility for breaking into the networks of the CIA, Sony and many other private and public websites.Scotland Yard's cybercrime unit made the arrest, and...

Hacking group LulzSec claims to have 4 gigabytes worth of emails taken from an alleged hack on servers at News Corp., but said it won't make them public for fear of jeopardizing ongoing legal actions. The hacktivists said they abandoned plans to release the emails, but will instead plan to release select batches of the emails via a "partnership" with select media outlets, an approach similar to that applied by WikiLeaks to its controversial US diplomatic cables and war document releases last...

Hacktivist group Anonymous announced plans for a new social network after the group's Google+ accounts were shut down. The group said its AnonPlus service will be free "of fear...of censorship...of blackout" and "for all people not just Anonymous."The project was announced over the weekend after several pseudonymous Google+ accounts supporting Anonymous were shut down. "As some of you know we got banned from Google+ due to some of our content," said YourAnonNews, one of the affected...

MasterCard confirmed on Tuesday that its website had been forced offline by a cyber attack, according to a report by The Telegraph. A Twitter user known as "Ibom Hacktivist" was the first to announce the attack and seemed to take credit for it.He said he was a member of hacking group Anonymous and said that MasterCard was targeted because of its withdrawal of financial services to the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks. "MasterCard.com DOWN!!!, thats what you get when you mess with...

John Neumann for RedOrbit.comThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is not laughing but someone is. The hacker group LulzSec is still busy breaking into highly public sites, defacing pages and causing general mayhem, Reuters is reporting.Lulz Security (LulzSec) is claiming responsibility for recent attacks on the US Senate, Sony Corp., News Corp. and the US Public Broadcasting System television network.The public website for the CIA appears to be the latest target. It initially could not be...

Lulz Security (LulzSec), a hacker group, recently opened a telephone request line so fans can suggest potential targets. It claims to have launched denial of service attacks (DDoS) on several websites as a result. The unspecified hacks formed part of a wave of security breaches the group called Titanic Takeover Tuesday. In recent months, LulzSec has attacked Sony, Nintendo and several U.S. broadcasters. The group publicized the telephone hotline on its Twitter feed. An individual calling...

Less than a month after the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) managing director was arrested in New York, the agency was hit by what computer experts are calling a large and sophisticated cyber attack. The IMF, which manages financial emergencies around the world and is a warehouse of highly confidential information for many nations, told its staff and board of directors about the attack on Wednesday, but stopped short of making a public announcement. IMF spokesman David Hawley told...

Spanish police arrested three suspected computer hackers who belonged to a loose-knit international hactivist group that has attacked corporate and government websites around the world. Spain's National Police said the three were part of the Spanish section of the famous hacker group called "Anonymous."  Manuel Vazquez, chief of the police's high-tech crime unit, said all three are Spaniards between the ages 30 and 32. Vazquez said a computer server in one of their homes was used...

Entertainment giant Sony has been slammed again with a second data breach, according to numerous media reports.Sony was still attempting to restore its image from a similar hacking in April when it reported the loss of millions of credit card numbers from its PlayStation Network.A loose-knit "hacktivist" group known as Anonymous allegedly began focused attacks on Sony's online services in April in retribution for its legal action against PlayStation 3 owners who cracked the game console...

The Internet activist group Anonymous denied any involvement in a cyber-attack on Sony Corp.'s networks that exposed the personal data of more than 100 million PlayStation and Online Entertainment network accounts."Let's be clear, we are legion, but it wasn't us. You are incompetent Sony," wrote Anonymous on its blog (anonops.blogspot.com) on Thursday.Sony had claimed that its video game network was breached at the same time it was defending itself against a major denial of service...