14 DAY TRIAL // In case you haven’t been online much over the past week, here’s your chance to catch up on some reading.
One of this week’s most important events was the sentencing of LulzSec and Anonymous hacktivist Jeremy Hammond. Much to the dismay of his supporters, Hammond has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release.
Just before the sentencing, the hacker made a statement in which he revealed some interesting things regarding his hacking activities and the way the US government had tricked hacktivists into doing its dirty work.
According to Hammond, the FBI tricked them into hacking the websites of foreign government through Sabu, who at the time was working as an informant.
Another hacktivism-related story is the one of the FBI memo obtained by Reuters. Apparently, the agency is warning US government organizations that their systems might have been breached over the past year by Anonymous hackers.
The list includes the Department of Energy, the Army, the Department of Health and Human Services, and possibly several others. The attacks appear to be tied to the case of British man Lauri Love, who was recently arrested and charged.
Some other interesting stories are related to Japan. Local media has reported that a total of 33 anti-nuclear citizens groups have been the target of a coordinated email-based denial-of-service (DOS) attack.
The targeted organizations were sent a total of 2.53 million emails in the course of less than two months.
In the meantime, Anonymous hacktivists have set their sights on the Japanese government in a campaign called OpKillingBay. The hackers want Japan to put an end to the killing of dolphins in the town of Taiji.
They’ve launched DDOS attacks against government websites and they even claim to have hacked one of them, stealing information on a tuna exports program.
Other Anons have targeted Ukraine’s State Customs Service from the systems of which they leaked 1Gb of documents allegedly related to corruption.
MacRumors has been hacked. The attackers stole the credentials of over 860,000 users. However, one individual taking responsibility for the attack says no information will be leaked online. He says they’re "not terrorists."
Shortly after WikiLeaks published a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, Anonymous announced an operation called OpTPP. The hackers want to “destroy” the controversial act just as they did with SOPA and ACTA.
In the “arrests” category we have the arrest of an alleged Anonymous Philippines leader, the one of a couple of Nigerians accused of running a 419 scam, and the ones of hacktivists suspected of taking part in attacks against Singapore government websites.
In addition, the hacker who blackmailed Miss Teen USA 2013 has pleaded guilty. There’s also the story of a hacker who tried to get himself swatted to boost his reputation among his peers.
As far as malware is concerned, this week we’ve had a couple of interesting stories. One of them is regarding the IE zero-day attack that delivered malware directly into memory. The second refers to a cleverly-designed Linux malware that uses some interesting techniques to steal information without being detected.
Here are some other interesting stories in case you’ve missed them:
Expert highlights links between website vulnerabilities and cyber warfare
Google fixes critical vulnerability found by Pinkie Pie at Mobile Pwn2Own 2013
Snowden used fabricated SSH keys and self-signed certificates to hack the NSA
Ethical hacking courses might be banned in India
DNSCharger cybercriminals will be extradited from Estonia to the United States
HealthCare.gov targeted by hackers 16 times. Check out why the number is so low
Cracked.com hacked and set up to serve malware
Kate Middleton’s phone might have been hacked by News of the World