Security experts also warn that a growing volume of sophisticated hacker attacks take information gleaned from social-networking profiles to trick people with convincing targeted messages.
New firms are even actively infiltrating and gathering information from hacker and cyber criminal forums.
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An enterprising PII (personally identifying information) hacker can harvest enough identifying coordinates to file an early tax return in the name of a victim, and swipe the refund.
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One of the most common styles of attack on small businesses targets credit-card information that a hacker can sell or use to make fraudulent purchases.
The alleged hacker is also accused of using personal information to commit identity theft.
The charging documents say a hacker identified as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room to access the Times' computer system.
The charging documents say a hacker identified as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room to access the Times' web system and alter a headline on a December 2010 story.
Kevin Bong, a Wisconsin-based security researcher and penetration tester, has developed what he calls the Mini Pwner, a spy computer smaller than a smartphone designed to be inconspicuously plugged into an ethernet port to gain access to a corporate network, feeding information back to a nearby hacker over its wifi signal.
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Some joked about whether Treyarch was making Anonymous, the real-life hacker group dedicated to promoting free flow of information, the game's main villain.
But Foley said Monday that the department has "no information that there actually was a hacker" who gained access to the two computers.
According to a federal indictment handed down last month, a hacker identified only as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room to alter a headline on a December 2010 Times story to reference another hacking group.
According to a federal indictment handed down last month, a hacker identified only as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room and altered a headline on a December 2010 Times story to reference another hacking group.
PageOnce, available to US residents, remains the safest online service for bill-paying and managing personal accounts, partly because it does not store your checking account details, so no hacker can potentially come in and steal the information to drain your savings.
In October of 2008 one of these networks was mapped out when a hacker named Neon broke into a computer housing accounting information for a Russian company called Bakasoftware.
According to blogger Brian Krebs, a group of hackers have eviscerated an underground hacker forum by posting database dumps of their private information and communication, including email addresses and private messages sent between users.
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If the alleged hacker(s) acted alone to break in and obtain the information from PricewaterhouseCoopers, rather than discovering the information, that break-in would of course be considered a criminal act.
Last month, a hacker broke into the personal Google accounts of Twitter employees, stealing personal information and company financial reports and posting them online.
In a bizarre twist the hacker directed investigators to Enoshima, an island off Tokyo, and gave them information that led them to a cat wearing a collar on which was a memory card.
Residents of the South Carolina learned about the vulnerability of their state computer systems the hard way, after a hacker operating from a foreign IP address gained access to a computer that stored taxpayer information.
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Mr Mutton said that questions about the hacker's identity had only partially been answered when they posted to the Pastebin website details of the information used to perpetrate the attack.
Sony has yet to offer more information on how its breach occurred or who might be responsible, although it has controversially hinted that the hacker collective Anonymous may be behind the attack.
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