Kotaku: Hackers

The Ridiculous Three-Month Ban of An Innocent Xbox Gamer

Kirk Hamilton — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST

Reclaiming a hacked account is always a nuisance, but Josh Hinkle's nightmarish story of losing, reclaiming, re-losing, and then re-reclaiming his Xbox Live account takes the cake. More »

Anonymous Deletes CBS, Universal Sites; is Xbox Live Next?

Owen Good — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:00:00 EST

Anonymous continues to lash out following the seizure of Megaupload and the jailing of its founder, having momentarily deleted both CBS.com and UniversalMusic.com. Xbox Live has been threatened, but is that credible? More »

Steam Hacked, Valve Investigating Possible Credit Card Theft

Owen Good — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:02:12 EST

A message sent just now from Valve Corporation head Gabe Newell says credit card numbers and other personal information were inside a database compromised during a defacement attack on the Steam forums this Sunday. More »

FIFA-Loving Hackers Strike Xbox Live Accounts

Owen Good — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT

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Xbox Live users should keep an eye on their accounts, and any credit card associated with that account, and especially take notice of any strange activity involving FIFA 11 or 12. Several users have complained, through multiple gaming publications, of hackers recovering their accounts to a different machine and using them for purchases associated with the soccer game. More »

"Swatting," the Hip New Griefing Trend, Sends the Cops to Xbox Live Mod's House

Owen Good — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EDT

Cops in Sammamish, Wash. are super pissed after being sent to a home here by a 911 call claiming someone inside had claymore mines and hostages. The caller turns out to be a prick seeking revenge on an Xbox Live moderator. More »

Is Iron Wolf the Next Call of Duty?

Mike Fahey — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:40:00 EDT

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A pair of hackers that gained access to the Xbox account of a Treyarch employee believes they've stumbled across the next entry in the Call of Duty series, code named Iron Wolf. Are they on to something? More »

Even 10-Year-Olds Are Hacking Video Games Now

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:30:00 EDT

At this year's DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas, for the first time kids were invited to take part. And take part they certainly did. More »

Sony Looking to Win Big at the 2011 Hacking Awards

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:30:00 EDT

The BlackHat USA security conference kicks off later today in Las Vegas, and will be attracting some of the world's top hackers and online security experts. As part of the festivities, every year an awards night is held called the "Pwnies". More »

Lulzsec Hackers Call It Quits

Owen Good — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EDT

Whether planned retirement (or, more likely, hounded into disbanding), Lulzsec, the unlovable clowns behind hack operations against BioWare, Sony, Nintendo, EVE Online and Minecraft, ended its brief reign of semi-terror today with its final dump of stolen data, highlighted by 550,000 user names and passwords for the Battlefield Heroes beta of 2009. Another 50,000 users' data from "random gaming forums" also were published. You can read their self-aggrandizing farewell at the link. [Gawker] More »

PS3 Hacker Resigned to Prison Sentence after Money Dries Up

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 03:30:00 EDT

American hacker George Hotz got all the headlines for his exploits trying to bring Linux back to the PS3, but he was only one of many working towards the same goal. And while Hotz today walks free, not everybody is so lucky. More »

Sega Hacked, Says Payment Info Not Compromised

Stephen Totilo — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:40:00 EDT

Sega joins Bethesda, Codemasters and Sony among the gaming companies to suffer a hack. The personal info of users of its Sega Pass online service users was compromised, but payment data was not. More »

Troll Faces and Empty Jackets Populate This Animated Look At the Hacker Civil War

Brian Crecente — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:20:00 EDT

Next Media Animation's army of computer graphic animators churned out a story today neatly encapsulating the week's escalating hacker wars. More »

Roving Hackers "LulzSec" Take Down Minecraft, Escapist Magaine, and EVE Online

Joel Johnson — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:20:00 EDT

According to their Twitter updates, LulzSec has launched DDoS attacks—either on purpose or as a side effect of a mass hack attempt—that has taken down EVE Online, Escapist magazine, and Minecraft, proving conclusively that they hate everyone equally. More »

I Guess it Was Bethesda's Turn to Get Hacked

Mike Epstein — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:30:00 EDT

Bethesda announced this morning that a group of hackers have grabbed data from some of their users, including "e-mail addresses and/or passwords." If you frequent Bethesda's sites, like their forums or the Brink statistics site, change your password. [BethBlog] More »

Phishing Threat Closes European Club Nintendo

Owen Good — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:00:00 EDT

Nintendo today sent a message to members of its European website saying that a potential phishing threat prompted the company to close down portions of the site, including Club Nintendo More »

Hacker Group Says It's Snagged Sony Computer Entertainment's Developer Code

Owen Good — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:51:56 EDT

The hacker collective Lulz Security isn't taking a break from its attacks on Sony simply because it's E3. This morning, via Twitter, Lulzsec bragged that it had compiled Sony Computer Entertainment's Developer Network source code. Earlier in the week Lulzsec went after Sony BMG and Sony Pictures, and broke into Nintendo USA's website. More »

Hackers Who Hit Sony Now Breach Nintendo's U.S. Website

Owen Good — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 14:00:00 EDT

Nintendo said today that hackers breached a server for its U.S. website but no customer information was compromised. The hacker group Lulzsec, which is behind other breaches of Sony websites earlier this week, claimed responsibility. More »

Latest Hacker Target: Codemasters

Owen Good — Thu, 26 May 2011 19:30:00 EDT

Four days before the North American street date for DiRT 3, password and login data for Codemasters' website was posted online, the developer said, making it the latest name in games to suffer an online attack. More »

Report: Sony PlayStation Network Password Reset Page Exploited, Customer Accounts Potentially Compromised

Joel Johnson — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:30:00 EDT

According to reports on Nyleveia.com, Eurogamer, and NeoGAF, Sony's PlayStation Network password reset system-the one just put in place after the PSN hack-has been compromised, allowing hackers to change a PSN password if they know your email and date of birth. Exactly the sort of information that was released in the original hack. More »

Report: Rented Amazon Server Used to Launch PSN Attack

Owen Good — Sat, 14 May 2011 14:00:00 EDT

Bloomberg news reports that the hackers who carried out the attack on PlayStation Network rented a server from Amazon.com to do so, signing up for the service using fake information. More »

Deus Ex Website Hacked, Customer Information Stolen

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:30:00 EDT

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According to a report on KrebsOnSecurity, the public websites for upcoming sci-fi title Deus Ex: Human Revolution and that of its publisher, Eidos, have been hacked, and a ton of information and code stolen. More »

Some of the PS3 Hackers May be Turning On Themselves

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:30:00 EDT

It's believed that members of Anonymous, a group of hackers and activists, are behind the attacks on the PlayStation Network. While the group's "leaders" have dismissed these claims, the fact they're seen as "leaders" at all may have become a bit of a problem. More »

Sony Scrubs Personal Data Published by Hackers

Owen Good — Sat, 07 May 2011 11:00:00 EDT

Reuters' Japan bureau reports that hackers uploaded data they'd stolen from Sony servers during the PlayStation breach, but that Sony quickly had the unnamed website removed. The information concerned some 2,500 users and was at least 10 years old. More »

Report: Hackers Say Anonymous Likely Behind Sony Attacks

Brian Crecente — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:00:00 EDT

Two long-time members of hacker group Anonymous tell the Financial Times that members of the loosely organized entity are likely behind the hacking attack on Sony, despite the group's official denials. More »

Linux (Unofficially) Returns to the PlayStation 3

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 04 May 2011 05:40:00 EDT

In many ways, it was Sony's 2010 decision to remove Linux compatibility from the PlayStation 3 that sowed the seeds for the current PSN downtime and data attacks. So there's poignancy to the news that this week Linux has returned to the system. More »

More Than 12,700 Credit Cards Stolen from Sony Online Entertainment

Mike Fahey — Mon, 02 May 2011 17:30:00 EDT

Sony's security problems continue to mount, as Sony Online Entertainment reveals that the personal information of 24.6 million SOE accounts and more than 12,700 credit card numbers may have been compromised in the massive attack that brought down the PlayStation Network late last month. More »

Sony Considers Reimbursing Credit Card Replacement Costs in Light of Data Breach [Update]

Owen Good — Sun, 01 May 2011 13:00:00 EDT

In this morning's news conference, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kazuo Hirai said the company would consider covering costs associated with reissuing credit cards to PlayStation Network subscribers who feel their accounts have been compromised by the massive data breach of April 20. More »

Sony Says It Didn't Know Severity Of PS3 Breach Until Monday

Brian Crecente — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:10:48 EDT

While Sony discovered that hackers had broken into their Playstation Network on April 19, it wasn't until nearly a week later that the company understood the full scope of the breach, a Sony official tells Kotaku. More »

PlayStation Network Shoplifting May Have Taken PS3 Offline & Other Less Believable Theories

Michael McWhertor — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:00:00 EDT

Why is the PlayStation Network still offline? Sony Computer Entertainment America will only cop to an unnervingly vague "external intrusion on our system," leading those affected by and those taking delight in PSN's problems to generate their own theories about the disruption that's now six days old. More »

Is The Entire PlayStation Network Down? [Update]

Luke Plunkett — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:31:00 EDT

Can you log onto the PlayStation Network via your PS3 console at the moment? We can't, and we're getting reports plenty of other people can't either. More »

Sony's Hosting Provider Calls Anonymous' Cyber-Attack an 'Annoyance'

Owen Good — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:30:00 EDT

Ars Technica reports that sources within Sony's hosting provider belittled Anonymous' cyber-attack as "medium strength," and something that only "annoyed our network engineers." The hosting service's plan is to wait out Anonymous until the attackers get bored. More »

Hackers Snare Website of Xbox Live's Top Cop [Update]

Owen Good — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:00:00 EDT

Stephen Toulouse, known to many as Stepto, is Microsoft's director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live. That means he's the guy with the biggest, baddest banhammer on that service, making him a prime target for grudge-nursing hackers. Apparently one just seized control of his personal website, stepto.com More »

Microsoft Invalidates Stolen Point Codes, Considers Punishment For Exploiters

Mike Fahey — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:45:33 EST

An algorithm that allowed the generation of working Microsoft point codes resulted in the unauthorized acquisition of what some claim could be as high as $1.2 million in virtual currency. Microsoft tells Kotaku that they looking into punishing those that took advantage. More »

Want To See What A Hacking Attempt Looks Like?

Mike Fahey — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST

Contrary to 1995 movie Hackers, breaking into a computer system does not involve colorful cartoon characters. The act can be accurately represented visually, however, as proven in this excellent video created by Ben Reardon of Dataviz Australia. More »

Sony Action Against Hacker Exposes Those Who Visited His Site

Owen Good — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:00:00 EST

Caught in the blast of Sony's lawsuit against the man who jailbroke the PlayStation 3 is anyone who may have visited his website, under a court order that set off privacy advocates and further angered hackers. More »

Sony Lays Down The Law On PlayStation 3 Hacking

Mike Fahey — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:30:00 EST

With the PlayStation 3 cracked wide open and alleged console hackers being taken to court, Sony Computer Entertainment America issues a statement today warning users that the use of "unauthorized circumvention devices" will be met with swift, meaningless justice. More »

Does This Mean Sony's Kevin Butler Will Also Be Subpoenaed?

Michael McWhertor — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:30:00 EST

PlayStation executive mascot Kevin Butler unwittingly re-tweets the PlayStation 3's private cryptography key, the key that opens the system up to piracy and homebrew programs, after Twitter user Travis "exiva" La Marr taunts the VP of PlayStation Stuff. More »

Sony Starts Rolling Out New PS3 Security Updates

Michael McWhertor — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:00:00 EST

In the wake of hackers exploiting security vulnerabilities in the PlayStation 3, opening the system to custom firmware, hacks and piracy, Sony appears to be issuing a response with new security updates. More »

Hacker Holds Video Game Hostage

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:30:00 EST

A player of the popular MMO Runes of Magic has hacked the game's databases, made demands of its German operators and is effectively holding the personal details of its users hostage. More »

Chastened Prosecutors Dismiss Xbox 360 Modding Case

Owen Good — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:00:00 EST

A day after a judge chewed them out in open court, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles dropped their case against a man accused of running a modding business that allowed Xbox 360s to run pirated or unauthorized games. More »