Tag: cyber war
Anonymous Hackers Target CEOs in Operation Wall Street
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Anonymous hackers have launched ‘Operation Wall Street’, a new protest started by the loosely organized hactivist collective against the US government, Wall Street and the financial services industry. The operation is a call to all Anonymous “members” and citizens of the world and seeks justice for the “innocent and exploited people being forced into homelessness” [...]
Chinese Hackers Target Bloomberg Journalists in Latest Media Attack
Adam Taylor Business Insider In next week’s Businessweek cover story, investigative reporters Dune Lawrence and Michael Riley take a deep dive on Chinese hackers, coming up with some fascinating details. It’s a big story given the recent accusations about Chinese hackers that have come from the New York Times and other news outlets, and Lawrence and Riley [...]
Anonymous Hackers Release Data for 4000 US Bank Officials
Jeb Boone Global Post Anonymous hackers released user and personal information belonging to 4,000 US community bank executives, in an escalation in their online battle against the US Department of Justice. Anonymous released the security credentials for over 4,000 US bank executives on Monday, posting their user account information, passwords and personal information online [...]
Chinese Hackers Attack NY Times Over Wen Investigation
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Over the past four months, Chinese hackers have penetrated computers belonging to the New York Times and its staff. The hackers appeared to be intent on hunting down and identifying newspaper sources involved in the investigation of a top Chinese leader. China’s Defense Ministry is denying any involvement in [...]
How Cyber Criminals Are Exploiting Our Swipe-n-Go Society
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Curtis Abernathy, a small business owner in Arizona, never expected to be caught up as the victim of an international ring of cyber criminals stealing identities online. But that’s exactly what happened last week when he received a call from Bank of America’s security office. The bank’s security team [...]
‘Red October’ Spy Network Goes Dark Hours After Being Exposed
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer The command and control servers behind the ‘Red October’ espionage network started shutting down only hours after the campaign was exposed by Kapersky Lab last week. The Red October malware campaign targeted governments, embassies and scientific organizations around the world. According to researchers at Kapersky Lab, the spy network [...]
Fatal Cyber-Attacks ‘are Possible and Plausible’
James Hayes The Institute of Engineering and Technology 2013 could be the first year in which cyber-attacks lead to human deaths, a Web security expert has warned. Corey Nachreiner, director of security strategy at security management firm WatchGuard Technologies, argues that the accelerated proliferation of both networked devices and online threats over the next [...]
Chinese Hackers To Blame For One Third of Global Cyberattacks
Michelle Florcruz International Business Times Though the story of computer network attacks by Communist spies sounds like a plot line from a Hollywood action film, a new report has found that one-third of cyberattacks actually originate in China. According to Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), a digital technology platform developer, China accounted for 33 percent of [...]
Anonymous Hackers Have Access to U.S. Government Classified Databases
Catherine Solyom NationalPost Anonymous hackers have keys to the kingdom … The world needs to be concerned. Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, sits atop a hillside in an undisclosed location in Canada, watching a reporter and photographer make their way along a narrow path to join him, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. [...]
U.S. Cyber Command Plans To Increase Workforce By 15%
Amber Corrin FCW.com The Air Force plans to increase its Cyber Command workforce by 15 percent in 2014, according to the Defense Department. Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, said he expects to receive orders next year from U.S. Cyber Command’s leadership to hire roughly 1,000 cyber specialists, mostly civilians. They [...]
Operation “Red October” is Spying on Governments Worldwide
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat.com, Contributing Writer Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a cyber espionage campaign that is targeting diplomatic and government agencies around the world. The campaign has been dubbed “Rocra”, short for “Red October”. As of this writing the malware at the heart of the attack is actively sending data to several command and control (C&C) [...]
Al-Qaeda Linked to New York Phone Hacking Scams
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Hackers with ties to Al-Qaeda terrorist cells in Somalia and the Philippines are targeting New York small businesses using international phone hacking scams. The scams are costing the companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in phone charges each month. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that the hacker group has a [...]
Hacked Phones Could Be Listening To Everything You Say
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Most people believe their phone conversations are private. Well, they may not be as private as you think if your office or home is filled with hacked phones. Researchers at Columbia University have discovered a flaw in telephones that allows a hacker to turn a phone’s microphone into [...]
Evade Government Surveillance Stay Anonymous Online
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Why stay anonymous online? In today’s society there are people and automated devices that are recording your deepest, most private thoughts and activities. Each day we voluntarily divulge the most intimate details of our lives through social networking accounts, email, banking apps, online games and more. In addition, [...]
Warning: Massive Bank Cyber Attacks Are Being Planned
David Goldman CNN Money Security firm McAfee on Thursday released a report warning that massive bank cyber attacks on 30 U.S. banks has been planned, with the goal of stealing millions of dollars from consumers’ bank accounts. McAfee’s research upheld an October report from RSA, the security wing of IT giant EMC Corp. RSA [...]
Cloudflare Selling Flak Jackets To Cyber Warriors
Gerry Shih Reuters – Sidney Morning Herald When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless internet. But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known internet start-up [...]
United States Officials Warned of ‘Cyber 9/11′ Cyber Attack
Cynthia Hodges The Examiner Former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), John “Mike” McConnell said that United States officials have already been warned about a huge potential cyber attack that could have a tremendous negative impact on the country. In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, McConnell said the warnings should [...]
Education is Most Powerful Weapon in Cyber Warfare
Sue Talley Huffington Post If you’ve seen recent headlines about cyber attacks and cyber warfare, you’ve had to consider some troubling questions: How real is the threat? How serious are the consequences? How prepared are we? In a recent speech, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described a dire scenario–a “cyber Pearl Harbor”. He [...]
European Smart Power Grid Targeted By Cyber Attack
Arthur Neslen EurActiv.com A German power utility specialising in renewable energy was hit by a serious cyber attack two weeks ago that lasted five days, knocking its internet communications systems offline, in the first confirmed digital assault against a European grid operator. “It was a DOS (‘Denial Of Service’) attack with a botnet behind [...]
Russian Hackers Demand Ransom For Medical Records
Sara Hicks Yahoo News Russian hackers are holding a Gold Coast medical centre to ransom after encrypting thousands of patient health records. The hackers are demanding a ransom of $4,000 to decrypt the sensitive information held on a server at the Miami Family Medical Centre. IT security expert Nigel Phair says this latest attack [...]
Google’s Vice President Says Chinese Hackers Won’t Stop
Yasmin Tadjdeh National Defense Magazine Charleston, S.C. — The military, the government, the private sector and private citizens are underprepared for growing cyberthreats from Chinese hackers, said a top Google executive. “Security needs to be everybody’s concern, and it needs to be much more pervasive not only in the Defense Department or in the U.S. [...]
What To Do When Your Phone Gets Hacked
Elise Ackerman Forbes What To Do When Your Phone Gets Hacked … My friend Mike’s Android phone had been acting strangely for awhile. In the middle of the night, the phone would come alive. It would meander down various menu paths, send texts that were gibberish and start playing poker. Was it bug in [...]
US to Scan Facebook and Twitter for Evidence of Bioterrorism
Liat Clark Wired Magazine – UK The US department of Homeland Security has commissioned a one-year contract to investigate the efficacy of using social networks to identify instances of bioterrorism, pandemics and other health and security risks. It is paying Accenture Federal Services $3 million (£1.8 million) to scan the networks’ for key words in [...]
CIA Mistress’ Email May Have Been Hacked By Anonymous
Zeke Miller Buzzfeed Paula Broadwell’s personal email appears on a list of compromised accounts, hacked by Anonymous, stolen from the commercial intelligence firm Stratfor. A Yahoo email account belonging to former CIA Director David Petraeus’ mistress may have been compromised by the group Anonymous. The personal email account, which other sources confirmed belongs to the [...]
US Fighting Global Cyber Warfare
Michael Kling Money News The Pentagon is striving to improve the military’s global cyber warfare capabilities — both offensive and defensive abilities — in an effort to prevent an electronic Pearl Harbor. The Army is interested in leading the cyber war effort through its new Army Cyber Command, according to Defense Tech, a military [...]
