AOL website hit by hacker

A minor hack of AOL's Postmaster website has already been fixed, but it adds another negative light on a company that is already on hard times.

On top of a particularly difficult week, AOL’s postmaster.aol.com website was hacked Saturday afternoon by someone who goes by the name “HodLuM.” The site was slightly defaced with a message from the hacker.

“AOL S3RV3RZ ROOT3D BY HODLUM LOLZ!,” the message read.

AOL finally discovered the hack, and fixed the page between two and four hours after evidence of the breach was posted to Reddit.com.

There are a number of reasons this hack looks bad for AOL. First of all, someone got into AOL’s servers, which is bad enough. Second, HodLuM likely has a sense of humor, as the HTML file used to deface the webpage appears to have been written in Microsoft Word — a sign that the cyber-security experts at AOL weren’t exactly doing their job up to par. Third, the ALL CAPS LEETSPEEK used by HodLuM suggests he or she is probably around 13-years-old.

Lastly, the various forums where this hack was posted all included various jokes along the lines of, “AOL still exists?!” Ouch…

It is not clear whether the people in charge of keeping AOL’s primary business properties, sites like Engadget, Joystiq and the Huffington Post, are the same people responsible for a relatively unknown site like Postmaster, which is a help site for businesses who regularly send emails to AOL members.

The AOL Postermaster blog has so far not responded to the hack.

The hack of AOL Postmaster comes at the end of a difficult week for AOL. Despite seeing a double-digit surge in display advertising revenue during the second quarter, AOL revealed this week that it was still losing money. Following the dire news, its stock price dropped more than a third (37 percent) from Monday through Wednesday, amidst an overall tumultuous week on Wall Street.

Prices did begin to rise on Friday, however, jumping 13 percent after AOL announced that it would invest up to $250 million in its own stock in an attempt to stop bleeding value.

While the hack of a minor AOL web property has nothing to do with the poor performance of its stock, the incident can only serve to worsen the mood at a company that’s struggling to stay upright.

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Hacker forums suggest PlayStation data is up for sale

A security firm has said that recent discussions on underground Internet forums suggest that the recently stolen PlayStation data belonging to millions of gamers is now up for sale.
An article posted late Thursday on The New York Times website pointed toward increasing evidence that hackers had gained possession of the credit card details of millions of Sony PlayStation gamers.
The news follows the recent attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity, which prompted Sony to temporarily shut the services down. It is thought that the personal data of more than 75 million users was stolen by hackers who infiltrated the system. The sensitive information included names, addresses, dates of birth and passwords.
The Times‘ Nick Bilton says that according to security researchers, recent discussions on several underground Internet forums seemed to suggest that hackers had gained possession of as many as 2.2 million credit card numbers belonging to Sony customers.
The senior threat researcher at security firm Trend Micro, Kevin Stevens, said that the forums indicated the hackers had a database containing the personal information, and that they were hoping to sell it “for upwards of $100,000.” Apparently the hackers had even tried to sell the information back to Sony, but they didn’t receive a reply from the Japanese electronics company.
“Although several researchers confirmed the forum discussions, it was impossible to verify their contents or the existence of the database,” The Times‘ report says.
Sony has claimed that the credit card data is encrypted, but Mathew Solnik, a security consultant with iSEC Partners, a firm that monitors hacker forums, had this to say: “Sony is saying the credit cards were encrypted, but we are hearing that the hackers made it into the main database, which would have given them access to everything, including credit card numbers.” Researchers think that hackers could have gained access to Sony’s servers by first hacking the PS3 games console, Solnik told The Times.
This week a lawsuit was filed against Sony for the security breach of its PlayStation Network and loss of user data. In a post on its PlayStation blog on Tuesday, Sony warned gamers to be “especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information.”
It’ll be interesting to see just how many PlayStation gamers return to the network once it’s back up and running. The answer to the following question, posted on the PlayStation blog on Thursday, may prove decisive (once the company actually decides):
“Q: Will there be a goodwill gesture for the time we haven’t been able to utilize PSN/Qriocity?
A: We are currently evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online.”
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PS3 hacker George Hotz fights back against Sony lawsuit

After taking a few rounds of beatings, the legal team of PlayStation 3 jailbreak hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz has come off the ropes swinging at SCEA and their lawsuit.
The fight between Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) and famous jailbreak hacker George Hotz (aka GeoHot) continued this week, reports CNet. But this time, the jabs came from Hotz’s camp.
According to court papers published on Groklaw.net, Hotz’s legal team, led by attorney Stewart Kellar, filed numerous motions on Friday that argue that the lawsuit against Hotz should be dropped altogether.
The first reason given by Hotz’s camp deals with SCEA’s attempts to establish Northern California as the appropriate jurisdiction for the case. The obvious place for the lawsuit to be filed would be in New Jersey, where Hotz lives and works. But according to Hotz’s defense team, SCEA is trying to stack the deck against Hotz by filing the lawsuit in the US District Court of Northern California, known for siding with technology companies over individuals.
SCEA says Northern California is the rightful place for the lawsuit to be heard, since some of the people who downloaded Hotz’s PlayStation 3 jailbreak live in California.
The company has worked tirelessly to justify the lawsuit’s current jurisdiction, having successfully received access to Hotz’s PayPal, YouTube and Twitter accounts, as well as logs related to his website, where the jailbreak hack was originally published. Those logs include the records of anyone who’s visited that site since January 2009.
Second, Hotz’s lawyers dispute the legitimacy of SCEA having the right to file the lawsuit, since the PlayStation 3 is sold and distributed by Sony of Japan, a separate corporate entity.
SCEA argues that it does have the right because it operates the PlayStation Network (PSN), and it is the PSN End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) that Hotz violated by accessing the network with a jailbroken PS3. Hotz’s lawyers, on the other hand, say that Hotz never had a PSN login, and his EULA remained sealed in its original packaging, so he never could have violated it since he never agreed to its terms in the first place.
This round of battle comes less than a week after SCEA accused Hotz of “fleeing” to South America to avoid the lawsuit. Hotz maintains that he was simply on vacation.
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