A group of Internet hackers said Tuesday it took down the website of Brazil’s second largest private sector bank, one day after it did the same with the country’s largest private bank. The group that calls itself “Anonymous Brasil” said on Twitter: “Attention sailors: Target hit! The http://bradesco.com.br is sinking. TANGO...

Once a threat confined to the margins of society, computer hackers have become a scourge of the modern age. Leading the charge is one group, Anonymous, launching online attacks on everything from scientology to credit card companies. As its fame has grown, Anonymous members have increasingly felt the real-world consequences of their...

The digital arms race is already underway, according to many global experts and their opinions included in McAfee’s global cyberdefence report. At least 57 per cent of the study participants concurred with this point, while another 36 per cent went so far as to argue that cybersecurity is more important than missile defence. For reference,...

The activist hacker group Anonymous attacked three Mexican government websites on Friday in protest at a proposed bill that seeks to toughen local laws about online file-sharing. The affected sites belong to the Interior Ministry, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The homepage of the Interior Ministry remained offline by mid-afternoon. “We...

Hackers identifying themselves as the “Polish Underground” took down the Polish government website early on Monday, the most recent in a series of attacks protesting against anti-piracy legislation. At the weekend, the computer hacker group Anonymous launched attacks on official websites belonging to the Polish president,...

In reaction to U.S. authorities shutting down Megaupload, the hacktivist group Anonymous has been launching attacks on various government agencies and big media companies. So far, the group has claimed responsibility for crashing the websites of the Justice Department, Universal Music, BMI, the MPAA and the RIAA. According to reports on...

The ongoing saga between pro and anti-Israeli hackers continues to escalate as pro-Israel attackers use distributed denial of service attacks to take down the websites of three notable Saudi banks. In addition, hackers have released over 4,500 Saudi credits card numbers complete with expiration dates, names and addresses — data...

Earlier this week a hacking collective called Nightmare hit the Web sites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, banks and El Al, the Israeli national airline. In a message posted on Pastebin, a group calling itself IDF-Team yesterday warned that “because of the lame hackers from Saudi Arabia” it would attack the Saudi Stock Exchange...

Hackers who attack Israel need to know they will be attacked back, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Saturday, following a cyber attack on Israeli credit card holders earlier this week.

‘Whoever harms Israel’s cyberspace is not immune from retaliation,’ Aylaon told a meeting at a community centre in the southern city of Beersheba.

An aide to Ayalon, Lital Shochat, told dpa Saturday night that Israel viewed cyber attacks as acts of terrorism.

The comments came after an anti-Israeli activist revealed credit card details and other information on thousands of Israelis – 15,000 on Tuesday, and another 11,000 on Thursday.

The hacker, who identified himself as 0xOmar and wrote he was a member of the hackers group Anonymous, initially claimed 400,000 Israelis were affected.

The details exposed included the credit card numbers, names, addresses, telephone and identity numbers.

An Israeli student meanwhile claimed to have uncovered the identity of OxOmar, and said he was not from Saudi Arabia, as had been claimed, but was a teenager living in Mexico but who hailed originally from the United Arab Emirates.

The student said he was able to make the trace after OxOmar used a particular e-mail address to conduct interviews with Israeli media.

However, the Israel Ynet news site said it had been contacted by someone claiming to be OxOmar, who denied his identity had been discovered.

A well-known expert on mobile phone security says a vulnerability in a widely used wireless technology could allow hackers to gain remote control of phones, instructing them to send text messages or make calls.

They could use the vulnerability in the GSM network technology, which is used by billions of people in about 80 percent of the global mobile market, to make calls or send texts to expensive, premium phone and messaging services in scams, said Karsten Nohl, head of Germany’s Security Research Labs.

Similar attacks against a small number of smartphones have been done before, but the new attack could expose any cellphone using GSM technology.

“We can do it to hundreds of thousands of phones in a short timeframe,” Nohl told Reuters in advance of a presentation at a hacking convention in Berlin on Tuesday.

Attacks on corporate landline phone systems are fairly common, often involving bogus premium-service phone lines that hackers set up across Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. Fraudsters make calls to the numbers from hacked business phone systems or mobile phones, then collect their cash and move on before the activity is identified.

The phone users typically don’t identify the problem until after they receive their bills and telecommunications carriers often end up footing at least some of the costs.

Even though Nohl will not present details of attack at the conference he said hackers will usually replicate the code needed for attacks within a few weeks.