Tag: government
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 [...]
6 Military Grade Solutions For Keeping Your Data Safe
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributor Keeping your data safe. It might seem inconvenient, but it should be your primary concern. Whether you work for a three-letter government agency or on top of a roof pounding nails, we all have sensitive information that we want to keep away from prying eyes. These days our most private data is stored on computer hard drives, from passwords [...]
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 [...]
‘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 [...]
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. [...]
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) [...]
M.I.T. Hackers Pay Tribute to Reddit Co-Founder Aaron Swartz
Nicole Perlroth NYTimes Bits Blog Anonymous, the loose collective of hackers, attacked the Web site of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Sunday, in a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old technology programmer who killed himself on Friday. Mr. Swartz, a passionate advocate for the freedom of information, helped create Reddit and RSS technology, [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
Team GhostShell Hacks Pentagon, NASA, Federal Reserve
Ben Weitzenkorn Space.com Members of the Anonymous-affiliated Team GhostShell hacking collective have published what they claim is stolen information for 1.6 million accounts linked to government agencies, including the Pentagon, NASA and the Federal Reserve. The hackers appear to have breached the database with a malicious SQL code injection, ZDNet reported, stealing passwords and [...]
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. [...]
Anonymous Spokesman Barrett Brown Indicted For Sharing Link on IRC
DJ Pangburn Death and Taxes Last week a federal grand jury indicted Barrett Brown, the former self-styled spokesman of Anonymous, on 12 charges relating to the Stratfor hack spearheaded by Jeremy Hammond. One of the charges pertains to Brown sharing a link related to the Stratfor hack. It seems that when Anonymous hacked the [...]
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 [...]
FBI Working 24/7 Tracking Hackers and Cyber Attacks
Emil Protalinski TheNextWeb The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is finally stepping up its game when it comes to tracking hackers. Maybe it was Anonymous that did it or maybe it was statements from the US Secretary of Defense two weeks ago, but either way, the FBI is now hunting hackers 24/7. You’re not the only one who was [...]
Hackers May Be Able To Manipulate Election Results
Ericka Chickowski DarkReading Hackers May Be Able To Manipulate Election Results. As the rest of the nation’s citizens sit on on pins and needles about who will win the presidential election — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney — information security pros are even more anxious in their wait to see whether this is the [...]
Hacked Pacemaker Used For Anonymous Assassination
Jeremy Kirk ComputerWorld IDG News Service – A hacked pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator could be manipulated for an anonymous assassination. Pacemakers from several manufacturers can be commanded to deliver a deadly, 830-volt shock from someone on a laptop up to 50 feet away, the result of poor software programming by medical device companies. The [...]
Hacked Iranian Nuclear Plants Play Heavy Metal Music by AC/DC
Chris Dougherty VirtualThreat Contributing Writer Hacked Iranian Nuclear Plants Play Heavy Metal Music by AC/DC. It seems the Iranian government has been busy retaliating after a barrage of recent cyber attacks targeting the computers within the country’s nuclear program. First there was Stuxnet, a malicious piece of malware that targeted the actual control systems [...]
6 Real Hacker Attacks Straight Out of the Movies
Danny Vittore Cracked.com Hacker attacks: Hollywood thinks that computers run on black magic and hackers are wizards. In movies, computers can blow up houses, shut down highways, release plagues and make Matthew Lillard appealing to women. However, our collective groaning about how laughably unrealistic these movies are may have been premature, because sometimes the real [...]
