The haven't gotten away with it, however, as Brazil has been trying to crack down on illegal logging. Now there are 107 companies being sued for $833 million. In addition, 202 people are facing prosecution, including 30 "ringleaders" who brought the hackers and logging companies together.

Essentially what they did was falsify transportation permits. The Brazilian system is set up so that companies receive permits to transport their felled trees. The load is measured and that amount of wood is deducted from the total amount allowed. Once a company reaches its quota, it can’t get more permits and therefore can’t make more money by cutting down trees. However, hiring hackers got them around the system for long enough to do some big illegal damage.

We'll see if anything actually happens in court to stop this practice. [Greenpeace via Treehugger]

The question was: Where did you meet your spouse? A fact that is readily available in the now flooded stream of Palin info on the web—they met in high school, and that's all it took to start the shitstorm. The 4chan post also further illustrates that the whole thing was done by someone well over their head:

yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Read the complete post over at Wired, and pick up an excellent primer to making sure your email and other online accounts are as secure as possible with this great guide by our friends at Lifehacker. [Threat Level, Lifehacker]

You see, it appears that the hacker(s) used the proxy Ctunnel.com to access the account. Smart move, using a proxy! What was less smart was including the entire address in your screenshots, as that kind of defeats the purpose of using a proxy. Says Ctunnel.com owner Gabriel Ramuglia:

Usually, this sort of thing would be hard to track down because it’s Yahoo email, and a lot of people use my service for that. Since they were dumb enough to post a full screen shot that showed most of the [Ctunnel.com] URL, I should be able to find that in my log.

Oops! If the hacker in question wasn't doing his work from an internet café or using a second anonymizing service, it shouldn't be tough to track them down. And since this was definitely a federal offense, anonymous might be getting a little less anonymous in the not-too-distant future. [The Register via Boy Genius]

Using his own computer at home in London, McKinnon hacked into 97 computers belonging to and used by the U.S. government between February 2001 and March 2002.

McKinnon is accused of causing the entire U.S. Army's Military District of Washington network of more than 2,000 computers to be shut down for 24 hours.

Using a limited 56-kbps dialup modem and the hacking name "Solo" he found many U.S. security systems used an insecure Microsoft Windows program with no password protection.

He then bought off-the-shelf software and scanned military networks, saying he found expert testimonies from senior figures reporting that technology obtained from extra-terrestrials did exist.

At the time of his indictment, Paul McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said: "Mr. McKinnon is charged with the biggest military computer hack of all time."

He's currently awaiting extradition to the United States where, if convicted, he'll face up to 70 years in jail and up to $1.75 million in fines. Let us know about that alien technology first, Gary! [Valleywag]

The loophole involved the tiny payments that online payment services and brokerages send to new user accounts to verify that they're real. While getting four cents from PayPal might not seem like a big deal to you, Michael Largent decided to create a script to automatically open 58,000 of these accounts. Unfortunately for him, the companies caught on to his scheme and he's currently out on bail on charges of wire, bank and mail fraud.

The funny thing is, he's not in trouble for taking the money. It was being given out freely, after all. He's in trouble for using fake names and social security numbers to open the accounts.

If only Milton would go burn down the Googleplex in retaliation for Sergey Brin taking his stapler, destroying the evidence of your crime, you could escape these charges! [PC Pro via Slashdot]

China poking around our networks and us doing the same to theirs is nothing new, but the fact that they were able to actually take down an internal network has caused some alarm at the Pentagon. It's proof that network security in the government isn't quite what it should be, as an attack such as this at a critical time could prove disastrous. As far as I'm concerned, they can take down internal Pentagon networks all they want as long as they leave the parts of the internet I use alone. Don't mess with my Facebook profile, China! [Techworld]

There's certainly a chance that this is a 6GB prank by some cruel jerk who wants to ruin a whole lot of thieving fanboys' day, but it could just as likely be the real deal. And if it is, look for a whole slew of Leopard screenshots in the very near future. Huzzah for the pink underbelly of the Internet! –Adam Frucci

WWDC Leopard Beta Leaked Onto BitTorrent Site [Crunchgear]