July 4 which is celebrated by all the Americans as their Independence Day has another chapter added to it in the history of computer attacks. You will be surprised to know that several government websites got knocked off due to a unique widespread cyber attack. I am sure quite a few of us have experienced the problem of cyber attack at some point of time, but that is restricted to the private sites. This is one of its kind, where several official websites were down at varying points.

It came into notice when quite a few of the websites such as the Transportation Department, Federal Trade Commission, The Treasury Department and also the ones that are responsible for fighting against the cyber crime were all not opening up. As a matter of fact, there are various sites that have been experienced major problems even till Tuesday evening. This incident is being linked to the cyber attack on the government and private websites of South Korea.

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It is a known fact that on popular social networking websites, rivalries between countries exist. Usually they are friendly rivalries. However post Mumbai attacks saw a different turn into the meaning of rivalries. Orkut is a very popular social networking site in both Pakistan and India. Recently, an Indian group known as HMG (Hindu Militant Guards) committed a gross criminal offense by hacking into the largest Pakistan community in Orkut.

The community for 41 thousands plus Pakistani members was hacked using brute force and owner’s profile was compromised very badly using sophisticated hacking methods. Their reason for hacking into a largest Pakistani community was to avenge the Mumbai attacks. Its shocking how something that had happened in real life, had to transcend into virtual life.

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Take a look at this site.

Cinematube.net

This is how the online version of a business take down looks like.

Most of us enjoy watching movies. It would be even more fun to watch movies and not have to pay for it. Internet has made that possible. Easy availability of music online has already sounded the death knell for music publishing industry. Record sales have fallen down like there’s no tomorrow and totally stripped this business model of any respect.

Now the same could have happened in the movie business too but the Hollywood moguls have learned their lessons well. They smartened up and took the fight right into the enemy camp. The pirates have no where to run and hide.

Cinematube is one example of that. This site was not even well known. Even then Hollywood went after it (and its ilk) with hammer and tongs to act as a deterrent for other such similar piracy businesses online.

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Many of you would have noticed the heavy chatter in the media about China and its atrocities in Tibet. With the oncoming games, people are the world are protesting about the excesses China has been committing.

Apparently, CNN too couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon when one of their hosts trashed China on its harsh policies.

This ruffled quite a few feathers. Besides the Chinese government coming out against CNN, a bunch of hackers planned to get back on CNN by launching a full scale cyber attack against the online presence of news giant.

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If you still have the old version of Wordpress deployed, remember your site can be easily hacked because of known exploits. The hackers may or may not have a lot to gain by injecting malware or spammy links on your website but if you own the website, it could be your worst nightmare.

A spammed website will most likely be ignored by search engine crawlers resulting in dropped rankings. In fact, Technorati is totally junking the older versions of WP from its system.

Sites like Security Focus are publishing a bunch of hacks possible on older versions of Wordpress. So before you get mugged by a script kiddie, take the necessary action.

Lets say one fine day you wake up and realize your blog has been a victim of such an attack, what do you do?

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What I am about to tell you should be used primarily for learning and education. Certainly not for any dubious activities. It is possible to connect to another computer through the internet and browse through their directory structure, update and copy the file etc. Before you can connect you are prompted for a login and password so obviously (and preferably) you need the other person’s explicit co-operation and consent.

If you try to login without consent and approval, it is deemed as hacking. Still, if your intention is neat, meaning you just want to probe and not damage, then you are a white hat hacker. But if you want to hold the other person hostage, then you are deemed a black hat hacker.

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Wordpress.com saw DOS attacks beginning Saturday, and the attacks were continuing till yesterday as some of the users still could not log on to their site.

Matt Mullenweg, the brains behind Wordpress and its spokesman, also confirmed these attacks. There were spikes of about 6 GB of incoming traffic rendering the blogs inaccessible by some users for almost up to 15 minutes.

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In an embarrassing blow to an Indian anti virus software maker, hackers compromised its website and turned it into a host for malicious code. This fact came to light when another security company, AVG, spotted the malicious code emanating from the download site for AvSoft’s SmartCop, an anti-virus software package.

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The more paranoid among us have long been wary of the possibility that networked fridges might spontaneously turn off, perhaps after becoming infected with a computer virus, ruining milk in the process. Other networked appliances might also pose a danger of sorts, security boffins have shown.

A security expert from Check Point demonstrated at the recent ClubHACK 2007 conference in India how a networked toaster might be used to hack a computer. The party piece, carried out by Check Point’s Dror Shalev, turns the more conventional use of computers in vending machines and computerised household appliances (such as DVD players) on its head.

Shalev said he developed the networked toaster hack in response to a statement from a senior scientist from Google that there was no need to be afraid of a toaster at home. “But as a hacker, I came up with a toaster that could actually hack a computer,” Shalev explained. “I call it a ‘Crazy Toaster’.”

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