AMD attackers continue hacking spree, target Phillips

The R00tbeer Security Team hacking collective is hell-bent on making a name for themselves on the Internet.

Following the hack of AMD’s official blog and discussion forum The Botting Network and the leaking of exfiltrated user information, the group has struck again less than two days later.

This time the targets were Dutch electronics company Philips and UK student community The Student Room.

The hackers have managed to get their hands on several small SQL databases containing some 200,000 email addresses and a few thousand user records (names, telephone numbers, addresses, passwords and password hashes) belonging to the former.

Sophos’ Paul Ducklin has analyzed the dumped information and found that some 400 passwords were stored in plain text, and other poorly hashed and not salted.

The passwords are predictably poor, but there is no doubt they should have been better protected. The leaked database of email addresses will surely be used for spamming.

The hackers have also released a zipped 86 MB file supposedly containing information about 720 000+ users of The Student Room.

Some of the files have been taken down by MediaFire, where they were stored and offered for download, but the hackers have returned with new links to the files.