No more Lulz as hackers log off

A publicity-seeking hacker group that has left a trail of sabotaged websites around the world has unexpectedly dissolved itself.
Lulz Security made its announcement yesterday through its Twitter account. It gave no reason for the disbandment, which could be a sign of nerves in the face of law enforcement investigations.
One of the group's members was interviewed by The Associated Press on Friday, but gave no indication that its work was ending.
LulzSec claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organisations, the CIA, the US Senate and a pornography website.
Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant and former hacker, said the group had probably concluded that the more they kept up their activities the greater the chance one of them would make some mistake to enable authorities to catch them.
They inspired copycat groups around the globe, he noted, which meant similar attacks were likely to continue even without LulzSec.
"They can sit back and watch the mayhem and not risk being captured," Mr Mitnick said.
As a parting shot, LulzSec released documents and log-in information apparently gleaned from gaming websites and corporate servers.
The largest group of documents - 338 files - appears to be internal documents from AT&T , detailing its buildout of a new wireless broadband network in the US.

A spokesman for the phone company could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the documents.
In the earlier interview, the LulzSec member said the group was sitting on at least five gigabytes of government and law enforcement data from across the world, which it planned to release in the next three weeks. Yesterday's release was less than a tenth that size.
In an unusual strategy for a hacker group, LulzSec has sought publicity and conducted a conversation with the public through its Twitter account.
Observers believe it is an offshoot of Anonymous, a larger, more loosely organised group that attempts to mobilise hackers for attacks on targets it considers immoral, such as Middle Eastern governments and opponents of WikiLeaks.
LulzSec, on the other hand, claimed it attacked anyone it could for "the lulz", which is internet jargon for "laughs".
A British teenager diagnosed with autism and accused of attacking websites as part of LulzSec was remanded in custody at the weekend.
Ryan Cleary, 19, appeared at a London court charged with offences including hacking into the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Judge Nicholas Evans initially granted him bail after his defence team said the teenager had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, since his arrest.
The decision was swiftly overturned after objections by prosecutors.
From: theaustralian.com

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A Tweet Response to a Government Contractor Hack

By Nathan Hodge
The Twitterverse is, well, atwitter over an apparent hack attack against government contracting and consulting heavyweight Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
Fittingly enough, the company is sticking to the microblogging website in reply.
AntiSec, an apparent spinoff of the hacking group Anonymous, said Monday it had infiltrated networks belonging to Booz Allen – and had obtained thousands of military email addresses and passwords in the process. “We infiltrated a server on their network that basically had no security measures in place,” read a message posted on a website called the Pirate Bay. “We were able to run our own application, which turned out to be a shell and began plundering some booty. Most shiny is probably a list of roughly 90,000 military emails and password hashes."

Booz Allen’s official response? The following tweet: “As part of @BoozAllen security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems.”
The attack, dubbed “Military Meltdown Monday” quickly picked up a Twitter hashtag (#militarymeltdownmonday). And plenty of tweeters are weighing in on the crisis P.R. response of Booz Allen, a major Beltway contracting firm that provides myriad services to U.S. agencies and private clients, including cyber security.
It’s hard to gauge, then, how seriously the company – or the government, or its clients – take the incident. “We are aware of the incident and coordinating with our federal partners,” said a Department of Defense official, without further elaboration.
From: Washington Wire
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News International phone hacking memos passed to police

News International phone hacking memos passed to police 2007 memos appear to show phone hacking more widespread than previously thought and that NoW paid police for information.
Police have been handed internal News International memos from 2007 that appear to acknowledge that the practice of phone hacking was more widespread than previously thought and that police were paid for helping with stories.
The memos - which were written in the wake of the jailing of the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman and the newspaper's £100,000-a-year private investigator Glenn Mulcaire - allegedly show that the pair were not the only News International employees implicated in phone hacking. The memos have now been passed to police investigating the matter.
The disclosure of the memos comes four years after the then executive chairman of News International, Les Hinton, told MPs that the organisation believed Goodman was the sole staff offender.
While giving evidence to the Commons culture committee on 6 March 2007, Hinton was asked whether the News of the World had "carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry" into phone hacking and whether he was "absolutely convinced" that the practice was limited to a single reporter.
He replied: "Yes, we have and I believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor [Colin Myler], continues."
The select committee was also told that News International had carried out an internal inquiry "of emails still on its IT systems" in May 2007.
Lawrence Abramson, managing partner of the solicitors Harbottle & Lewis, who reviewed the emails on the instructions of News International, told the committee that they had examined the evidence and concluded: "We did not find anything in those emails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures."
The memos – which are reported to have been recovered by Will Lewis, News International's general manager and the man tasked with investigating the phone-hacking claims – also suggest that the organisation was paying police officers for information.
According to the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, the documents were not handed to Scotland Yard until 20 June this year and are thought to have been in the possession of Harbottle & Lewis. Peston reports that the memos appear to show Coulson, who edited the News of the World from 2003-2007, "authorising payments to police" for assistance with stories.
The Guardian understands that News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and James Murdoch, the chairman of its parent company, News Corporation, were made aware of the memos only relatively recently.
From: www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/10

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