Motherboard (part of VICE - which you may know better from their new weekly news show on HBO) has an interesting interview with two hackers - Dragon and PhäntömZ - who run a stresser/booter company called Agony (a stresser/booter is a software or service that allows a user to flood a network). In the Interview the publication talks to the duo about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, botnets, shells, black hat and white hat hackers, Anonymous, CISPA, and more.

The BBC reports that four members of the hacktivist group LulzSec based in the United Kingdom have been sentenced this week. They are Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd. All four pled guilty to various charges either last year or earlier this year.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that 23-year-old Todd M. Miller has been sentenced to one year of house arrest for his part in the 2008 security breach of Sony's PlayStation Network. Miller wasn't convicted on charges directly related to the hacking, but for destroying computers the FBI was interested in investigating related to the crime. Miller was sentenced last week.

At a recent Ubisoft press event to promote its upcoming game Watch Dogs, senior producer Dominic Guay revealed how the company is working hard to make the hacking in the game as authentic as humanly possible. Joystiq covered the press event extensively in this article.

A hacking group is claiming that it has managed to circumvent the copy protection on Nintendo's Wii U. Nintendo is not commenting on the story publicly. According to the group who seems to have no formal group name, they were able to bypass the Wii U's copy protection and play pirated games via USB media. The team claims that it has "completely reversed the Wii U drive authentication, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation key."

Cody "Recursion" Kretsinger, the Lulzsec member who pled guilty last April for his part in hacking the Sony Pictures Entertainment website, has been sentenced to one year in jail, ordered to pay $605,663 in restitution, and perform 1,000 hours of community service.

If you are interested in using some third-party video game hacks that you happened upon in the darker corners of the Internet, then you might want to think twice before using it. According to a report by AVG Viruslab Research Group, almost 90 percent of all video game hacks contain malware, putting gamers’ systems at risk.

Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a Chinese hacking ring that has been breaching the security of and stealing source code and other material from various online games in East Asia, South Korea, Germany, the US, Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, Peru, and Belarus. The security researchers at the company say that this Chinese hacking ring broke into the servers of dozens of online video gaming companies and stole from them over a four year period.

A fourth member of the hacktivist group LulzSec has pled guilty to attacking websites owned by Sony, Nintendo, and News Corp., according to Bloomberg. Ryan Ackroyd entered a guilty plea at a hearing in London today. He will be sentenced on May 14 along with the three other hackers, according to presiding Judge Deborah Taylor.

According to this Gameranx report some hackers in Russia are already playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, despite the fact that it isn't quite out yet. Apparently a group of Russian hackers have discovered an exploit in Ubisoft's uPlay digital distribution service that allows them to download the game without paying for it.

Watchdog and online advocacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology says that the new cyber security bill makes its way through Congress is so badly written that it effectively authorize hacking.

The Zombie survival MMO The War Z has been taken offline after an unknown hacker mucked about in the game's database and compromised personal player data, according to a message from publisher OP Productions. The message, which appears when you try to go to the War Z forums tells players that the game has been taken down and that the hack is being investigated. The publisher also says that those who might have been affected by the hack have been informed.

A mother in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) blames lax security at Microsoft after her 11-year-old son's Xbox Live account was hacked for $300 in fraudulent charges for in-game content. Jennifer Stubbs of Toronto said an unknown hacker charged the FIFA 13 Ultimate in-game buys to her credit card.

"I wasn't aware that these purchases were happening," she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "Someone had gone into our device remotely."

Hot on the heels of an exploit uncovered relating to EA's origin client, another product in the EA family has been found to have a massive security hole. Users playing EA's Battlefield Play4Free game on an older version of Windows can have their PCs hijacked by simply landing on a booby-trapped website, according to this Ars Technica report.

Hackers have targeted an undisclosed number of "high-profile" Xbox LIVE accounts owned by current and former Microsoft employees, according to GII. The hacks are somehow tied to individuals gathering social security numbers.

According to this Ars Technica report a serious bug in the client for EA's Origin digital distribution service could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on players' computers. The attack was demonstrated last week at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, and it apparently only takes a few seconds to execute.

Microsoft says that it had no involvement in the raid of an Australian man who sold a Durango development kit on EBay. The Australian man known only as "SuperDaE" was raided last week for acquiring and selling a Durango development kit. Durango is the code-name for the next Xbox system from Microsoft. Today we learn that Microsoft is denying any involvement in the raid. The company issued the following statement:

In case you didn't get the memo, this week is apparently Gamer Safety Week, according to the Merchant Risk Council's Gamer Safety Alliance. This week marks the second annual awareness campaign to draw attention to gaming account safety with the hope of teaching the community about the ramifications of having their online identity compromised (hint: it's real bad).

Hacktivist group Anonymous continues its assault on various U.S. government websites in retaliation for the prosecution of Reddit co-founder and internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this month. Naked Security reports that Anonymous targeted the website of the US Sentencing Commission with a "Konami Code" that activates an Asteroids-like game and a message:

"PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW! End Prosecutorial Overreach!"

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are pushing lawmakers to pass some sort of cybersecurity bill to protect critical infrastructure in the United States. Both say that waiting much longer could prove to have devastating consequences.

Napolitano said the lawmakers should not wait until we have a "cyber 9/11" to act:

House lawmakers are criticizing federal prosecutors involved with the Aaron Swartz case, who killed himself in New York City after the U.S. Government refused to give the internet activist a plea deal. Earlier in the week the Justice Department officially dropped the case. Lawmakers blasted prosecutors for pushing aggressive hacking charges against Swartz, and vowed to look into the details of the case.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about Anonymous putting forth a DDoS free speech petition to the White House, various violent video game buyback programs (Southington CT. and Melrose, MA.), the video game industry meeting with Vice-President Joe Biden's Gun Violence Commission last week, and a whole lot more. Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 36 (1 hour, 7 minutes) 61.5 MB.

While it might be funny that Anonymous now has a petition up on the official website for the White House, it is doubtful at the Obama Administration finds it all that humorous. The loose-knit Internet hacking collective has taken some time out of its busy schedule of attacking various government agencies and other organizations it hates to launch a petition asking the Administration to make DDoS attacks a form of protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

According to MCV the game servers for Hammerpoint Interactive's The War Z game have been the target of a DDoS attack over the last couple of days. Earlier this week Hammerpoint's Sergey Titov apologized to the community for his comments about fans complaining about the game's lack of promised features, but apparently individuals upset over the online-focused zombie apocalypse game are still angry.

Mutant Mudds and Dementium developer Jools Watsham is concerned about the potential of rampant software piracy on the Nintendo 3DS after a hacker claimed that he (or she?) was able to take full control of the hand-held system, according to Eurogamer.

Hackulous closed its doors for good, according to a report from TorrentFreak. The entire community that catered to offering cracked apps for Apple's iOS devices seems to have unceremoniously died or shut down yesterday. This includes Apptrackr, the web-based partner index for cracked apps; and Installous, an app used by millions to transfer those cracked apps to iOS devices.

On December 16, S2 Games issued an alert via its forums letting users of its online game Heroes of Newerth know that a "password security breach had occurred," and that users should change their passwords.

In Episode 29 of the Super Podcast Action Committee hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the shaky launch of the Wii U console over the weekend, Sony perma-bans for PS3 'hackers,' and the good and bad side of Electronic Arts. It's a show to remember unless you stopped that Wii U firmware update - then it's a painful reminder that getting your brand new console 'bricked' kind of sucks! Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 29 (1 hour, 19 minutes) 73 MB.

According to this EA forum thread, some Origin users are claiming that their accounts are being hijacked. Customers claiming that their accounts are being hijacked are receiving emails from EA informing them that their email address and password have been "successfully updated" even though they themselves have not attempted to update any of their account settings.

Sony has begun taking steps to secure the PlayStation Network to deal with the threat of the PS3 lv0 boot loader key leak and the ability for hacked consoles to play online alongside legitimate users.