UNIVERSAL AND VIACOM HACKED LEAKING USERS PASSWORDS AND INFORMATION; ANTISEC CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

A hacking group named LulzSec made headlines recently for attacking high visibility targets, including Sony and the U.S. government. LulzSec announced earlier this week that it was stopping its operations, and rumor has it many of the members joined up with Anonymous’ “AntiSec” hacking group. Now that group is making its own headlines. On Tuesday AntiSec claimed responsibility for attacks against Universal and Viacom.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the hackers released personal data, including passwords, from the Universal Music Website. It also obtained and leaked information about Viacom’s network. It’s unclear how many users were affected by the security breach, although we hope to hear an official word from both firms in the near future.

LULZSEC LEAVES BEHIND ONE LAST PARTING SHOT WITH MALWARE, TROJANS AND VIRII

The small group of hackers known as Lulz Security, or simply “LulzSec,” would never disband without one final round of fun. BGR reported on Monday that the group’s reign of terror was coming to an end after 50 lul-filled days. During that period of time, LulzSec released data stolen in a series of online breaches with targets ranging from Sony to the U.S. Government.

In its coup de grâce, LulzSec released a stash of stolen data from a variety of targets, including AT&T, Disney and the U.S. Navy. But data obtained through online breaches wasn’t the only thing LulzSec stuffed into the file; a directory named “BootableUSB” also contained a variety of malware including trojans and worms. While “LulzSec” is no more and its notorious Twitter account now sits dormant, members of the well-known hacktivism group “Anonymous Operations” have confirmed that LulzSec is gone in name only — the six LulzSec members have been absorbed by Anonymous, according to the group’s official Twitter feed.

SONY PICTURES WEBSITE HACKED; 1 MILLION ACCOUNTS COMPROMISED

Hackers from a group called LulzSec announced on Thursday that they had breached sonypictures.com, the website belonging to Sony-owned studio Sony Pictures. The group claims to have compromised personal information belonging to over 1 million users, including user names, passwords, home addresses, dates of birth and other sensitive data.

The group also claims to have accessed 75,000 “music codes” and 3.5 million “music coupons.” LulzSec says it employed a simple SQL injection technique to access the data, and that Sony Pictures’ site was not secure and was therefore easy to breach.

The hackers did not have the resources to download all of the exposed data, but they say they did obtain samples in order to prove the authenticity of the attack.

This is the fourth breach of a Sony owned property in the last two months. The most famous being the Sony Playstation Network. Sony was forced to bring the site down while additional security measures were put in place.

SONY'S HACKING NIGHTMARE CONTINUES

Sony continues to be targeted in a series of cyberattacks that have resulted in the theft of personal information belonging to over 100 million Sony customers. Following breaches of the company’s PlayStation Network, Sony Online Entertainment, So-net Entertainment and most recently, the Sony’s Greek website, hackers have breached a database associated with Sony Ericsson’s Canadian online shop.

Personal data including names, email addresses and passwords belonging to more than 2,000 customers was compromised, but Sony said no credit card numbers were stolen. A Lebanese hacking group called Idahca claimed responsibility for the attack, and it said the information obtained has been leaked on Facebook and Twitter.

It is unclear if this latest attack is tied in any way to previous attacks on Sony’s various digital properties.

SONY BMG GREECE HACKED

It's the security nightmare that just won't end, and right now there's got to be plenty of Sony executives beginning to wish someone would pinch them already. After taking quite a PR and financial beating over the PSN breach, now the Greek site of Sony BMG has been hacked and the account info of thousands of users has been posted online.

According to the Sophos blog Naked Security, the attack does not appear to have been particularly sophisticated and was carried out using an automated SQL injection tool that demands more patience than skill. While the data dump reveals the usernames, real names, and email addresses of registered SonyMusic.gr customers, other fields (including passwords and telephone numbers) are either empty or contain fake data, suggesting the hack was not entirely successful.

SONY ESTIMATES PSN BREACH TO COST $171 MILLION; EXPECTING $3.2 BILLION LOSS FOR YEAR

It has not been a good year for Sony, which was affected both by the massive earthquake in March and the PSN outage that spanned from April into May. There couldn't be any doubt that those things would have a drastic impact on the company's bottom-line, and it's now taking the time to give investors an idea of just how big an impact that could be -- even though the financial issues lie largely elsewhere. Sony is set to announce its full financial report for its fiscal year this Thursday and, to soften the blow, estimates have been revised steeply downward. Previously Sony predicted a ¥70 billion ($855 million) profit, but now thinks a ¥260 billion ($3.14 billion) loss is rather more accurate -- a ¥360 billion non-cash charge taking the wind out of ¥200 billion in operating income.

The earthquake was directly blamed for a loss of ¥22 billion, but that figure could certainly grow as this estimate is only through the end of March. Additionally, Sony has provided a early guess of a ¥14 billion (about $172 million) total cost for the PSN breach. That's less than two bucks per exposed account, but again we wouldn't be surprised if it's a figure that increases through the year.

GROUP PLANNING ANOTHER ROUND OF SONY HACKS

A group of hackers says it is planning another wave of cyberattacks against Sony in retaliation for its handling of the PlayStation Network breach. An observer of the Internet Relay Chat channel used by the hackers told CNET today that a third major attack is planned this weekend against Sony's Web site. The people involved plan to publicize all or some of the information they are able to copy from Sony's servers, which could include customer names, credit card numbers, and addresses, according to the source. The hackers claim they currently have access to some of Sony's servers.

Should the planned attack succeed, it would be the latest blow in a series of devastating security breaches of Sony's servers over the past month. The failure of Sony's server security has ignited investigations by the FBI, the Department of Justice, Congress, and the New York State Attorney General, a well as data security and privacy authorities in the U.K., Canada, and Taiwan.

Several weeks ago the hacker group known as Anonymous targeted several Sony Web sites, including Sony.com and SonyStyle.com, with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in retaliation for what its members saw as Sony's unfair legal action against hacker George Hotz. Two weeks ago Sony's PlayStation Network, along with its Qriocity service and Sony Online, were the target of an attack that exposed the personal information of more than 100 million Sony customers. Sony was forced to shut down PSN, Qriocity, and Sony Online, and is currently working to bring them back online after rebuilding the security of its servers.

Sony says it doesn't know who orchestrated what it's calling a "highly sophisticated, planned" attack, but it has dropped hints that the group Anonymous is involved. Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, told a Congressional subcommittee in a letter yesterday that the intruders on its servers planted a file named "Anonymous" containing the statement "We are Legion," part of the group's tagline.

Anonymous issued a statement yesterday denying it was involved in the PSN breach. "While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our 'leadership' does not condone credit card theft," the statement said.

Now it seems the same group of hackers that was able to infiltrate the PSN servers is planning to hit back against Sony.

Sony has not responded to a request for comment.

SKYPE FOR ANDROID UPDATE FIXES GAPING SECURITY HOLE; ADDS 3G CALLING

Verizon Android users have had 3G Skype calling since this time last year, but the latest app release -- v1.0.0.983 for those of you keeping tabs -- brings 3G calling to the masses, without the need for a VZW-sanctioned app. The update also patches a rather significant security hole discovered last week, which could let third-party apps get hold of your personal information. We're glad to see that's no longer the case, and who's going to object to free calling as part of the deal as well? Make sure your phone's running Android 2.1 (2.2 for Galaxy S devices) and head on over to the Android Market to get updated.

TIVO'S EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER BREACHED

Epsilon, Tivo's email service provider, has been hacked. The breach apparently has compromised the security of some users names and email addresses. A rigorous investigation has concluded that no other personal data was exposed, however it's not just TiVo that's affected -- other big names, such as JPMorgan Chase, Citi, US Bank, Kroger, and Walgreens have also affected by the breach.

If you have subscribed to any of those company's email lists, you may want to consider using a spam filter.