After the secret source code for its then-unreleased shooter Half Life 2 showed up on file sharing services in 2003, game-maker Valve Software cooked up an elaborate ruse with the FBI targeting the German hacker suspected in the leak, even setting up a fake job interview in an effort to lure him to the United States for arrest.
The gambit ultimately failed, and Axel "Ago" Gembe remained safely in Germany. He was indicted last month in Los Angeles on new charges of creating the Agobot malware, and sharing it with a crew of U.S. hackers who used it to stage denial-of-service attacks in 2003.
In September 2003, the source code for the much-anticipated Half Life 2 game turned up online, and Valve's managing director, Gabe Newell, revealed that the company's network had been breached. In a post to the company's Web forum, Newell asked for gamer's assistance in finding the hackers responsible.
"If you have information about ... the infiltratio... More »
According to a report from German newspaper NRC Handelsblad, Dutch authorities arrested the 20-year old computer hacker Jasper Houben last Tuesday evening.
Known in the underground community under his online pseudonym of “MaddoxX,” Houben ran an anti-Valve forum known as No-Steam, as well as the piracy group “EMPORiO,” which specialized in releasing cracked copies of Valve’s Steam titles, including Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2.
MaddoxX made headlines back in April of 2007 when he posted a threat letter to Valve on his No-Steam Web site, publicly revealing sensitive data on a number of subscribers to Valve’s Cyber Cafe service in the process.
Not only is he being charged for hacking into Valve’s servers, but also for downloading an in-development version of Activision’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, as well as stealing credit card data on 50,000 customers from an English tickets site. To put it simply: he’s screwed.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 is the leading web browser, but the fresh-outta-beta Firefox 3 and Apple’s Safari 3.1 are gunning for its crown, each claiming new speed records. So which is the fastest? We fired up all three to find out
A few short years ago the browser war seemed dead and buried. After Microsoft’s Internet Explorer usurped Netscape’s Navigator in the late 1990s, it’s domination of the Internet seemed complete, over 95 percent of us using a version of IE.
Those days are gone. The guts of Navigator were reborn in 2004 as Firefox, a browser that has been drinking more and more of IE’s milkshake ever since. Firefox now owns at least 18 percent of the market, with some estimates giving it more than a quarter.
More recently, Apple has threatened to start a three-way fight, using the software updater included with iTunes to slip its Safari browser onto PCs. While its market share is miniscule – less than one per cent amo... More »
A teenage boy has been arrested on suspected arson charges for burning down a Palmyra, MO church. What makes this game related you may ask? It seems that GameFaqs forum poster "Jediknight12345" (original, eh?) made a post in the "Current Events" page asking readers if he should burn down a school and a church.
The post was quickly removed by forum administrators and then a few days later another post showed up from the same person. This time, Jediknight12345 bragged that he had in fact burned a church/school down, described how he did it and even went so far as to post pictures of the event for posterity.
Fellow forum posters immediately alerted local news station WGEM and authorities leading to the teenager's arrest. According to recent reports, the arrested suspect was a member of the church and its attached school.
In Miami-Dade County, Florida, police have arrested two teens for fatally attacking a 17-year-old boy over his PlayStation Portable (PSP).
According to an arrest report from Miami-Dade Detective Elvey Melagarejo, James Felton-Maitland, 17, was walking home from the library during Christmas vacation of last year.
Jamila “Jam” Brown, 19, and Keith Lebrone Goa, 17, were “loitering on the library grounds and saw the victim and decided to rob him of his PSP,” Melagarejo wrote.
The two teens knocked Felton-Maitland to the ground and began beating him while trying to snatch the PSP. However, Felton-Maitland refused to let go of the PSP and tried to escape his attackers.
As the teens gave chase, when Felton-Maitland crossed a street, a truck slammed into him, resulting in severe head trauma to the 17-year-old.
He died on January 5 at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood.
Back in July, we covered the appearance of a sophisticated malware generator named Pinch Pro. Although not a Trojan itself, Pinch Pro provided a framework for malware authors to create and design their own worms and trojans, each of which could be specifically tailored to report certain data, zombiefy the PC, or kill certain commands/files. Imagine something like Build-A-Bear, but designed for malware rather than fuzzy bear creation, and you've got the right idea.
Pinch became popular in Russia, which meant is also became something of a headache for IT services generally and government services in particular. In effect, the malware-builder proved a bit too popular for its own good, and ultimately attracted the attention of Russian authorities. According to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian FSB (Federal Security Service) has identified the two authors of the program, Ermishkin and Farkhutdinov, and will soon take expose them to the cheery Russian legal system.
Police in New Zealand have questioned a teenager believed to be the ringleader of an international cyber-crime group.
The group is alleged to have infiltrated more than one million computers and skimmed millions of dollars from people's bank accounts.
The teenager, who is 18, cannot be named for legal reasons but was known by an alias as "Akill".
He was detained as part of an FBI crackdown on hi-tech criminals who run botnets - networks of hijacked PCs.
Global crackdown
After being questioned "Akill" was released without charge, but police say he is still being investigated.
Police allege that he was responsible for setting up a global network of hijacked PCs - known as a botnet.
The term describes the process of installing malicious software on PCs around the world to collect information such as login names, bank account details and credit card numbers.
Las Vegas police arrested O.J. Simpson on Sunday amid an investigation into an alleged armed robbery at a hotel in Las Vegas, a source close to the investigation said. O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday in relation to an armed robbery investigation, a source told CNN.
The charges he faces are unclear. However, Las Vegas Police Capt. James Dillon told The Associated Press that Simpson could face felony charges including robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a firearm. Simpson was arrested at his room in the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, the source said.
On Saturday, Las Vegas police arrested Walter Alexander and seized two guns in connection with the alleged armed robbery, the source said.
"I don't know why they arrested him," Simpson said Sunday, before his own arrest. "I've stayed in contact with the police, and the truth will come out."
Simpson recently wrote a book originally titled "... More »
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