hacker

A British computer hacker wanted by the United States for "the biggest military hack of all time" begins a final fight today to avoid extradition. Lawyers for Gary McKinnon, will argue in London's High Court today that he is too ill to be sent to the United States for trial because he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

 When it comes to hacking social networks, girls are showing that they are more practical than boys in terms of what they are doing. Girls are more likely to go after information that leads to bank accounts, while boys are more likely to hack social networks in a survey conducted in England by Trend Micro. 

The seventeen-year-old hacker who gave Twitter a busy weekend earlier in the month was subsequently hired by hosting company exqSoft Solutions, a reward that may have inspired further bad behavior.

It used to be one was at most risk of getting a computer virus via spam or frequenting bad Internet neighborhoods (places one probably shouldn’t be hanging out in the first place, picking up just any old download they come across). These days malware pushers have come out in the open where the masses collect, and places like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are starting to resemble the Time Square of old—with peril and vice all around.

It would be hard to be more embarrassed than the guy caught with his pants down at the ski lift—whose photos are at SmokingGun—but if there’s a contender, it’s “Crystal” at Twitter, whose admin support account was hacked by a standard “dictionary” attack.

Authorities caught up with another infamous hacker this week, this time the guy who hacked Miley Cyrus’ email account. Interestingly, he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything. Josh Holly,19, did lose three computers to the FBI though, who located him in Murfreesboro, TN.

You may remember a few weeks ago when vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email account was hacked. This was revealed to be the work of David Kernell, the son of Tennessee Democratic State Representative Mike Kernell. David was indicted Wednesday morning, and faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after turning himself in.

It’s not been a good week, online or off, for the McCain campaign, but it’s been especially brutal online. The biggest news, aside from the obvious fundamentally strong economic crisis occurring Monday, has been the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email account.