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'Hacker' threatens to expose health data, demands $10M

Days after a hacker claimed to have broken into a database and encrypted millions of prescription records at the Virginia Department of Health Professions, it remains unclear what happened. Whistleblower Web site Wikileaks.org last Sunday carried a report from an anonymous poster who said that the secure site for the Virginia DHP Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) had been broken into by a hacker who made a $10 million ransom demand. The alleged ransom note posted on the PMP site claimed that the hacker had backed up and encrypted more than 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions and then deleted the original data.(Computer World) ›

Swedish hacker indicted for Cisco attack

A 21-year old Swedish hacker has been indicted (PDF) on charges of stealing source code from networking firm Cisco. Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka 'Stakkato', is accused of breaking into Cisco's servers between 12 and 13 May 2004, and stealing the source code for the firm's Internetwork Operating System (IOS). He was 16 at the time of the attacks. (VNUnet) ›

S. Korea: N. Korea engaging in cyber-war

North Korea is operating a cyber-reconnaissance unit that targets South Korean and U.S. military networks, South Korean intelligence personnel said Tuesday. The Korean People's Army has been operating for years a "technology reconnaissance team," charged with collecting information and disrupting military computer networks in South Korea and the United States, South Korea ›

Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demand Ransom

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an onli ›

Botnets Took Control of 12 Million New IPs this Year

Botnet criminals have taken control of almost 12 million new IP addresses since January, according to a quarterly report (.pdf) from anti-virus firm, McAfee. The United States has the largest number of botnet-controlled machines, with 18 percent of them based here. The number of zombie machines represents a 50-percent rise over last year. Researchers attri ›