Andrew Breitbart (via Wizbang Blog)

Though arch-conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart may have passed away suddenly this week at 43, some enterprising spammer has ensured his Twitter feed has an afterlife. At 3:32 on Saturday, those who follow the late pundit were surprised to find the following pop up in their Twitter timelines:

Fastest and most efficient way to remove toxins & lose weightworldnews20.com

— AndrewBreitbart (@AndrewBreitbart) March 3, 2012

The tweet was definitely posted on the real Breitbart Twitter account, complete with his Twitter-issued "verified" button.

Reactions ran the gamut, from perplexed to outraged:

Umm @AndrewBreitbart just tweeted? Hacked! Disturbing!!!!

— Gina (@gxmolin) March 3, 2012

RT @SissyWillis RT @jtLOL: Please be advised that a rotten spammer has broken into @AndrewBreitbart's Twitter account.

— Love Of Freedom (@Love0fFreedom) March 3, 2012

There were reports on social media that Breitbart's Facebook page was also hacked but if so it was quickly taken care of. The offending tweet was removed within a half-hour of posting Saturday afternoon.

Spammers have always been an issue on Twitter in particular, but this may mark the first time a spammer/hacker unwittingly drew so much attention to his or her product.

A check of domain registration information on the spam link tweeted via Breitbart's account revealed it was registered to a Russian address. This will likely not curb the appetite some have shown in the days since Breitbart's passing for imagining there is some kind of conspiracy surrounding his death.

The Friday hacks appeared to compromise emails and other sensitive documents:

A web page that included Anonymous' signature tag line stated the hacking was in response to Alabama's "recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals" -- referring to legislation, signed last June, aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration in the state.

The Anonymous-related Twitter page also provided links to documents, messages and other files that it said it had taken off a website tied to Mexico's mining ministry.

"Hello Mexican Chamber of Mines," a related Twitter post read. "Want to see your emails exposed?"

Interpol's website, Interpol.int, was hit Saturday afternoon:

Yep, seems INTERPOL (interpol.int ) is still Tango Down from here - downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.int… (via @BlackTuesday) #Anonymous

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) February 11, 2012

A message found on Pastebin.com appeared to imply credit for DDoSing Interpol and was tagged "With love from @blackTuesday." (Ed: The Twitter handle for the group is apparently @BlackTuesdayHG.)

Thousands protested A.C.T.A. (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) across Europe on Saturday. While anti-piracy A.C.T.A. is a favorite target for Anonymous's wrath and plenty of Guy Fawkes masks were in evidence in photos of protesters, it wasn't clear that the Interpol wipe and A.C.T.A. protests were connected.

[CNN.com]

What's at stake? According to the Herald, "vast amounts of private information traded through the app - in many cases naked photos." (Translation: your tastefully filtered and soft-focused genital self-portraits could be available via an easy Google Image Search any day now.)

Leveraging Grindr's links to other social networking sites the hacker found a way to log into Grindr or Blender as someone else and impersonate that user at will. And no one is safe:

The vulnerabilities are also present in Blendr, the straight version of the app, according to a security expert who said both apps had "no real security" and were "poorly designed". Fairfax Media is not aware that Blendr has been hacked but the potential was there, according to the security expert.

Grindr founder and CEO Joel Simkhai addressed the problem in a blog post:

Your security and the security of our platform is a core priority. Like other responsible companies, we don’t comment on specifics of security enhancements or allegations about network issues – that wouldn’t serve the security of our users, our networks, or web security in general. As a result of Grindr’s ongoing investigation, we took legal and technological actions to block a site that violated our terms of service. This site impacted a small number of primarily Australian Grindr users and it remains shut down.

We continuously make improvements to our platform to increase security across our networks. We are releasing a mandatory update to our apps over the next few days to enhance security. When the update is available, users will be notified via in-app messaging, on Twitter and on this blog post. Our users can be assured that Grindr does not retain chat history, credit card information, or addresses – and no such information was ever compromised.

That no chats, street addresses or financial info was compromised may be a relief, but for many users of either app the idea that you could actually be flirting with a trolling hacker who looks like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons is probably bad enough.

[smh.com.au]

Screengrab

The Huffington Post's Twitter account was hacked Sunday afternoon and it wasn't even fun, just offensive. In a rapid-fire series of tweets containing grandiloquent soliloquies like "hello gay boys" and "lol wes is a gay boy," a hacker who claimed the nom de hack "cloverfdch" locked the feed down tight, amusing and puzzling HuffPo's 1.5 million or so followers for several minutes until he was locked out again and HuffPo resumed tweeting links to its posts as if nothing had happened.

The closest cloverfdch came to having real fun may have been the tweet (not captured in the screengrab at the end of this post) that read, "Sup bitches??? Hacked by: New York Post."

It may have been a coincidence but Ashton Kutcher's famed @aplusk account was also hacked at the same time. Kutcher was quickly on top of the problem, even though his Foursquare account was compromised as well. Kutcher had a warning for the hacker:

Ok mr hacker, you only made one mistake. You hacked my Foursquare and I now know your address. Whoops.... This is gonna be fun.

— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) January 15, 2012

If cloverfdch was responsible for both hacks, his or her response to Kutcher's warning is pretty easy to imagine.

Screengrab of compromised HuffPo account-click to enlarge

It looks like Lulzsec—the notorious hacking group—has taken over the homepage of Murdoch-owned The Sun, with a fake article about Rupert Murdoch dying at the hands of some chemicals and a butler, or something. It's not exactly Onion-quality work, but it certainly gets the job done.

As of 5:41 PM EST, the front page of The UK Sun is still showing as hacked. Full screengrab below, click to enlarge:

The hackers noted over a series of messages on Twitter:

"If you visited The Sun before we did this (may God have mercy on your soul) clear your cache so the redirect works. #MurdochMeltdownMonday." Also, they're seeing the site on their end as down, and are now enjoying themselves quite a bit: "It would appear new-times.co.uk has been hit so hard with redirects that it's now down. That would explain it... we're laughing quite hard."

UPDATE: As of 5:53 PM, the redirect to the LULZSEC site is no longer working. That was quick.

UPDATE 2: They're now Tweeting out Sun staffers' email login information, and one Lulzsec Tweet noted: "Don't be a #peon like the others. We are showing you a very small surface; the real damage is currently giving the admins heart attacks. ;)"

UPDATE 3: And they've now redirected The Sun to their Twitter feed, noting: "Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good?" Good!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

An attack on the nation's basic infrastructure is pretty scary, so it was comforting when a spokesperson told AFP that neither customer service nor trading appeared to have been hit. Rather, hackers went after  Nasdaq's Director's Desk software, which helps directors at big companies share information related to board meetings. Why would they do that? A subsequent Wall Street Journal report gives us a hint:

The fact that the Web-based service, called Directors Desk, was penetrated could lend credence to one theory that law-enforcement authorities investigating the matter are considering, namely that hackers may be aiming to extract nonpublic inside information that could be used illegally to gain a trading edge.

Insider trading! Although it's unclear what exactly the hackers were after, one thing is clear: short-term trades in the stock market are not for guys with a Strategy Desk in the basement office or the babies in Super Bowl commercials. Faster, smarter and less scrupulous people are out there to take money from those people. Just stop trying, everyone. Give up (unless you're hackers).

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

"How would you contact the ones you love if the cell/internet networks went down? How would you get the news out to the greater worldwide community if there were things you were seeing that the world needed to see?"

Pettis has put out a call asking people to submit ideas for survival apps that would be useful in the event of a true internet Appocolypse. 

"I want an app that creates a localized IRC channel that anyone within wifi range can join. The idea here is that wifi can't be jammed locally, so it would be nice to set up a localized network to chat with your neighbors without leaving the house," writes Pettis. 

Holler at us with some suggestions in the comments. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

And this being Facebook, the new measures are in part social. One new feature, social authentication, works kind of like the standard CAPTCHA, which asks users to type in the text they see onscreen. 

With Facebook's Social Authentication, users are asked to identify a friend based on a series of photos. 

This seems like a clever integration of social and security, except that there are several pictures of me tagged on Facebook in which I am a dog, a woman and a tree. 

Hopefully this system will utilize some facial recognition to choose photos that can reasonably be identified. 

Beyond that there are the dozens of high school and elementary school folks whose friend requests I have accepted, but who I haven't seen in over a decade. Hope they haven't changed too much. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

It also has one Twitter account and one YouTube account. That's how stuff works in a crazy, despotic dictatorship.

Anyways, this past weekend marked the birthday of Kim Jong-Un, scion of the increasingly unhinged Kim Jong-il and closely watched heir to the throne.

Jong-Un was probably expecting the same old thing, a bunch of parades in his honor and maybe a stadium full of rhythmic gymnasts.

Instead, the official Twitter and YouTube accounts of North Korea were hacked, most likely by South Koreans. The results are strange, hilarious and disturbing. Check out the video:

But now experts are saying that high frequency-trades are also highly susceptible to attacks by hackers.

By introducing microseconds of latency, hackers could skew prices and make millions of dollars in just a few seconds, reports InfoWorld's Bill Snyder.

Because the speeds at which trades are happening is faster than the speeds at which they can be monitored--we're talking about situations in which the speed of light is a limitation -- such attacks could go completely undetected.

Sounds like high frequency traders should hire some hackers! Wonder where you find those? Craigslist?

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries