six teenagers arrested for using lizard

Six teenagers were recently arrested and later bailed on account of using the hacking tools of a certain Lizard Squad to breach softwares and websites, which included gaming companies, school servers and even newspapers. Learn on Udemy Today! The teenagers, aged between 15 to 18 and all male, were arrested during an operation by the UK police in search of hackers using the Lizard Stresser tool that allows the user to send spam to system and facilitate the denial of service (ddos) attack, which makes the website unavailable to the real time visitors. In the past, such ddos attacks have caused both reputational and financial damage to services provided by big business giants like Sony to even government websites, while these attacks interrupt the smooth functioning for a time interval that starts from a few hours and can last till weeks. This tool was effectively used by the Lizard Squad in December 2014, to interrupt the online gaming services of Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network. The tool is available in the market and can acquiring it can make a normal person into a potential hacker who can then select their targets according to their will. The UK police arrested the teenagers with the help of the National Crime Agency(NCA), while they were trying to pay anonymously for the tool using BitCoin. However, none of the six teenagers have been confirmed to be a member of the Lizard Squad. Tony Adams of NCA’s cybercrime unit, explained that by a small amount, a person can acquire the Lizard Stresser that can ruin big businesses and make access to information a deliria for the public. He further added that the arrest was made under an operation named ‘Vivarium’, and that the teenagers were operating from all across UK. A member of Lizard Squad was arrested in Twickenham in December for their involvement in cyber attacks, while a further member was arrested in May for pranking armed police. However, the hacking group’s tool remains available, despite its site being hacked revealing customers’ details.

Lizard Squad disrupt National Crime Agency website

The website of National Crime Agency (NCA), a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom which replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency, was temporarily down on Tuesday morning by attackers. According to a news report published in The Guardian, the attackers did this as a revenge for arrests made last week. Four days ago before the attack, six teenagers were released on bail on suspicion of using hacking group Lizard Squad’s cyber-attack tool to target websites and services. They arrests were in an operation codenamed Vivarium, coordinated by the NCA and involving officers from several police forces. Those who were arrested: an 18-year-old from Huddersfield; an 18-year-old from Manchester; a 16-year-old from Northampton; and a 15-year-old from Stockport, were arrested last week, while two other suspects, both 17, were arrested earlier this year, one from Cardiff and another from Northolt, north-west London. However, all of them have been bailed, while a further two 18-year-olds – one from Manchester and one from Milton Keynes – were interviewed under caution. “The six suspects are accused of using Lizard Stresser, a tool that bombards websites and services with bogus traffic, to attack a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and a number of online retailers,” the report reads. The NCA spokesperson told The Guardian that the NCA website is an attractive target. Attacks on it are a fact of life. DDoS is a blunt form of attack which takes volume and not skill. It isn’t a security breach, and it doesn’t affect our operational capability. “At worst it is a temporary inconvenience to users of our website. We have a duty to balance the value of keeping our website accessible with the cost of doing so, especially in the face of a threat which can scale up endlessly. The measures we have in place at present mean that our site is generally up and running again within 30 minutes, though occasionally it can take longer. We think that’s proportionate,” he added.

Cyber of Emotion" hacks saudi websites

Many Saudi websites were hacked by a group that gave warnings that they would be making the attacks.The group known as “Cyber of Emotion” hacked more than 24 government websites over a period of two hours.

As reported by Al-Riyadh newspaper, the visitors to the website were directed to a page that read- “We do not want to harm the site. Had it been hacked by enemies, your personal information, emails and registration data would have been compromised."

The hackers said that their team had already warned their administrators that the websites are not properly secured and they should do something about it, but, the warnings were ignored, they claim.

The newspaper reported that the websites hacked included that of government hospitals, municipalities, education departments, social development offices and health departments.

The websites, however, started working properly a few hours after the attack.

Last year, the twitter account of Ministry of Justice was hacked by the same group.

Chinese Hackers targeting Indian institution to steal information

If we had to believe FireEye Inc, a US-based cyber security firm, hackers based in China are now targeting India to steal information about its border disputes and diplomatic intelligence.

The relationship between these two countries once broke in 1962 when both of them fought with each other over border issues. However, the situations between these countries have become a bit cool when Modi government came in power.

It is also said that the hackers were also active a month before the PM Modi visit to China.   

Now, it seems the cyber threat would make the thing worse as it was before.   

As per the company, an advanced campaign over the past four years has targeted more than 100 people, 70 percent of whom are in India. Earlier this year it identified a decade-long cyber espionage operation against businesses and governments in Southeast Asia.

“These attacks on India and its neighbouring countries reflect growing interest in its foreign affairs,” Bryce Boland, FireEye’s chief technology officer for Asia Pacific, said in the statement.

Along with the Indian institutions, the hackers also targeted Tibetan activists and others in Southeast Asia, in particular government, diplomatic, scientific and educational organizations, the security company said.

According to a news report published in The Financial Times, the hackers sent so-called spear phishing e-mails with Microsoft Word attachments appearing to relate to regional issues. Those messages contained a script which would create a “backdoor” in infected machines, allowing access to programs without detection by security measures.