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Epic Hacks of 2012: Fakes, False Rumors and Unfounded Threats

JB

The folks from Wired have inspired us to write an article about the hacks that made a lot of headlines but in the end turned out to be fakes. Yes, we know that 2012 is not over yet and we’ll probably see other fake “epic hacks,” but let’s take a quick look at what has happened so far.



Chronologically, the first – back in February - was the one where Anonymous hackers threatened to take down the entire Internet by attacking the 13 root DNS servers. News websites from all over the world picked up the story and experts started arguing about the validity of their claims, but in the end it turned out to be nothing more than a threat.

At the beginning of June, rumors started circulating that 130 zero-days were leaked from French security firm VUPEN. The company’s CEO and Head of Research Chaouki Bekrar immediately denied the unfounded claims.

Sometime around June 10, UGNazi hackers claimed to have gained access to Google’s Mark Monitor account. This seemed a big deal since the cybercriminals claimed that they could cause a lot of damage to the search engine giant.