HACKER WAR: ANONYMOUS VS. THE LIZARD SQUAD

The UK Mirror reports a hacking crossfire between Anonymous Protection—a branch of famed hacker collective Anonymous—and the Lizard Squad, which has lately been renting itself out as a band of cyber-attack mercenaries, while threatening to release nude photos of singer Taylor Swift in its spare time.

 Anonymous Protection took to social media to crow about a successful effort to shut down the Lizard Squad’s website and Twitter account

As the Mirror recounts, this attack was carried out in retaliation for Lizard Squad threats against Anonymous, plus extremely annoying denial-of-service attacks carried against the Xbox and PlayStation gaming networks on Christmas Day. The Lizard Squad claims to have been behind the North Korean Internet crash in December. They’ve been named as the culprits behind Facebook and Instagram crashes just this week. They also hacked the website of the unfortunate Malaysia Airlines, littering the site with phony threats from ISIS and replacing the home page with a supremely tasteless riff on the standard error message for missing web pages: “404 – PLANE NOT FOUND.” lizard_squad_hack

It’s hard to know your hacker collectives without a scorecard these days, since new groups pull off headline-grabbing attacks on such a regular basis, but contrary to all the ISIS and “cyber caliphate” references, the Lizard Squad does not appear to be linked to the terrorist state.

They remain one of the more enigmatic hacker groups, without much in the way of a defining agenda thus far, although members interviewed under pseudonyms have claimed they want to demonstrate how easily major commercial networks such as Microsoft’s can be penetrated, to shame the companies into developing better security measures.

The Anonymous hacker collective has increasingly been at odds with the Lizard Squad, angrily warning them in December to stop messing around with the encrypted “dark web” network Tor. At the height of its attack, the Lizard Squad took control of almost half of Tor’s relays, using what it alleged were “zero-day” security flaws completely unknown to network engineers, as part of its mission to demonstrate that secure websites are not as secure as their proprietors claim. This angered Anonymous because the Tor network is used by dissidents and whistleblowers seeking to evade monitoring by corrupt governments.

The Lizard Squad’s response to Anonymous was “Do something,” and now it would appear Anonymous has, possibly with the assistance of disgruntled Lizard Squad members who formed yet another hacking collective called “Finest Squad.” The Finest Squad counted coup on their own Twitter account when the Lizard Squad’s account was suspended:

With all these hacker wars raging, using the Internet for constructive purposes is getting to be like crossing a Wild West street during a shootout.

Lizard Squad hackers get HACKED

Website offline and Twitter account suspended after series of cyberattacks

The Lizard Squad 'hackers' have been causing a lot of cyber mischief lately, but they've just got a taste of their own medicine. Their website has been taken offline and their Twitter account - @lizardmafia - has been suspended, with a branch of 'hacktivist' group Anonymous taking the credit.

The news was announced by Anonymous Protection with a tweet saying: “LizardSquad website has been cleaned out and is offline: lizardpatrol.com. LizardSquad Twitter is now suspended: @lizardmafia. We WIN.”

The Anonymous Protection group says it’s "dedicated to protect the people of the internet" and chose to take on Lizard Squad after the group made threats against Anonymous and carried out a number of denial of service cyberattacks (DDoS).

The cyberattacks took down a number of key websites, including Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network on Christmas day. The Lizards have since been using Twitter to advertise their "cyberattack-for-hire" service, Lizard Stresser.

Most recently Lizard Squad hacked Taylor Swift's Twitter account and threatened to release nude pictures.

Anonymous Protection seems to have delivered on its promise, taking down Lizard Squad’s website using a similar denial-of-service attack, and hammering Twitter with complaints so that social network took down the @lizardmafia account.

Twitter/@Lizardmafia

Lizard Squad Twitter page

Twitter doesn't comment on individual cases, but will take down accounts if they post other people’s private information without their permission or make threats. Twitter can also suspend accounts if they use the service “in furtherance of illegal activities”.

Facebook outage yesterday—a technical glitch, not a cyber attack

The Facebook outage yesterday, which lasted for about one hour, was an internal technical glitch, said Facebook in a statement on its website.

“This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems,” said the statement.

Facebook and its photo site Instagram were unavailable to its users between 7.15 pm and 8.15 pm NZ time across the United States, Europe and Asia.

The Facebook breakdown flooded Twitter with complains and jokes, with “#facebookdown”and “#SocialMeltdown2015” trending.

Some suggested Lizard Squad, a hacker group that claimed to attack Microsoft and Sony gaming networks over Christmas, were behind the outage. A twitter read, “Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad.”

For legions of users, it was just a blip while companies dependent upon Facebook, such as Tinder and over 75,000 other websites, were affected by the disruption.

A technical fault sounded more plausible than a cyberattack because a DDoS attack would have made sites inaccessible to its users rather than displaying an error message, said Guillermo Lafuente, security consultant at MWR InfoSecurity.

Additionally, the outage was global and had it been a cybercrime, the impact would have been localized to one particular area as Facebook has multiple data centers.

Facebook, headquartered at California, has more than 1.35 billion active users globally, with more than 80% of its users outside the US and Canada.

Facebook had suffered a massive outage in September 2010 that lasted for about 2.5 hours. Early then outages were common as the system was not robust. However, off late a Californian company, Menlo Park, routinely checks its infrastructure and resilience.

Taylor Swift denies 'nude pictures' claim in defiant response to Twitter hackers

Taylor Swift has responded to hackers apparently claiming to have nude pictures of the star with the defiant message: “Have fun photoshopping cause you got NOTHING”.

The singer’s Twitter and Instagram accounts appeared to have been hacked overnight by users affiliated with the group Lizard Squad.

Messages were posted from both accounts and retweeted thousands of times before being removed.

Swift addressed the hack to her 51.4 million Twitter followers with the mocking tweet: “Cause the hackers gonna hack, hack, hack, hack, hack.”

The 25-year-old also thanked her friend Hayley Williams, lead singer of the band Paramore, for being the first to warn that her accounts had been compromised.

Her third tweet suggested those responsible had threatened to release nude pictures of her – a claim Swift wasted no time in clearing up.

The hackers also allegedly posted a screenshot of Swift’s private messages, which only served to cement her squeaky-clean reputation.

Lizard Squad first came to attention in August when they hacked Playstation, causing a shutdown of the network and the emergency diversion of a commercial airliner carrying one of the company's executives.

One of the messages on Swift's Twitter account told users to follow the now-suspended @lizzard account. That user’s Twitter biography described them as a “leader of Lizard Squad”.

Facebook: Hackers Didn’t Cause Worldwide Outage

Despite hacking group Lizard Squad's claims, Facebook said it was not hacked

Facebook says hackers didn’t cause a worldwide outage Tuesday morning, denying claims made by a rogue hacker group. Instead, the company said the 45-minute Facebook and Instagram outages were the result of an internal change made on the social network’s systems.

The disruption “was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems,” a Facebook spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. “We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100% for everyone.”

Hacking group Lizard Squad appeared to claim responsibility for the outages, which made it impossible for Facebook and Instagram users to access those websites and apps.

British police have reportedly arrested a Lizard Squad member

British authorities have arrested a person said to have links with Lizard Squad, the hacking organization claiming responsibility for disrupting Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on Christmas Day, according to the Daily Dot.

A copy of the search warrant provided to the Dot identifies Vinnie Omari, a 22-year-old living in the United Kingdom, as the person behind the outages. Law enforcement officials reportedly seized phones, laptops and an Xbox from Omari's home, according to the Dot.

The Dot says Omari provided the media outlet with the search warrant and the information about the arrest, but that they were not able to confirm the details with local police.

Previous reports had speculated that the name Omari was an alias, but the police documents releasing him on bail used that name, according to the Dot story.

The arrest highlights the pressure that investigators are putting on Lizard Squad after a string of antics this year raised the group's profile. In an interview last week, another member of the group identifying himself as "Ryan," said Lizard Squad gave Sony employee logins to Guardians of Peace, the hackers suspected of breaking into Sony's network and initially prompting the company to pull "The Interview" from theaters. Lizard Squad also caused an American Airlines flight bearing a Sony executive to be diverted in August when the hackers tweeted a bomb threat to the airline. In the interview, Ryan expressed regret over how far the stunt went.

On Wednesday, Lizard Mafia's Twitter account began reporting that Ryan had been arrested by Finnish authorities.

Social media sites knocked offline, #LizardSquad hack group claims responsibility

 

 

The hacking group Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for what it said was an attack that briefly knocked several social networking sites, including Facebook and Instagram, offline early Tuesday. 

The Facebook glitch was reported in the United States, Asia, Australia, and the U.K. and affected access to the site from personal computers and from Facebook's mobile app. The social media giant's Instagram service was also inaccessible.

Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the outage in a Twitter posting that listed the sites it said it had affected, which included matchmaking app Tinder, AIM, and HipChat. The message concluded with the hashtagged statements "offline" and "LizardSquad."

Facebook denied that it had been hacked and claimed that the disruption was caused by a technical change it made to the site. On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour.

The LizardSquad group has previously claimed to have been responsible for a Christmas Day outage that affected Xbox and PlayStation Live services late last year. On Monday, the group said it had hacked the website of Malaysia Airlines, changing the site to display a message reading "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail", a reference to the Islamic State terror group.

Lizard Squad occasionally makes tongue-in-cheek claims to support Islamic State, although there are no known links between the groups. The group also claimed that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.

Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million.
News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag "facebookdown" to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

As access to Facebook returned, some users in Asia reported that the site was loading slowly or not offering full functionality.

The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

Lizard Squad may have hacked Facebook

NEW DELHI: Hacker collective Lizard Squad, which recently took down Malaysia Airlines website, hinted that they may have had something to do with the outage faced by Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday morning.

Facebook and Instagram were down for about an hour leading to a wave of panicky messages on Twitter, with people trying to assess the situation.

Lizard Squad posted a cryptic message on their Twitter feed: "Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad." The message was tweeted close to noon, IST from their Twitter handle @LizardMafia. The Tweet got nearly 4800 retweets.

"If only we didn't use twitter to communicate..." they tweeted soon afterwards, and followed it up with, "More to come soon. Side note: We're still organizing the @MAS email dump, stay tuned for that." @MAS is the Malaysia Airlines' official Twitter handle. The person behind the Twitter account also dared followers with a picture, asking them to "dox" him or reveal his real identity.

The Lizard squad also claimed that MySpace was down, but it was discovered to be working when TOI accessed it.

Facebook responded with a statement that debunked the Squad claim: "Earlier this evening many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100% for everyone."

Malaysia Airlines website hacked by group claiming to support ISIS

FOXNEWS

HONG KONG –  The website of Malaysia Airlines was hacked Monday by a group that proclaimed support for the militant Islamic State group and also vowed to release data stolen from the site.

The airline's site was down for at least seven hours, replaced by a message from the hacker group, before the company brought it back online by mid-afternoon in Malaysia.

The hackers at first changed the site to display a message saying "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail."

Malaysia Airlines is struggling to recover from twin disasters last year, including the disappearance of Flight 370, which authorities believed crashed 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off Australia's west coast, and the downing of Flight 17 over Ukraine.

The hackers later replaced the jet with a picture of a lizard in a top hat, monocle and tuxedo smoking a pipe. The Islamic State reference was removed and the claim of responsibility changed to "Lizard Squad - Official Cyber Caliphate," with a link to the group's Twitter account.

The airline said in a statement that it was a "temporary glitch" that didn't affect passenger bookings and that the breach had been reported to Malaysia's transport ministry and Internet security agency. It said user data "remains secured."

The group, however, tweeted that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.

The particular booking was made by Malaysian Amy Keh, who said she had made it in October for her mother and two relatives to travel from Kuala Lumpur to Taiwan in March.

"I am a bit worried about their security. Now the whole world knows that they will be going to Taipei," said Keh, who logged on Monday to check the itinerary. She said the website looked different and called the airline, which told her of the hacking. However, she only found out when contacted by The Associated Press that the travel information was posted online
The Lizard Squad group last year claimed it was behind attacks on Sony's online PlayStation network and Microsoft's Xbox site.

In August, it also tweeted to American Airlines that there might be explosives on a plane carrying the president of Sony Online Entertainment, which makes video games, forcing the flight to be diverted.
Explaining how the hack had occurred, Malaysia Airlines said its domain name system was "compromised" and users were redirected to the hacker group's website. The domain name system translates web addresses typed into browsers into the numbers that computers use to identify and connect with each other on the Internet.

The Islamic State group now holds about a third of both Syria and Iraq, territory it has declared a caliphate. Police in Malaysia detained 43 people last year on suspicion of links to the extremist group, underscoring concerns held by Prime Minister Najib Razak that the spread of Islamic State ideology could lead to conflict in predominantly Muslim Malaysia