hacking

Cellebrite was in the headlines earlier this year when it was rumoured to have helped the FBI to crack an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter.

Now the company has told the BBC that it can get through the defences of just about any modern smartphone. But the firm refuses to say whether it supplies its technology to the police forces of repressive regimes.

Ashley Madison - 32m accounts leaked

Last year, real-world account details of millions of people using the Ashley Madison site were leaked. They had all been using a site intended for married people who wanted to find somebody to cheat on their spouse with.

In terms of numbers, this was not the biggest hack of recent years by a long shot. But it had a huge impact on peoples' lives.

Along with the dangerous Quadrooter vulnerabilities that affected 900 Million devices and other previously disclosed issues, Google has patched a previously-unknown critical bug that could let attackers deliver their hack hidden inside an innocent looking image via social media or chat apps.

Although any intrusion in the state voting system has not been reported, the FBI is currently investigating the cyberattacks on the official websites for voter registration system in both Illinois and Arizona, said Yahoo News.

The FBI's Cyber Division released a "Flash Alert" to election offices and officials across the United States, asking them to watch out for any potential intrusions and take better security precautions.

Roman Seleznev, 32, the son of Russian Parliament member Valery Seleznev, was arrested in 2014 while attempting to board a flight in the Maldives, which sparked an international dispute between American and Russian authorities, who characterized the extradition as a "kidnapping."

Incidents of massive data breaches, advanced cyber attacks coming from China, groups like Syrian Electronic Army, Hacking Point of Sale machines at retailers such as Target have splashed across the news in the last one year.

Whether a Government Agency or Private Company, Small or a Large Tech Company....

...It’s no secret that No one is Immune to Cyber Attacks.

This article is from The Hacker News, listing the Top 7 Brutal Cyber Attacks.

#1 "Hacking Team" Data Breach

The site was hacked on Thursday and Friday by a group calling itself the Sri Lanka Youth.

It demanded that A-level exams due to be held in April be rescheduled because they clashed with Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations.

The student, 17, is being questioned to determine any other motives.

A message posted by the group in Sinhala protested about new exam times and called on the president "to take care of the security of Sri Lankan websites or... face a cyber war".

Set up by the US Darpa research agency the competition hopes to spur interest in autonomous security systems.

Mayhem's creators will get $2m (£1.52m) to continue their work and make their creation more effective.

Results will be confirmed on Friday at 10:00 local time (17:00 GMT).

Dubbed the Cyber Grand Challenge, the event was held at the Def Con hacker conference.

Quick fix

There's no need to hit panic stations though, as it turns out the hacker responsible isn't a total wrong-un.

Instead of targeting Facebook with malicious intent, hacker Orange Tsai used his firewall-dodging wizardry to find a weakness in the social network's internal server systems in order to earn money.

Not by selling the usernames and passwords he managed to extract either, but by alerting Facebook to the weaknesses.

ICT issued a warning notice to all students from various departments yesterday.

According to ICT services they’ve been fully aware that there are a few individuals running software on the network and stealing passwords from  other students.

Those individuals’ actions are also affecting internet connectivity and downtime on the online resources as was experienced recently.

“We would like to warn those individuals who are practising this unethical behaviour to refrain from doing it,’’ a statement said.