NKorea accuses SKoreans of hacking into website

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea is accusing South Korean Internet users of hacking into one of its websites, calling the behavior a provocation aimed at undermining its national dignity.

The North's government-run Uriminzokkiri website said Tuesday that South Korean Internet users recently deleted articles on the site and posted messages slandering the North's dignity.

It accuses the South Korean government of being behind the cyber attacks and urges it to apologize.

Anti-North Korea articles and pictures were reportedly posted on the site over the weekend, with one image showing leader Kim Jong Il and his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong Un kneeling down before what appears to be a Chinese emperor.

Saturday was believed to be Kim Jong Un's 28th birthday.

A Michigan man has been charged under anti-hacking

A Michigan man has been charged under anti-hacking legislation designed to protect trade secrets after logging on to his wife's email account and discovering she was having an affair.Leon Walker, 33, hacked the Gmail account of his wife, Clara, who has had two previous marriages, and found out she was having an affair with her second husband.When the wife discovered the emails had been read she went to the authorities. The Walkers were divorced earlier this month.

Lawyers say the trial could have significant repercussions given that nearly half of US divorce cases involve some form of snooping, such as reading emails, text messages or social networking.

Hackers target bank, credit card websites in WikiLeaks war

An group of hackers said Wednesday they had launched online attacks to shut down the websites of credit card Mastercard and a Swiss bank that cut off business ties with WikiLeaks.

The self-styled 'hacktivist' group dubbed Anon_Operation said in one tweet that "mastercard site is down" and the site of the credit card giant could not be accessed from Geneva.

On their homepage the group, which claims it is fighting for "freedom on the internet" and against censorship designated mastercard.com as their "current target" in what was taking the proportions of cyber war.

It quoted John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the San Francisco-based internet freedoms group Electronic Frontier Foundation, as saying on microblogging service Twitter: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

The Swiss post office banking service, PostFinance, confirmed Wednesday that its website was suffering denial of service attacks since it closed the bank account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday.

"Since the closure of the account, groups have launched 'Operation Payback' with the aim of blocking PostFinance by simulating hundreds of thousands of connections with the aim of overloading it," said PostFinance spokesman Alex Josty.

The spokesman said the hackers had not endangered its payment systems or account managements.

"The situation improved Wednesday but the attacks are continuing," the spokesman added.

Attempts to connect to the Postfinance.ch website earlier Wednesday produced error messages but it later came back online with notices warning of disruption.

"Target: postfinance.ch : Grab your weapon and its settings: FIRE NOW!" said one tweet on Anon_Operation.

PostFinance closed an account set up by Assange because he gave "false information" on his address, claiming he lived in the Swiss city of Geneva, in violation of banking and money laundering rules.

The bank insists that any deposit belongs to Assange and the money can be transferred where he wishes.

News website CNET cited a MasterCard spokesman as saying the whistleblowing website was being cut off due to rules barring use for "directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal."

Visa followed its credit card rival in suspending all payments to WikiLeaks, a spokesman for the debit card company said Tuesday.

US-based online payment service PayPal has also blocked financial transfers to WikiLeaks after governments around the world sought legal action against the site following its publication of sensitive US diplomatic cables.

The whistleblowing site says it has also come under attack, including during the weekend when a hacker disabled the website according to Internet security firm Panda Labs.

A statement purportedly issued by the hacker, or hackers, at Twitter claimed the assault was retaliation for WikiLeaks "attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, other assets and foreign relations," according to Panda.

Assange was denied bail in London on Tuesday after his arrest on a warrant from Swedish police on suspicion of rape offences.

Chinese government ordered Google hacking

United States officials believed that the Chinese Communist Party's highest levels were involved in planning last year's hacking attacks on Google and forcing the company out of China, leaked U.S. Embassy cables have indicated.

A cable from May 2009, part of the latest batch of documents released by WikiLeaks on Saturday, quoted U.S. officials as saying they had information, from one unidentified Chinese contact, that a member of the Communist Party Polit Bureau's Standing Committee had a role in ordering the hacking attacks on Google, and had told Chinese telecom companies to stop dealing with the U.S.-based web giant.

The contact claimed a member of the Polit Bureau, identified by the New York Times as propaganda chief Li Changchun, had been angered after searching himself on Google and finding critical comments.

While the cable acknowledged that the claims made by the source were questionable and made without any evidence, the dispatches filed by diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Beijing indicated that officials privately believed the Chinese government had played a key role in driving Google's exit from China at various stages, even as they publicly withheld direct criticism of the authorities.

“While we can neither confirm nor deny the provocative language and views attributed to [the source], the claims of government-forced retribution by the major SOE [State-owned Enterprise] telecoms companies are cause for serious concern,” the cable said.

The U.S. government has not publicly blamed the Chinese government for the attacks, and has only called on the government to do more to crack down on China-based hackers. The Chinese government has denied it had any role in the hacking attacks.

Google opened a search-engine in China, Google.cn, in 2006, after agreeing to censor search-results to comply with the Chinese government's restrictions. The cable said Polit Bureau member Mr. Li was angered that Google.cn had provided a link to the uncensored Google.com search engine, which contained critical comments. The cables did not say how the source had access to Mr. Li, or even how the source knew the Chinese leader had indeed searched himself on Google.

Another cable from July 2009 said that the company's refusal to remove the link to the unfiltered Google.com search engine was at the heart of its dispute with the Chinese authorities. The web giant's relations with the Chinese government soured after last July, with the company being accused by the authorities last year of providing links to pornographic material in search-results. As the relationship strained, the company eventually closed down its Chinese search-engine following a series of hacking attacks that targeted the email accounts of many Chinese activists.

The cables also revealed that while Google decided to keep much of its falling out with the Chinese authorities private, it regularly consulted with senior U.S. officials over the issue.

“Google is the only international search engine still doing business in China. It is an important symbol,” embassy officials noted in the July cable. “If Google were forced to withdraw from the market, the move could attract heavy international attention.”

Popular hacking tools

Armitage is a graphical cyber attack management tool for Metasploit that visualizes your targets, recommends exploits, and exposes the advanced capabilities of the framework. Armitage aims to make Metasploit usable for security practitioners who understand hacking but don’t use Metasploit every day. If you want to learn Metasploit and grow into the advanced features, Armitage can help you.

Armitage organizes Metasploit’s capabilities around the hacking process. There are features for discovery, access, post-exploitation, and maneuver.

For discovery, Armitage exposes several of Metasploit’s host management features. You can import hosts and launch scans to populate a database of targets. Armitage also visualizes the database of targets–you’ll always know which hosts you’re working with and where you have sessions.

Armitage assists with remote exploitation–providing features to automatically recommend exploits and even run active checks so you know which exploits will work. If these options fail, you can use the Hail Mary approach and unleash db_autopwn against your target database.

For those of you who are hacking post-2003, Armitage exposes the client-side features of Metasploit. You can launch browser exploits, generate malicious files, and create Meterpreter executables.

Once you’re in, Armitage provides several post-exploitation tools built on the capabilities of the Meterpreter agent. With the click of a menu you will escalate your privileges, dump password hashes to a local credentials database, browse the file system like your local, and launch command shells.

Finally, Armitage aids the process of setting up pivots, a capability that lets you use compromised hosts as a platform for attacking other hosts and further investigating the target network. Armitage also exposes Metasploit’s SOCKS proxy module which allows external tools to take advantage of these pivots. With these tools, you can further explore and maneuver through the network.

Trace Mobile Numbers by Hacking

With the rapid growth of mobile phone usage in recent years, we have often observed that the mobile phone has become a part of many illegal and criminal activities. So in most cases, tracing the mobile number becomes a vital part of the investigation process. Also sometimes we just want to trace a mobile number for reasons like annoying prank calls, blackmails, unknown number in a missed call list or similar.

Even though it is not possible to trace the number back to the caller, it is possible to trace it to the location of the caller and also find the network operator. Just have a look at this page on tracing Indian mobile numbers from Wikipedia. Using the information provided on this page, it is possible to certainly trace any mobile number from India and find out the location (state/city) and network operator (mobile operator) of the caller. All you need for this is only the first 4-digit of the mobile number. In this Wiki page you will find all the mobile number series listed in a nice tabular column where they are categorized based on mobile operator and the zone (state/city). This Wiki page is updated regularly so as to provide up-to-date information on newly added mobile number series and operators. I have used this page many a time and have never been disappointed.

If you would like to use a simpler interface where in you can just enter the target mobile number and trace the desired details, you can try this link from Numbering Plans. Using this link, you can trace any number in the world.

By using the information in this article, you can only know “where” the call is from and not “who” the caller is. Only the mobile operator is able to tell you by hacking”who” the caller is. So if you’re in an emergency and need to find out the actual person behind the call, I would recommend that you file a complaint and take the help of police. I hope this information has helped you!

How to Prevent Someone Hacking Into Your Blog?

As the most popular blogging platform seems to be WordPress, I'll talk from the WordPress point of view, but on the whole the safety issues will apply equally well to any blogging platform that you use. With some platforms, for example Blogger, you won't be in control of various aspects like most recent versions, but there are plenty of tips that apply.

1) Keep Up To Date

If a new version of the blogging software is released, it is for a reason. There may be new features, but there may also be extra security releases. So update your blog to the latest version of the software as soon as you can, especially if you are on a version of WordPress older than 2.8.4 as there is a worm that can attack these versions.

2) Protect Your Machine

The same also goes for your own machine, keep the virus protection up to date and a firewall running. Try to avoid using unsecured wifi networks and internet cafes that you aren't sure about.

3) Maintain Your Username

Everyone who uses WordPress knows where the logon screen is - many themes actually link to it! And the default user id is Admin, so it is quite easy for hackers to run a script against your blog that starts trying likely passwords.

To prevent this, sign on as admin, create a new username with an admin role, sign off, sign on as the new username and then delete the standard Admin account. When you delete it, you should get the option to move all posts over to your new name. Now hackers have to guess username and password.

4) Create An Author Username

If you might be posting from third party wifi networks and computers, then setup a new username and just give it author access. Use this whilst you are away and if the networks aren't as secure as they can be and someone gets the logon details, they can only edit the new posts and submit new posts. Earlier posts and the admin of your blog is secured.

You can move the posts back to your main username once safely back on a secure computer.

5) Change Your Nickname

The biggest clue that you haven't deleted the Admin user is that all posts are from Admin. To prevent hackers from working out your new admin user name from looking at name attributed to the post, go to profiles and give your username a different nickname. Then in the next box choose to display your nickname, rather than the username.

6) Don't Use Obvious Passwords

If your username is unguessable then you are a long way there, but also make your password strong. Look at the indicator when you type in the password. A combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and maybe a few odd keyboard characters.

7) Don't Display Versions

Remove from the footer of your theme any displays of version of theme or WordPress that you are using. If you are late updating to the new version, you don't want to be telling hackers!

8) Spam Protect Your Blog

Make sure that the Akismet pluggin is installed, activated and you have entered the key to run it. But don't give spammers a clue about how successful Akismet is at detecting their spam by displaying how many comments it has blocked.

9) Use A Backup

Search the plugins database for a backup plugin that works for you and use it regularly. If you are hacked, then as long as you have a few of the most recent versions of the blog backed up you will be able to recover all posts and settings.