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Vigilante Hackers Aim to Hijack 200,000 Routers to Make Them More Secure

Vigilante Hackers Aim to Hijack 200,000 Routers to Make Them More Secure
Feb 10, 2016
The same "Vigilante-style Hacker," who previously hacked more than 10,000 routers to make them more secure, has once again made headlines by compromising more than 70,000 home routers and apparently forcing their owners to make them secure against flaws and weak passwords. Just like the infamous hacking group Lizard Squad , the group of white hat hackers, dubbed the White Team , is building up a sizeable botnet consisting of hundreds of thousands of home routers, but for a good purpose. Lizard Squad , the same group responsible for Sony PlayStation Network and Microsoft Xbox Live outages , uses their botnets to launch DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service ) attacks against target websites to flood them with traffic and knock them offline. Hacking Routers to Make them More Secure Challenged by Lizard Squad's maliocus work, the White Team of vigilante hackers built their own peer-to-peer botnet that infects routers to close off vulnerabilities , such

Six U.K. Teens Arrested for using Lizard Squad's DDoS Tool

Six U.K. Teens Arrested for using Lizard Squad's DDoS Tool
Aug 30, 2015
Six British teenagers arrested and released on bail on suspicion of launching cyber attacks on websites and services with the help of Lizard Squad DDoS attack tool, called Lizard Stresser . Lizard Squad is infamous for hacking and knocking down the largest online gaming networks – PlayStation Network and Xbox Live – last year by launching massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The notorious hacker group set up a website to let customers use its Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool Lizard Stresser to launch similar DDoS attacks. The six teens, arrested by the National Crime Agency , are accused of using Lizard Stresser DDoS tool to launch cyber attacks against a school, a national newspaper, gaming companies and a number of online retailers. However, according to the law enforcement, none of the teenagers are believed to be the member of Lizard Squad, nor had any connection with the last year's Christmas hack against Sony and Microsoft's gami

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

17-Year-Old Lizard Squad Member Found Guilty Of 50,700 Hacking Charges

17-Year-Old Lizard Squad Member Found Guilty Of 50,700 Hacking Charges
Jul 08, 2015
An alleged member of Lizard Squad, who claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline late last year has been convicted of 50,700 counts of cyber crime. The infamous computer hacker gang Lizard Squad launched massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks against the largest online gaming networks -- PlayStation Network and Xbox Live -- on Dec. 25, 2014. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser. Julius "zeekill" Kivimaki , a 17-year-old was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and was "ordered to fight against cybercrime," according to Finnish newspaper Kaleva . Facing more than 50,000 Counts of Computer Crime Finnish authorities arrested Kivimaki in late 2014. Under the alias " Ryan ," the teen participated in an interview with U.K. television station Sky News, openly claiming that he is a member of Lizard Squad a

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Lenovo Website has been Hacked

Lenovo Website has been Hacked
Feb 25, 2015
Lenovo.com , the official website of world's largest PC maker has been hacked. At the time of writing, users visiting Lenovo.com website saw a teenager's slideshow and hacker also added song "Breaking Free" from High School Musical movie to the page background. It appears that Lizard Squad hacking group is responsible for the cyber attack against Lenovo and it could be in retaliation to the Superfish malware incident. It was revealed earlier this week that Lenovo had been pre-installing controversial 'Superfish' adware to its laptops which compromised the computer's encryption certificates to quietly include more ads on Google search. In the Source code of the hacked webpage, description says," The new and improved rebranded Lenovo website featuring Ryan King and Rory Andrew Godfrey "  Rory Andrew Godfrey and Ryan King have been previously identified as members of Lizard Squad Hacking Group. It is not clear whether anyone of them is involve

Taylor Swift's Twitter and Instagram Accounts Hacked

Taylor Swift's Twitter and Instagram Accounts Hacked
Jan 28, 2015
The very popular Pop star Taylor Swift became the latest celebrity to have their social media accounts hacked on Tuesday. The 25-year-old " Shake It Off " singer, who has the fourth-most popular Twitter account with 51.4 million followers, appeared to be asking her millions of followers to follow @veriuser and @lizzard. Swift confirmed that her Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked on Tuesday afternoon, and also that the rogue posts were quickly removed from the social media websites. " My Twitter got hacked but don't worry, Twitter is deleting the hacker tweets and locking my account until they can figure out how this happened and get me new passwords ," said a statement posted on Swift's personal Tumblr page. The accounts were taken for just 15 minutes, but when it belongs to Taylor Swift, that makes it a big hit. At the time, a Tweet went out from @TaylorSwift13 to her millions of fans, saying, " go follow my boy, @lizzard :) " Yes Li

UK Police Arrested Second Hacker Over PlayStation and Xbox DDoS attacks

UK Police Arrested Second Hacker Over PlayStation and Xbox DDoS attacks
Jan 17, 2015
A UK man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad , that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day has been arrested by the United Kingdom police. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25, 2014. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser . SECOND ARREST As part of an investigation, the UK Regional Organised Crime Unit, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have arrested an 18 year old teenager in Southport, near Liverpool, UK on Friday morning, and seized his electronic and digital devices as well. So far, this is the second arrest made in connection to the attack after Thames Valley Police arrested a 22-year old , named Vinnie Omari , also believed to have been an alleged member of Liz

Hacker Leaks Xbox One SDK that could let Developers make Homebrew Apps

Hacker Leaks Xbox One SDK that could let Developers make Homebrew Apps
Jan 03, 2015
Just a week ago on Christmas, the massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from the notorious hacking group Lizard Squad knocked Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline, but as if it wasn't the end of disaster for Microsoft. This time it isn't a case of services being taken down — instead, the software development kit (SDK) for the Xbox Live is being freely circulated over the Internet. Another group calling itself H4LT has apparently managed to leak the Microsoft's official Xbox One developer SDK , potentially opening the door for homemade applications and allowing unapproved developers to create unofficial software for the system. The group announced the Xbox One leak via its official Twitter account, and also provided some screenshots of the November's release of the Durango XDK (Xbox Development Kit) files, including the accompanying development tools, device firmware and its documentation. H4LT group states noble reasons f

Two 'Lizard Squad' Hackers Arrested After Christmas DDoS Attacks

Two 'Lizard Squad' Hackers Arrested After Christmas DDoS Attacks
Jan 02, 2015
A 22-year-old man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad, that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day was arrested by the United Kingdom police on Monday. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser. Vinnie Omari , an alleged member of Lizard Squad, arrested by the police investigating PayPal thefts and cyber-fraud offences occurred in 2013-14 while raiding his London home. Law enforcement officials reportedly seized phones, laptops and an Xbox from his home. "The arrest is in connection with an ongoing investigation into cyber-fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts,"

Lizard Squad vs Anonymous — 'PlayStation, Xbox and Tor Network' Attacks

Lizard Squad vs Anonymous — 'PlayStation, Xbox and Tor Network' Attacks
Dec 27, 2014
It was the sad Christmas day for gamers all around the world!! A lot of people get new PlayStations and Xboxes on Christmas, but this Christmas they bought the game, popped it into the console for online gaming, and what they found? Oh Crap! I can't log on . It was the notorious hacker group " Lizard Squad " who claimed the responsibility for taking down PlayStation Network, saying it has made unavailable both networks with apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks — intentionally overloading servers by sending a flood of bogus web traffic, which made logging into the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live difficult for most users. Now Anonymous has declared war against Lizard Group, warning that " now you are all going down. " Recently, in response to Lizard Squad launching DDoS attacks on the Tor network , the international activist group Anonymous has leaked the personal details of one of the group's alleged members, warning the hacke
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