Hacker

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

LONDON - Four hackers who pleaded guilty to a series of high-profile cyberattacks on computers in the U.S. and Britain, including those of the CIA and Sony Pictures, were sentenced Thursday to up to 32 months in prison. The four men, all Britons, were members of the hacking group LulzSec, which flaunted its ability to break into the high-security computer networks of such targets as the United States Senate. In 2011, the group claimed responsibility for hacking into the systems of PBS, media baron Rupert Murdoch's News International and the U.S. Air Force, among other targets.

A hacker organization on Monday released e-mails in which a former Bank of America Corp. employee asserts the company is hiding foreclosure information from regulators. The posting by a member of a group known as Anonymous includes e-mails in which an employee of Balboa Insurance Group in Irvine raises questions about removing from the record documents that were sent out in error. The e-mails don't indicate the loans have foreclosure issues. A Bank of America spokesman said the former Balboa employee stole documents from the company.

Candace Bushnell, author of "Sex and the City," is the latest to fall victim to Guccifer, the hacker who exposed former President George W. Bush's secret life as a painter, New York magazine reported . Taking control of Bushnell's email, Twitter account and website, the hacker posted the opening pages of Bushnell's upcoming novel online. The book is tentatively titled "Killing Monica. " After breaking into Bushnell's email account Tuesday, the Guardian reported, the hacker tweeted a link through Bushnell's official Twitter feed to a Google Drive account ( currently still online )

Candace Bushnell, author of "Sex and the City," is the latest to fall victim to Guccifer, the hacker who exposed former President George W. Bush's secret life as a painter, New York magazine reported . Taking control of Bushnell's email, Twitter account and website, the hacker posted the opening pages of Bushnell's upcoming novel online. The book is tentatively titled "Killing Monica. " After breaking into Bushnell's email account Tuesday, the Guardian reported, the hacker tweeted a link through Bushnell's official Twitter feed to a Google Drive account ( currently still online )

A hacker has released stolen source code from Symantec Corp., one of the largest computer security firms, after a phony set of ransom negotiations failed, according to the company. The source code is part of a Symantec product called pcAnywhere, which enables users to log into and control home or work computers from remote locations. Access to the code could in theory give hackers insight into how to seize computers that use the software. Symantec said the source code was for 2006 products that had since been updated with newer code.

Computer security experts and law enforcement officials are conducting an electronic manhunt in search of a sophisticated hacker who has broken into dozens of university and business computers around the country. The intruder, who uses the password "Pink Floyd," has been eluding authorities and taunting them since the break-ins began Aug. 25.

A Comcast Corp. website was hacked for several hours by someone who directed visitors to a third-party site. Comcast.net, the company's main consumer site, was blocked to visitors late Wednesday by "an unauthorized person," the company said.

LinkedIn Corp. said it was not aware of any user accounts being compromised as a result of an attack by a hacker who obtained 8 million passwords and posted them online. The professional social networking website said Thursday that it had not received "verified reports of unauthorized access" to its users' accounts since the breach earlier this week. But that didn't address users coming under attack from phishing scams that are using the incident to steal log-in names and passwords.

A hacker Tuesday claimed to have stolen 50 gigabytes of information from 79 banks over the last three months. The hacker, whose Twitter handle is Reckz0r but who also goes by " Jeremy " according to a PasteBin post, posted a text file of his hacks that contained a portion of the data he claimed to have stolen -- enough, he said, to prove he isn't kidding. Within that text file are details from 1,700 individual Visa and MasterCard credit cards accounts, according to ZDNet . The details posted by Reckz0r includes people's names, card types and both their postal and email addresses.

A Laguna Beach chef says animal rights activists posted personal information online - including his  cellphone  number and credit card transactions - because he served foie gras. Activists hacked into the website of  Hudson Valley Foie Gras , from whom chef Amar Santana of Broadway in Laguna Beach purchased fattened duck liver, and distributed his and more than 1,200 other clients' personal information to animal rights groups, which posted the data online April 24. The list included email addresses, personal cellphone numbers and credit card transactions.

Reputation.com may need a little help with its own reputation after the company revealed that someone had broken into its network and stolen some customer data.  Based in Redwood City, Calif., Reputation.com sent users an email Tuesday disclosing the breach. The company reset customers' passwords. It said it did not believe any financial was taken.  The thieves apparently did grab the names, addresses and passwords of some customers. However, the company said that because passwords were encrypted they should be unusable to the thieves.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter and soccer's World Cup have joined the quickly increasing number of high-profile figures and organizations to become victims of Twitter hackers. Soccer's governing body said Monday that the Twitter accounts of Blatter and the World Cup organizers had been hacked and that any messages implying that the FIFA president had admitted to corruption and stepped down were untrue. Of course, anyone following either account closely may have suspected as much.

News agency Reuters has fired deputy social media editor Matthew Keys after he was indicted on federal charges of conspiring with the hacking group Anonymous to breach a Tribune Co. website, changing a Los Angeles Times online story. Matthew Keys, 26, said on his Twitter account Monday morning that he “Just got off the phone. Reuters has fired me, effective today. Our union will be filing a grievance. More soon.” Reuters spokesman David Girardin confirmed the firing. Keys was charged last month with three hacking-related counts in the December 2010 incident.

A member of the LulzSec hacker group was sentence to a year in federal prison Thursday as a result of his involvement with a cyberattack in 2011. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ordered Cody Andrew Kretsinger, a 25-year-old Decatur, Ill., resident to also serve a year of home detention after he completes his time in prison. He will also be required to perform 1,000 hours of community service and pay more than $605,000 in restitution. Kretsinger, who went by the name of "recursion" during his days with LulzSec, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in connection with the hacker group's attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer systems in May and June 2011.

An electronic sign near USC whose display was changed to flash inappropriate messages about the  Los Angeles Police Department  was unlocked and the message altered using a control panel, the USC police chief said Thursday. Various pictures of the sign surfaced on Instagram and Twitter on Thursday morning, showing the crude message, which included references to the Police Department, a posterior and "probing. " John Thomas, chief of USC's Department of Public Safety, said the department considered it a "prank" and won't be wasting resources looking for the culprits.

A Russian hacker who was stopped by Apple from allowing others to make illegal in-app purchases in iOS apps has given up trying to beat the company. But only in the mobile realm. Alexey Borodin has instead moved his focus to Apple's Mac OS X. Apple managed to put a stop to Borodin's actions on iOS, which were allowing users to acquire in-app goodies without dropping a dime via a process discovered by the Russian hacker. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company stopped the fraudulent activity, which was causing developers to lose money.

EBay Inc. has been penetrated by a hacker who managed to take down the company's home page and gain extensive access to other content, Forbes Digital Tool reported. The report said the popular Internet auction site was hacked last Saturday by someone who continues to have access to the site and the ability to change auction prices, post fake ads, divert traffic to other sites or take down the entire network.

A British man has pleaded guilty to his involvement in cyberattacks launched by LulzSec, an Internet hacker group that in 2011 targeted the websites of Sony, the FBI, CIA, PBS and others. Ryan Ackroyd, 26, otherwise known as "Kayla" among hackers, admitted Tuesday to one count of carrying out an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer, according to the Associated Press. Ackroyd joins Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, Jake Davis, 20, and Ryan Cleary, 21, who as members of the group pleaded guilty to the 2011 cyberattacks.

JERUSALEM -- A widespread hacker attack targeting Israeli websites caused some disruption to government, academic and private sites Sunday. The extent of the damage was unclear at midday, but officials said strategic infrastructure appeared to have largely repelled the attacks, expected to increase later in the day as Israel begins to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.  Hundreds of websites have been attacked, and more than a dozen government sites have been temporarily disabled since the attack that threatened to "erase Israel from cyber-space" began.  The attack -- dubbed and tagged #OpIsrael by hackers affiliated with the shadowy group Anonymous -- was announced in advance and described by its organizers as an act of solidarity with Palestinians in retaliation for Israel's treatment of them, as well as for Israeli settlement activity and what is perceived as disrespect for international law. Several government websites, including those of the ministries of Education, Defense and Environmental Protection, were disabled overnight, defaced with anti-Israeli messages and loud music.