Sega attacked, hacker group offers to take revenge (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – Japan's Sega Corp joined the rapidly growing club of video game companies whose computer systems have been hacked by cyber criminals, the company said on Friday.

The news capped a week in which the Lulz Security group of hackers launched a cyber crime spree against other video game companies.

In an unexpected twist, Lulz responded to the news of the attack on Sega by offering to track down and punish the hackers who attacked the Japanese maker of video game software.

The drama surrounding the recent round of video game breaches paled compared to what PlayStation maker Sony Corp experienced following two high-profile attacks that surfaced in April. Those breaches led to the theft of account data for more than 100 million customers, making it the largest ever hacking of data outside the financial services industry.

They also exposed what turned out to be a large number of security holes in sites throughout the global Sony media empire. That led to a rash of attacks on Sony systems that undermined confidence in the company and made it the source of frequent jokes by security experts. Its security staff scrambled to repair vulnerabilities in its network as independent experts identified new problems via remote scans and disclosed them to Sony and the public.

Sega said that some personal information about an unspecified number of Sega Pass online network members had been compromised in the attack, according to a letter the company sent to customers on Friday that was published on the PlayStation LifeStyle.net website.

Customer email addresses and birthdates, which can be read in plain text were taken, as were passwords, which could not be read in plain text because they had been scrambled or encrypted using security software before being stored in the database.

Sega shut down the Pass network on Thursday, the day it learned of the breach, telling customers in a note on its website that it was "undergoing improvements." It was not immediately clear when it would go back online.

The video game developer is a division of Japan's Sega Sammy Holdings, which makes game software such as Sonic the Hedgehog as well as slot machines.

Sega was one of the biggest video game consoles makers in the 1990s, but pulled out of the market in 2001 in response to disappointing sales of its Dreamcast system, which had debuted in 1998 to widespread industry praise. Dreamcast lost ground to newer products developed by Sony and Nintendo.

It now focuses on developing video games for systems made by other companies.

LULZ GETS INVOLVED

While the FBI is likely to be called in to investigate the attack on Sega, as the bureau typically is in such cases, its agents may find themselves competing for clues with members of Lulz Security hacking group.

In its offer to assist Sega, the Tweet from Lulz hinted that its leaders might count themselves among a small but highly loyal group of gamers who still play on the aging Dreamcast console.

"Sega - contact us," Lulz said in its Tweet to the video game developer. "We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down."

Lulz offered to see that the cyber criminals are punished for attacking Sega shortly after ending its own crime spree that included attacks on several other video game companies.

The Lulz hackers, who publicize their attacks on their own website and via Twitter, said on Friday that they had stolen customer records of some 200,000 users of the online video game Brink. Officials at Xenia Media, the developer of Brink, could not be reached for comment.

Lulz last week also attacked several other industry players, saying it was working on behalf of disgruntled players who had ordered the attacks via telephone hotlines that Lulz set up in the United States and Europe to solicit such requests.

Tribalware.net and EVE from Innogames were among the victims of the Lulz campaign against video game makers. The hacking group also attacked servers that help run two other online games -- "League of Legends" and "Minecraft" -- and it hit the The Escapist website, which provides video game news.

Lulz had hacked into Nintendo in an attack that it disclosed on June 3, but the incident has not appeared to have serious consequences for the company. The hacking group published a data file over the Internet that it said contained details on the way Nintendo set up one of its web servers.

Such data could be valuable to other hackers planning future attacks on Nintendo because the data potentially could leave clues as to possible security weaknesses in the game maker's network.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Yahoo! News

Group: Bahraini activist's home attacked

The home of Nabeel Rajab is tear gassedThe attack follows a similar one in AprilRajab is president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights

(CNN) -- The home of prominent Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab was attacked Saturday, the rights group he heads said.

The attack took place early Saturday morning while Rajab and his family were sleeping, said the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. Assailants launched teargas grenades into the house, breaking the window of Rajab's brother, the group said.

"We had very frightening moments rescuing my brother, his wife and his daughter as they were close to serious suffocation. This is an attempt to murder a member of my family to pressure me to stop my human rights activities," said Rajab, president of the Center.

"Thank God the teargas bombs fell on the tile and not the carpet, which could have caused a fire and could have killed the whole family while they were asleep," he said. "Please do whatever you can to stop the government from attacking me and my family who have nothing to do with my human rights work."

Saturday marked the second attack on Rajab's home in about a month. In April, assailants lobbed teargas over a high wall surrounding his and his mother's houses, Human Rights Watch reported. After that attack, the New York-based rights group called on the government of Bahrain to investigate, saying the attack appeared to target Rajab for his advocacy work.

Human Rights Watch said then that it knew of no entity other than Bahrain's security forces that would have access to the kind of grenades used in the April attack.

There was no immediate response to the Human Right Watch statement by the Bahraini government.

The country is ruled by the Al-Khalifa family, which has been in power since the 18th century. Many protesters are calling for the removal of the royal family, whom they blame for the country's high unemployment rate and for running a corrupt government that relies on torture and other harsh measures to clamp down on dissent.

On March 20, about 25 people in about a dozen cars pulled up to Rajab's house and took him to the offices of the Interior Ministry's investigative department. There, according to Rajab, he was beaten, blindfolded and interrogated about an armed suspect they believed he knew.

The government confirmed the arrest but provided no other details.

Rajab is one of hundreds of Bahrainis to be detained by security forces in recent months. The arrests, according to human rights activists, have often been violent and have taken place at night.

Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy anchors its Fifth Fleet, is a small, predominantly Shiite country governed by a Sunni royal family.

CNN Top Stories

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Pakistan Taliban says attacked U.S. consulate convoy (Reuters)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan's Taliban said on Friday it had attacked a U.S. consulate convoy in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, the latest assault in a surge of violence since U.S. forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden this month.

Police said a car bomb had been detonated by remote control as the convoy passed, killing one Pakistani. Twelve people were wounded.

U.S. embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said two U.S. nationals were among the wounded, with minor injuries. Police said the two were security guards.

The attack on the two-vehicle convoy took place on a main road in an area where many Western diplomats live and involved 50 kg (110 pounds) of explosives, police said.

"There was an attack on a two-car convoy from the consulate in Peshawar. One car was hit. We are still investigating what actually happened," said Rodriguez.

Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali said the blast had been caused by a car bomb detonated remotely.

"It was not a suicide bombing," he told Reuters.

It was the first attack on Westerners since bin Laden's death on May 2.

Peshawar has seen many operations by Taliban militants seeking to topple the U.S.-backed Pakistani government and was home to bin Laden in the 1980s when Islamists were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

TALIBAN TARGETS NATO DIPLOMATS

Al Qaeda and its ally, the Pakistani Taliban, have vowed to avenge the killing of bin Laden by U.S. special forces and, the group said it would target the Pakistani government and its Western allies.

"The diplomatic staff of all NATO countries are our targets," said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban spokesman, told Reuters via telephone from an undisclosed location.

"We will continue such attacks. Pakistan is our first target, and America is our second."

Many Pakistanis are frustrated with the inability of security forces to subdue the Taliban. In a separate attack on Friday, an explosion killed five people and wounded four in the tribal region of Orakzai in the northwest, officials said.

"The security after the killing of Osama has been lax instead of being tighter. We are feeling insecure," said Tahir Khan, 20, a student standing near the site of the blast in Peshawar.

One of the consulate vehicles, which police said was armored, was riddled with shrapnel. The blast forced it to slam into an electricity pole beside a pre-school.

"I had just arrived at school and was about to start my work when there was a big blast. The windows of our school were broken and I was hurt," said school administrator Zahid Zaman from a hospital bed.

The Pakistani rupee fell to an eight-month low of 86 to a dollar on Friday. Dealers said the new attack had compounded uncertainty linked to bin Laden's killing and its aftermath.

Americans have been targeted before in Pakistan.

In April of 2010, militants using a car bomb and firing weapons attacked the U.S. consulate in Peshawar. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the operation in which eight people, including three militants, were killed. No one in the mission was hurt.

Pakistan has witnessed a jump in violence since bin Laden's death, including a twin suicide bombing last week that killed more than 80 people, most of them paramilitary recruits.

The Taliban have kept up pressure on the government with suicide attacks despite several army offensives against them.

The United States wants nuclear-armed Pakistan to be a more reliable partner in its war on militancy. Cooperation between the two allies is needed to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

Ties have been severely damaged since the secret raid that killed bin Laden. Pakistan is under pressure to explain how he spent what appeared to be about five years in a military town not far from the capital.

Pakistan's army was infuriated by the operation, describing it as a violation of national sovereignty.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haiderin Islamabad and Izaz Mohmand, Khurram Pervez and Saad Khan in Peshawar and Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.