AP - A hacker claims to have compromised the personal information of more than 350,000 users after breaking into a disused website operated by pornography provider Brazzers.

Kate Miller, director of communications for site owner Manwin Holding SARL, said on Saturday it was "currently investigating the issue" but that no credit card information has been leaked.

Miller said it appeared that the hacker had gained access to an inactive forum to help enter other, linked websites.

She said she couldn't put a figure on the number of people potentially affected and declined to say whether customers were being warned of the breach, citing security reasons.

In an email, she said that security was "a priority at all times" and that the company would do all it could to safeguard its users' information.

The email went on to blame the hacker for "illegal and prohibited cyber criminal activities".

The breach is a potential embarrassment for Luxembourg-based Manwin, which runs some of the world's best-known pornography websites.

A small sample of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of user data allegedly compromised were posted to the internet earlier this week.

Emails, usernames and encrypted passwords were divulged, and in some cases it was possible to infer users' full names and country of origin.

The hacker claiming responsibility for the breach told The Associated Press that he carried out the attack to draw attention to the site's vulnerability.

"I didn't do that for any money," he said in an email.

He identified himself only as a 17-year-old living in Morocco and claimed allegiance to Anonymous, the global movement of cyber-mischief-makers who have carried out embarrassing attacks on record companies, the Church of Scientology, and the FBI.

 Forbes reported that “CIA TANGO DOWN” reads an Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account. It’s military-speak for eliminating a hostile force that has infilitrated hacker circles as an announcement of a successful attack.

CIA.gov was taken down Friday afternoon, and Anonymous hackers seem to be taking credit for the latest in a series of high-profile internet attacks that have included the FBI, Foxconn, the State of Alabama, the Boston Police, the Oakland Police, and many more.

The CIA probably doesn’t store much classified information on its website, but even symbolic attacks like this continue to give the impression that Anonymous is running unchecked.

Tensions have been running high between law enforcement and hacker groups due to the controversy concerning controversial copyright legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, TPP and ACTA, as well as crackdowns on Occupy protests. The new year has been an especially volatile time in what seems to be an escalating war for the internet, and there aren’t any signs that either side will be relenting any time soon.

Record-breaking floods have sparked a disaster declaration in Queensland's southwest, with the premier warning the region has entered dangerous new territory.




The flood threat in the inland town of Roma is worsening rapidly, with waters rising a metre in an hour, Maranoa mayor Robert Loughnan told the ABC.

He said he had called in helicopters to winch some residents to safety and people should immediately abandon low-lying areas.

"The time for sandbagging has gone," he said. "We need to get people out of those low-lying areas right now."



Swift-water rescuers are searching for an adult and a child believed to have been swept away in a car on Northern Road at Roma.

The town is facing its worst flood since March 2010, when water entered about 200 homes, and the Bungil Creek is expected to peak on Friday night above the 2010 level of 8.1 metres.

Premier Anna Bligh has declared a state of disaster.

The State Disaster Co-ordination Centre is managing the response, and Queensland Police Service Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart has been appointed state disaster co-ordinator.

"Ian Stewart was at my side during last year's natural disasters, and as the emergency unfolds in the southwest it is heartening to have him in the position again," she said.

Meanwhile, the Maranoa River at Mitchell is expected to peak at 10 metres on Friday night, a new record.

St George and other towns are facing damaging flood peaks on Saturday and Sunday.

"We are in new territory here, the water coming through is breaking records for this region," Ms Bligh said.

"I have been in direct contact with mayors and the situation is unfolding. I will visit these regions as soon as it is safe and practicable to do so."

Judy Barclay, a long-time resident of Roma, said she was watching the flood waters rise, but refused to leave her home.

"The water has broken the banks of the creek but it hasn't spread up as far as me yet," she told AAP.

"I'm too old to evacuate. I'm going to stay put with my dog - he can't be evacuated because they can't take dogs.

"We've all been through this before and I think that probably helps, knowing that you do get over it, you do get through it."

The president of the Roma Chamber of Commerce, Cameron O'Neil, says residents are banding together and the mood is positive, despite three floods in as many years.

"The community spirit's high," Mr O'Neil told AAP.

"People are getting in behind their friends and neighbours and helping."

Jacqui Burns, who has lived in Roma for only six months, says her home should be OK but many people are nervous.

"There's a lot of sandbagging going on.

"We've just put the word out to people that if anybody needs anywhere to go they can come and lob on our doorstep."

Anne Hatcher said her husband's medical practice has had a steady stream of patients all day and the spirit of the town is unbroken.

"People are fantastic - they're bushies," she said.

The entire town of Mitchell has been blacked out.

Half the town lost power because of a fault in the system and supply was cut to the rest as a safety precaution.

Once the flood drops, homes that have had water through them will have to be inspected before power can be restored.

In Roma nearly 360 homes have been disconnected because the expected speed of the rising water could stop crews getting in later on. People in flood boats have been warned to remember they will be closer to power lines as they move around.

Two remote communities that have been cut off in the Gulf of Carpentaria are being resupplied by Emergency Management Queensland (EMQ), which is flying in essential food and medicine.

More than two tonnes of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, medical supplies and other essentials will be airlifted into Doomadgee and almost as much will go to Burketown.
Two commercial aircraft have been chartered and will make up to nine flights from an airstrip at Gregory, about 60km south of Burketown.

AAP

An international team of scientists has discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star — the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it, the scientists say.

With an orbital period of about 28 days and a minimum mass 4.5 times that of the Earth, the planet orbits within the star’s “habitable zone,” where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface.

The researchers found evidence of at least one and possibly two or three additional planets orbiting the star, which is about 22 light years from Earth.

The team includes UC Santa Cruz astronomers Steven Vogt and Eugenio Rivera and was led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Their work will be published by Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The host star, called GJ 667C, is a member of a triple-star system (GJ 667AB) and has a different makeup than our sun, with a much lower abundance of elements heavier than helium, such as iron, carbon, and silicon. This discovery indicates that potentially habitable planets can occur in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.

GJ 667C is an M-class dwarf star. The other two stars in the triple-star system are a pair of orange K dwarfs, with a concentration of heavy elements only 25 percent that of our sun’s. Such elements are the building blocks of terrestrial planets, so it was thought to be less likely for metal-depleted star systems to have an abundance of low-mass planets.

“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy,” said Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. “The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”


Best candidate to support liquid water and life

The planet (GJ 667Cc) has an orbital period of 28.15 days and a minimum mass of 4.5 times that of Earth. It receives 90 percent of the light that Earth receives. However, because most of its incoming light is in the infrared, a higher percentage of this incoming energy should be absorbed by the planet. When both these effects are taken into account, the planet is expected to absorb about the same amount of energy from its star that the Earth absorbs from the sun.
“This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it,” Anglada-Escudé said.
The team found that the system might also contain a gas-giant planet and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days. However, further observations are needed to confirm these two possibilities.
“With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds,” said Anglada-Escudé, who was with Carnegie when he conducted the research, but has since moved on to the University of Gottingen.


Ref.: Guillem Anglada-Escudé, et al., A planetary system around the nearby M dwarf GJ 667C with at least one super-Earth in its habitable zone, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2012;

London: Dolphins are more intelligent than you thought. They are multilingual -- at least in their sleep, scientists have found.

A team at University of Rennes claims to have recorded captive dolphins at an acquatic park in France talking in their sleep -- in fact, the aquatic mammals have been found to be making whale-like noises, and not dolphin sounds.

In their study, the scientists focussed on five dolphins -- Peos, Mininos, Cecil, Teha, and Amtan -- who were born in captivity and have only ever heard whale sounds as recordings, media reports said.

According to the scientists, if the sounds are confirmed to be "whale", it'll be the first known instance of dolphins remembering a particular noise and repeating it "later".

For their research, the team hung underwater microphones in the tank of the five dolphins who perform everyday at the French aquatic park Planete Sauvage.

The unusual noises -- which make up just one per cent of all the sounds recorded -- strongly resemble whale song and occur only during "rest periods", mainly between midnight and 3 am, a newspaper reported.

The scientists recruited 20 volunteers to compare dolphin whistles and whale songs and found the dophin's "whale" is so good that listeners mistook it for real whale song 72 per cent of the time. The noises suggest that the dolphins could be practising their daily shows in their minds at night.

Martine Hausberger, who led the team, told the 'Science' magazine: "The shows are a really special time in the day, because the dolphins are rewarded for their performance. There are lots of things they could mimic but don't... It's really remarkable the only mimicry (we) found was this one."

The recordings are "the first report of mimicries of sounds heard during special events produced by dolphins in a resting/sleeping context", the researchers wrote in 'Frontiers in Comparative Psychology' journal.

"This finding opens very large perspectives for future investigations on dolphin learning processes and 'mental representations'," they added.

PTI