Hacker arrests spur attacks on banks, politicians.

• Position: CYBERCRIME

In August, a group of hackers calling itself Team GhostShell published more than 1 million hacked records as part of "Project HellFire." The hacks are the "final form of protest this summer against the banks, politicians and for all the fallen hackers this year," according to a statement from the team.

The attacks occurred shortly after the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it had arrested a LulzSec hacker, 20-year-old Raynaldo Riviera, for attacks against Sony Pictures. If convicted, Riviera could be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail for attacking Sony Pictures.com's database in June 2011. Another LulzSec hacker, 24-year-old Cody Kretsinger, pleaded guilty to his role in the attack four months earlier.

LulzSec stole passwords, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of more than 1 million SonyPictures. com usersf. Sony took a much bigger hit in April when it sustained attacks on its PlayStation Network, which cost the company $171 million and took the network offline for 77 million members for six weeks.

Team GhostShell hit more than 100 sites worldwide, including real estate agencies, weapons dealers, police departments, and banks. Just how much data was stolen is hard to say. However, security firm Imperva's Director of Security Strategy Rob Rachwald called it "a pretty significant breach." Imperva was hired to analyze the data and told CNET that some of the breached databases contained more than 30,000 records.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The hackers primarily used SQL injection attacks, which are common techniques that exploit security vulnerabilities in website software. Through the injected code, the hacker can change the website's database content or, perhaps, instruct the system to dump database information, like credit card numbers or passwords, to the attacker.

In the Team GhostShell attack, the hackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in a content management system across...