Anonymous Hackers breach transport site

Anonymous hackers breached Bart public transportation website Sunday. This screenshot shows a page from myBart.org after the attack. Photo: AP

Anonymous online hacker collective broke into a Web site belonging to San Francisco's public transport body Sunday after authorities threatened to thwart a anti-police protest by throttling the town's mobile phone network.

Hackers said the attack was in retaliation for group Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) attempt to stifle demonstrations on the deadly shooting of a man by the police last month.

Anonymous published contact details of more than 2,000 Bay Area bebøre, apparently stolen from the site unavailable was on Monday morning.

The incident is the latest showdown in a free speech battle between authorities and online activists. A separate attacker group identification plate last week, the official website for research in motion, BlackBerry maker, when the company said it would cooperate with police investigations English riots.

In a message posted on the site hacked Bart Sunday, anonymous wrote: "we are anonymous, we are your citizens, we are human beings, we cannot tolerate oppression from any government agency. Bart has been shown several times, they have no problem exploiting and abusing people. "

A Bart spokesperson told local media the FBI and Department of homeland security to investigate the attack. He added: "we will take steps to ensure our customers are secure. Disconnection of mobile phone service was made Thursday to prevent what could have been a dangerous situation. It is one of the tactics we have at our disposal. We can use it; We can not. And I am not sure that we necessarily would let anyone knows in advance either way.

Anonymous bills itself as " internet defenders of freedom". Amorphous group shot to notoriety in December 2010 for attack on global companies, including visa and PayPal after these companies severed ties with the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

More recently, have collectively expressed support for the Arab incursions, and called on Western communities to revolt against the authorities.

Sunday, anonymous said it sympathized with the riots and looting across parts of England last week. It described the demonstrations as "a product of decades of neglect inflicted on your country by various Governments."

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North Korean hackers stole $ 6 m, says South

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Contestants to the E-Stars Seoul game festival in South Korea. Police believe North Korean attacker's chairs $ 6 m from online game servers in the South. And: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

One is the most wired country in the world, with 90% of its homes hooked up to the internet. The other refuses its population internet access and even 13.05.2009 mobile phone usage.

But North Korea, whose people may be the most cut-off nation on the planet, stop the family town its southern rival of opera things hacking an elaborate network that allegedly broke into online sites hosted in South Korea and chairs prize points worth almost £ 3.7 m ($ 6 m).

The North blustered on Sunday that it had nothing to do with the hijacking scheme. Its grandly named Committee for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland issued a riposte rather to odds with its name, accusing the "puppet authorites" of fabricating allegations. The Korean Central News Agency was blunter, telling the South Koreans to "shove the cheap gimmicks".

Police in the south believe 30 North Korean hackers based in northeast China were hired to infiltrate Seoul-based online game servers and build so-called "auto programs" based on the data they siphoned. Investigator arrested five South Koreans last week and family, them of building and distributing the illegal programs. They said some of the proceeds went to the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang.

North Korea has been family of launching several cyber attacks on the South in the past – crippling the computer networks of a major local bank and attacking the websites of the presidential office and other government agencies earlier this year – but it was the first time North Korean hackers were suspected of making a profit from their activities.

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Hackers send obscene emails

Metropolitan Police have been called after computer hackers accessed a London University medical database, send a string of the expletive-laden emails to hundreds of its users.

Unidentified hackers sent mail last week claims to the members of the University's Executive Board was involved in a "most recent child pornography sting" and warned the database was "closed due to Aids".

Database, which is run by the St Georges University of London medical school, is an online directory of doctors and nurses across the UK. It does not hold health records.

Market economy treatment (met) and the University have launched separate investigations into attacks on Primary Care electronic library [PCEL]-database.

A spokeswoman for the St Georges University confirmed guardian, that the list email had been "compromised" by hackers and described e-mail as "highly offensive and unjustified".

"A number of unsolicited e-mails were therefore sent to members of the list. We are currently investigating how access was gained to the list subscription, "said University.

"We would like to reassure who received one of these emails, that they were not sent by any member of the team, PCEL. The content of these messages was extremely offensive and unjustified, and we apologize for any offence caused to them, receiving these e-mail messages.

"This was an isolated incident, affects the PCEL only server, which runs independently of the St George University of London (SGUL) primary server. No SGUL data, including confidential information about SGUL staff, students or partners, were damaged as a result of this situation ".

The first email that was sent on 15. February and has been seen by the guardian, said: "Dear PCEL user, if you ever were once a patient our, we regret to inform you that Primary Care electronic library is closed due to AIDS. Thank you for your attention. "

The following day hackers sent e-mail messages to the site's three more amazed users. First, said: "Dear PCEL user, you are all cunts. Fuck yourself. "

Moments later, a second statement seemed to confirm that the database was hacked and asked users to disclose their login details and password.

Hackers then sent a final e-mail. It said: "Dear PCEL user be attributed to the Board's involvement in the recent child pornography sting, all PCEL resources and administrative offices will close on February 24, 2011 at 4: 00 pm GMT.

"We advise all members to quickly withdraw their memberships to avoid unnecessary payments, which will be caused by the final procedures."

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Hackers will not be deterred by the UK cyber defences, new report warns

The report comes at a time of heightened awareness of online attack following hacking protests against businesses caught in the WikiLeaks controversy. Photo: Corbis

Military "cyber weapon" will be commonplace this century, but it would be unlikely to deter attacks by "hacktivists" and criminal gangs, and could easily be used for State-sponsored cyber attacks instead of the Organization for economic cooperation and development warns.

British authors of the study, which were released today, also caution "explicit lurid language" and lobbying the Government's technology companies distorts plans to protect the United Kingdom against cyber attacks.

Professor Peter Sommer of LSE and Dr. Ian Brown Oxford University internet Institute was commissioned by the OECD for one of a series of studies of potential "future global shocks".

Their report comes at a time of heightened awareness of online attack following hacking protests against businesses caught in the WikiLeaks controversy.

Answers to other hacking attacks from groups inside China and Russia, is military preparations started to gather pace, the study says. But it also warns: "it is not too difficult for nation States to configure discrete cyber attack units. Any agency that researcher for defensive purposes, the nature of cyber-attacks have all the knowledge required to originate attacks and disguise the fact they are doing.

"Little capital investment required … [en] almost all cyber attacks use hijacked, innocent zombie machines."

Brown says State-supported cyberwar will probably be more common because "cyber weapon will play a key role alongside more conventional and psychological attack of nation States in future warfare". However, the report warns: "a predominantly military [reply] to cyber security is a mistake. Most of the targets in the communications, energy, finance, food, Government, health, transport and water critical national infrastructure is in the private sector. Because it is often difficult to be certain who is attacking you from cyberspace, defence of deterrence is not. "

The authors suggest that "lean, just-in-time delivery systems", supplying supermarkets and manufacturers expose them to serious disturbance if large computer network go down.

"More effective is increasing resilience and robustness of critical systems and society in General … Add redundancy to systems allow some service must be continued, while damaged components in isolation, repair and replacement. Public panic buying can quickly enlarge these interruptions. During 2000 the fuel protests in the United Kingdom stores some imported food rationing. "NATO has created a pole of excellence on cyber defence in Estonia, and last year United States appointed its first cyber warfare General.

"UK [created] office of assurance cyber security and information (Ocsia) and a cyber security operations centre. At European level is Enisa, the European network and information security agency, "the report says.

Ocsia has approximately 20 persons working for it, to bring together experts from military, police and intelligence services. It is the lead agency coordinating £ 650 m cyber security program as the coalition Government announced in October last year.

Summer added: "we do not help us by using the ' cyberwar ' to describe espionage or hacktivist block or unreadable by websites, as seen recently in response to WikiLeaks. Nor is it useful to group the trivially avoidable events like virus and fraud with resolute attempt to interfere with the national infrastructure. "

Cyber warfare strategies and weapons include: unauthorized access to systems [hacking], viruses, and worms that spread across the Internet, Trojan horses, distributed denial of service attack that uses botnets, root-kits and use of social engineering.

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