hacker news stories on Newser

Facebook Kicking Off IPO With All-Night Hackathon

Evann Gastaldo — Thu, 17 May 2012 07:29:47 CDT

Facebook is holding an all-nighter tonight, in advance of tomorrow’s IPO and its first day as a public company. The company will hold a "hackathon," a long-standing tradition involving employees working quickly on whatever they want, which has produced products including Facebook chat. It will culminate tomorrow morning with Mark...

White Supremacist Boasts He Hacked Trayvon's Email

Rob Quinn — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:57:40 CDT

How low can you go? A white supremacist claims to have hacked into Trayvon Martin's email and social networking accounts, reports Gawker , which has verified that at least one of the slain teenager's email accounts was indeed broken into. The racist, who calls himself Klankannon, posted what he says are...

ScarJo Hacker Pleads Guilty

Polly Davis Doig — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:07:28 CDT

The man responsible for bringing naked photos of Scarlett Johansson to the World Wide Web has pleaded guilty to nine felonies, including unauthorized access to a computer and wiretapping, reports TMZ . Christopher Chaney, 35, also accessed email accounts belonging to Mila Kunis and Christina Aguilera, and had forwarded other, less...

LulzSec Leader Was Really, Really Eager to Help FBI

Matt Cantor — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:22:05 CST

LulzSec leader Sabu didn't need to be asked twice to partner with the FBI. When the feds arrested him last June, Hector Xavier Monsegur immediately agreed to work for them, court papers show. He pulled all-nighters to help the government track down fellow top members of hacking groups LulzSec and...

Anonymous Could Shutter Power Grid: NSA Honcho

Evann Gastaldo — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:39:51 CST

Hacking collective Anonymous has taken on the FBI and the CIA , among others—and soon the group could be making its presence known in your living room. The National Security Agency director warns that within the next one to two years, Anonymous could launch a cyberattack that results in a...

Hackers Fill Sesame Street With Porn

Evann Gastaldo — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:44:03 CDT

Sesame Street briefly turned into Sex-ame Street yesterday, when hackers apparently took hold of the children’s show’s YouTube channel and filled it with porn. The page was taken offline in the afternoon, CNN reports, but it appears to be back up today . The nonprofit Sesame Workshop apologized yesterday, noting that,...

Celeb Hacker 'Deeply' Sorry: 'It Eats at Me'

Matt Cantor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:41:25 CDT

The man arrested by the FBI for Hollywood hacking has offered a lengthy apology for what he calls an "addiction" he couldn't control. "I deeply apologize," Christopher Chaney told a CNN affiliate. "I know what I did was probably one of the worst invasions of privacy someone could experience. These...

FBI Busts Low-Tech Celebrity Hacker

John Johnson — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:59:34 CDT

The FBI has arrested a suspect accused of hacking the emails of Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities and leaking personal—sometimes nude—photos, reports the Los Angeles Times . The feds say Christopher Chaney, 35, didn't have a sophisticated tech scheme. Rather, he pored over public info available in magazines, on...

Sony Networks Hit With New Attack

Kevin Spak — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:12:22 CDT

Sony’s recently beleaguered Playstation Network, Sony Entertainment Network, and Sony Online Entertainment services have been the target of another attack, the company announced on its Playstation Blog yesterday. This time, the ne’er do wells tested “a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database,” Chief Security Officer...