French hacker is said to have guessed the President’s password to illegally access his page on the micro-blogging service.

French police arrested a man Thursday for allegedly hacking into the Twitter accounts of U.S. President Barack Obama and other famous individuals.

Authorities said the 24-year-old Frenchman, who has not been identified, used the online pseudonym “Hacker Croll” while breaking into various Web sites.

The man was able to access Obama’s Twitter page and other users’ accounts simply by guessing passwords, French authorities said.

“He was a young man spending time on the Internet,” said French prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat, according to London’s Telegraphnewspaper. “He acted as a result of a bet, out of the arrogance of the hacker. He is the type who likes to claim responsibility for what he has done,” said Coquillat.

It’s not clear whether the hacker was able to glean any sensitive information from Obama’s Twitter account or from the other sites he broke into. He’s accused of illegally accessing dozens of Twitter and Facebook pages.

If convicted, the hacker faces up to two years in prison on each count he’s charged with.

French authorities reportedly worked with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to monitor Hacker Croll’s online activities and whereabouts, and to eventually bring him to justice.

More than any previous president, Obama has embraced technology for both political and personal purposes.

The president made extensive use of Facebook and other social networking sites during his election campaign last year, and is said to be as addicted to his Blackberry as any mid-level, corporate sales manager.

But Obama’s technological bent could leave him more vulnerable than his predecessors to electronic crime. The White House has not officially commented on the matter.

source: informationweek.com

One out of every four British teenagers revealed that they have tried to hack their friends’ Facebook accounts just for fun. This blustering information came in a survey conducted by Tufin Software Technologies, a security company, and Cumbria Constabulary. The survey was conducted on 1150 children below the age of 19 years.

The survey revealed that the most common way of access among the teenagers is to crack each other’s passwords. According to the survey, 18% teens said that they had tried to access a friend’s email while 6% of them admitted that they had tried to access the email accounts of their parents.

One fourth teens said that they have done it just for fun while 21% of them said that they wanted to make their friends in trouble. The survey showed that 50% of teenagers used their personal computers or the computers of their school.

Surprisingly more than 7% of the respondents revealed that they had tried to attack an online shopping website while 5% said that they had tried to hack their school’s website. Nearly 3% teens admitted to attack on corporate websites. Around 20% of the teens said that they had done it for getting money.
source: topnews.in

Dr. Ali Jahangiri, a leading information security expert and author of Live Hacking: The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Techniques & Countermeasures for Ethical Hackers & IT Security Experts, is pleased to announce that he has created a channelon the popular online video site YouTube to share his free educational videos on ethical and white hat hacking. The new videos form part of the growing ‘Live Hacking’ brand which includes a book, workshops and a dedicated ethical hacking Linux distribution.

The Live Hacking YouTube channel is a dedicated resource for those wanting to learn about the tools and utilities used by criminal hackers as the first step in preparing to defeat them. At the launch of the new YouTube channel, Dr. Jahangiri uploaded several tutorial videos covering a range of network tools including: p0f (the advanced passive operating system and network fingerprinting utility), dsniff (the password packet sniffer) and nmap (the utility for network exploration and security auditing).

‘I am really excited about these new YouTube videos’ said Dr. Ali Jahangiri. ‘My goal is to encourage people to take information security serious and introduce them to some fundamental tools of the trade.’

To coincide with the launch of the new YouTube channel, the livehacking.com website has also been updated to embed the new videos and also to launch a new ‘Free Weekly Educational Videos’ feature. Livehacking.com also contains information about other projects in the ‘Live Hacking’ brand including details of the Live Hacking Workshops and the Live Hacking Linux distribution.

Dr Jahangiri runs the Live Hacking Workshops internationally to introduce IT professionals to the world of hacking and empower them with the knowledge they need to thwart criminal hackers. The most recent workshop was help in South Africa and was a great success.

The Live Hacking Linux distribution is a ‘Live CD’ that runs directly from the CD and doesn’t need to be installed on the hard-drive. Once booted it can be used to perform penetration tests and ethically hack on your own network to ensure that it is secure from outside intruders.

A few weeks ago, I got an email presumably from a friend stuck in London asking for some money to help him out. It turned out that the email was sent by a scammer who had hijacked my friend’s account. By reading his email, the scammer had figured out my friend’s whereabouts and was emailing all of his contacts. Here at Google, we work hard to protect Gmail accounts against this kind of abuse. Today we’re introducing a new feature to notify you when we detect suspicious login activity on your account.

You may remember that a while back we launched remote sign out and information about recent account activity to help you understand and manage your account usage. This information is still at the bottom of your inbox. Now, if it looks like something unusual is going on with your account, we’ll also alert you by posting a warning message saying, “Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…” along with the geographic region that we can best associate with the access.

By clicking on the “Details” link next to the message, you’ll see the last account activity window that you’re used to, along with the most recent access points.

If you think your account has been compromised, you can change your password from the same window. Or, if you know it was legitimate access (e.g. you were traveling, your husband/wife who accesses the account was also traveling, etc.), you can click “Dismiss” to remove the message.

Finally, we know that security is also a top priority for businesses and schools, and we look forward to offering this feature to Google Apps customers once we have gathered and incorporated their feedback.

Read Complete News at gmail blog

Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by the anti-virus firm McAfee.

“We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee. “It’s totally changing the threat model.”

Google announced Tuesday that it had been the target of a “highly sophisticated” and coordinated hack attack against its corporate network. It said the hackers had stolen intellectual property and sought access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The attack originated from China, the company said.

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/#ixzz0imlI0tP3