It only lasted a few minutes but as the account has 120,000 followers – it caused quite a stir. It’s not known how the hackers who call themselves ‘Script Kiddies’ got access to the account, but my guess would be social engineering.

Hackers calling themselves the Script Kiddies took control of the NBC News Twitter account on Friday afternoon and used it to send out a series of hoax Twitter messages claiming there was a repeat terrorist attack on New York’s Ground Zero.

The Script Kiddies had control of the account, which has more than 120,000 followers, for about 10 minutes before it was suspended. During that time they sent three messages stating that hijackers had crashed two airplanes on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “This is not a joke, Ground Zero has just been attacked. We’re attempting to get reporters on the scene. #groundzeroattacked.” said one of the messages.

Then, a minute later, perhaps sensing that the jig was up, they wrote. “NBCNEWS hacked by The Script Kiddies. Follow them at @s_kiddies!”

That s_kiddies Twitter account was immediately suspended, but according to a cached version of the page, the group describes themselves as “Anonymous Supporters :: Hackers :: Exploiting simplistic methods with hilarious results :: Occasionally doing it for teh lulz :: We are The Script Kiddies.”

The hack was brought to an abrupt end fairly shortly and the perpetrators own Twitter account was also suspended – @s_kiddies.

No major damage was done, but it does interest me as to how this was achieved – it has happened numerous times to celebrities on Twitter. I would have thought a fairly serious news organization would have better controls and processes in place though.

This hack doesn’t have anything to do with the Anonymous group though, it seems to be for the lulz more than anything else.

This type of account compromise is a regular occurrence on Twitter, although it is typically celebrities, and not trusted news organizations, that fall victim. Often the accounts are taken over following a phishing attack. Script Kiddies did not respond to an email asking them how they managed to take over the NBC News account.

Script kiddies is a hacking term, referring to technically unsophisticated hackers who rely on automated scripts rather than hacking wiles to conduct their online attacks.

Friday wasn’t exactly a gold star day for accuracy on Twitter. Earlier in the day, an account associated with CBS News show “What’s Trending” erroneously posted a Twitter message citing rumors that Apple founder Steve Jobs had died. That message was quickly deleted and “What’s Trending” apologized.

I guess this may well be the new Web2.0 version of defacement for a new generation of Script Kiddies – breaking into high profile Twitter/Facebook accounts and spamming them with humorous or offensive updates.

I don’t think there will be any more to this story than what has already been published, I’m sure we’ll see many more similar cases in the future though.

Source: Network World

Ah now this is interesting..and scary in a way. Script Kiddies with guns!

Script kiddies going to war, or is it turning soldiers into script kiddies. Who knows.

Anyway, the US military has decided to make their soldiers walking hackers, with an all-in-one super hacking device that can penetrate satellite signals, VoIP networks and normal information systems.

As the US military strives to boost its ability to wage cyber warfare, it’s looking for ways to make it easier for non-expert soldiers on the front lines to wreak havoc on enemy networks.

Enter a new generation of attack devices that is packaged to be brought into the battlefield and used by non-specialists to penetrate satellites, voice over internet networks, and supervisory control and data acquisition systems. Aviation Week recently got a peek at one device and provided a rich description of its features.

The device is designed to allow US forces to test enemy networks for a wide range of vulnerabilities and then synthesize the results so they can be acted on quickly. It offers touch-screen dashboards and sliders to make enumeration and penetration more intuitive. One display shows a schematic of an enemy network and identifies its nodes. A sliding lever can be moved to increase an attack or dial it down to reduce collateral damage.

Seems like point and click hacking has been taken to a new level and can now be done with a mobile device on the move.

It takes virtually no skill at all with sliders and dials.

I’d love to get my hands on one of these devices just to check it out and see how it actually works, run some packet sniffer on the wire and see if it’s actually just a black box with Metasploit inside and a fancy interface.

The device is designed to take a slew of algorithms for monitoring and penetrating networks and put them into an easy-to-use package. Think of it as a hack-by-numbers gadget for combat forces.

“Right now, all that information is in the head of a few guys that do computer network operations and there is no training system,” one researcher told Aviation Week.

There’s much more here.

Sounds pretty interesting either way, I hope some more news pops up about this in the future and we can get a better look at the device.

I’d love to see some pictures and a video demonstration, I’d imagine though as always they will be rather secretive about it.

Anyway if anyone finds out more info on this, let us know!

Source: The Register (Thanks Simon)