Bill Gates addresses cybersecurity threats, then gets hacked

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stopped by the Washington Post today and spoke about his support for addressing the threats of cybersecurity.

Coincidentally, Gates today became the latest celebrity to have his credit card, social security and other information posted online as part of an ongoing celebrity doxxing fiasco.

Gates’ SSN, date of birth, address and credit card info were posted to a mysterious website that has been publishing the personal data of various celebrities from Michelle Obama to Tiger Woods.

The hackers seem to be pulling data from one of three big credit reporting companies: Experian, Equifax or TransUnion.

President Barack Obama told ABC News Tuesday that U.S. authorities are looking into the matter.

“We should not be surprised that if we’ve got hackers that want to dig in and have a lot of resources, that they can access this information,” Obama told ABC News. “Again, not sure how accurate but … you’ve got websites out there that tell people’s credit card info. That’s how sophisticated they are.”

South Korea on alert after hackers strike banks, broadcasters

A customer stands in front of automated teller machines at a branch of Shinhan Bank in Seoul after the bank's computer networks were paralyzed by hackers Wednesday.

SEOUL -- South Korean police were investigating a hacking attack on an Internet provider that brought down the servers of three broadcasters and two major banks on Wednesday, and the army raised its alert level due to concerns of North Korean involvement.
The network provided by LG UPlus Corp. showed a page that said it had been hacked by a group calling itself the "Whois Team," an unknown group. It featured three skulls and a warning that this was the beginning of "Our Movement."
Servers at television networks YTN, MBC and KBS were affected as well as Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank, both major financial institutions, police and government officials said.
"We sent down teams to all affected sites. We are now assessing the situation. This incident is pretty massive, and it will take a few days to collect evidence," a police official said

Police and government officials declined to speculate on whether North Korea, which has threatened to attack both South Korea and the United States after it was hit with United Nations sanctions for its February nuclear test, was behind the cyber attack. North Korea has in the past staged cyberattacks on the world's most wired country, targeting conservative newspapers, banks and government institutions.
South Korea's military said it was not affected but raised its state of readiness in response.
None of South Korea's oil refineries, power stations, ports or airports was affected.
The biggest attack by Pyongyang was a 10-day denial of service attack in 2011 that antivirus firm McAfee, part of Intel Corp, dubbed "Ten Days of Rain" and which it said was a bid to probe the South's computer defenses in the event of a real conflict.
Shinhan Bank, one of the financial institutions affected, said its servers were back up by 4 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).

Chase denies hacking in vanishing balances

 Chase Bank experienced technical difficulties for over an hour Monday night, worrying customers who logged into their accounts and saw their balance at $0 or were unable to get any access to them at all.
A spokesman for the bank said it was strictly an internal technical issue and customers' accounts were not in danger.
"The problems are an issue with the checking account portion of chase.com, nothing to do with mortgage or credit banking. We have a technology problem regarding customers balance information that we are working to resolve," the spokesman to CBS News. "It has nothing to do with cyber threats or hacks. It is an internal issue. We are very sorry to our customers for the inconvenience."
Within two hours, the bank tweeted that the issue was resolved. Customers reported seeing their balances once again.

Still, hundreds of Chase users expressed their frustration on Twitter and Facebook. Many reported seeing their account balances listed as "$0" on mobile devices, while others said they got a "System Unavail" message when logged into the bank's website on their computers.
The hacking collective "Anonymous" said they were responsible for the vanishing balances on Twitter, but there is no evidence supporting their claim.
As CNET's Steven Musil notes, the scare was only natural given that the disappearing balances occurred "less than a week after a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack rendered Chase's Web sites useless for many hours." In that case, customers trying to use chase.com's banking tools were greeted with a note that the site was "temporarily down."