In the 2006 attacks on the DHS systems, hackers often took over computers late at night or early in the morning, "exfiltrating" or copying and sending out data over hours -- in one case more than five hours, according to evidence collected by the committee.
Test attacks designed to take over computers running the resulting machine code always failed.
Attackers can easily take over computers located somewhere else, and use them to launch an attack.
While hacktivist collectives like Anonymous seem to be getting the most attention, regular old black-hat hackers continue to quietly steal money and take over computers around the world.
In recent weeks, computer security experts have come to believe that malicious hackers have developed tools to take over computers using the Unix operating system through a vulnerability in a nearly ubiquitous computer communications protocol known as SSH.
Its Web site was knocked out by a distributed denial of service attack, in which malicious hackers take over computers on the Internet and cause them to flood a target site with spurious demands for data and other small tasks.
The people who design rogue programs that take over computers from afar are now applying the tactic that made music pirating programs so effective -- and the Internet may never be the same.
Even the text-only version which I used (for the real hacker experience, naturally) lets you take over computers with just a few keystrokes; the full paid-for software adds a graphical user interface which can let you seize someone's laptop with the click of a button.
Once they grabbed the Trojan Horse, the infected program took over computer after computer, creating something security experts call a botnet – a collection of infected machines controlled by a central command and control unit (CnC).
Meanwhile, it has come to light that an unconfirmed group of Russian hackers took over computers at an electricity control center to plunge parts of the city of Kiev into darkness.
The trojan is able to carry out many tasks, he added, but taking over computers for Bitcoin mining appears to be its primary function.
