Heartbleed, the bug that has preoccupied thousands of websites and millions of users over the past week, may well have been the biggest security flaw in internet history but it is unlikely to be the last…
There is some controversy about what we mean by the word “hacker”. Historically, and as far back as the 1960s, a hacker was someone who was an expert programmer. But today, it is a word generally used…
A spate of internet hacking during the New Year period – including an attack on Skype by hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army, and another on social media photo sharing app Snapchat by website SnapchatDB…
One evening when I was young, my father confiscated my radio because he said I was playing it too loud (I wasn’t). Fortunately, I had a bunch of broken down receivers in my room, so I built a new one…
Following an agreement in the European Parliament on the 4th July, EU countries are to strengthen their domestic laws against the more serious forms of cyber-crime. We can now expect to see prison sentences…
US President Barack Obama hopes to lay the foundations for a long-term relationship when he meets Xi Jinping, China’s new president, for a two-day summit in Southern California on Friday. Obama has a difficult…
Chinese intelligence operatives are said to have obtained the floor plans of ASIO’s new Canberra headquarters. And at the same time, having been badly burned when Australian “tradesmen” installed bugs…
There are now more mobile devices than people on our planet. The amount of personal data we share through mobile devices is also increasing. So it is not surprising that cyber-criminals want a piece of…
It has been a bad couple of weeks for social media and Twitter in particular. The degree of misinformation spread by social media sites in the aftermath of the bombings at the Boston marathon has given…
Last week, we woke to news that the largest cyber attack ever was underway in Europe, with reports of global internet speeds falling as a result of an assault on the anti-spamming company Spamhaus. In…
You’ll have seen the fallout this week regarding a so-called “spearphishing” attack on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in 2011. As with most media reports on cyber-attacks, this one appears to have…
In an age of Facebook, eBay and online banking, data privacy is becoming more important than ever before. The majority of Australians have personal information stored online with a range of organisations…
Early last week, Origin Energy, Australia’s pre-eminent energy retailer, launched an online energy-use monitoring portal Origin Smart to much fanfare. All good – but what about the the privacy and security…
About 10am this morning, Anonymous used Twitter to announce an attack on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) website. Anonymous claimed the ASIO website would be unavailable for the…
A few days ago, Anonymous activists hacked into AAPT, stole 40GB of data including customer information and forced offline ten Australian government websites. Anonymous members stated in an online internet…
As reported late last week, Facebook is encouraging hackers to try hacking its security systems to find weaknesses. Those who succeed will receive a reward of US$500 or more and have their name added to…
Over the last couple of days a small furore has erupted over allegations a News Corp subsidiary, NDS, has been hacking the pay-TV smartcards of News Corp’s competitors, and even News Corp’s own companies…
Whenever the press covers a story about hackers, a great deal of the discussion concerns the nature of online identity, the cohesiveness of hacking groups, and the individuals that identify with these…
In a statement posted online last month, hacker collective Anonymous announced plans to shut down the internet. Yes, you read that right. Operation Global Blackout, planned for March 31, is apparently…
Of all the tactics used by hacker collective [Anonymous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) in any of its “operations”, the release of their victims’ emails has been one that potentially could…