Category Archives: Cyberwar/attacks

Anonymous hacker behind Stratfor attack faces life in prison

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RT:

Published: 23 November, 2012, 22:17

Jeremy Hammond (AFP Photo / Chicago Police Department)

Jeremy Hammond (AFP Photo / Chicago Police Department)

A pretrial hearing in the case against accused LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond this week ended with the 27-year-old Chicago man being told he could be sentenced to life in prison for compromising the computers of Stratfor.

Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday that he could be sentenced to serve anywhere from 360 months-to-life if convicted on all charges relating to last year’s hack of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence company whose servers were infiltrated by an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

Hammond is not likely to take the stand until next year, but so far has been imprisoned for eight months without trial. Legal proceedings in the case might soon be called into question, however, after it’s been revealed that Judge Preska’s husband was a victim of the Stratfor hack.

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Canada should heed warnings of ‘cyber Pearl Harbor,’ security experts say

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H/T Shab

from Canada.Com

By Jordan Press, Postmedia News October 12, 2012 9:01 PM
U.S. Air Force personnel in the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center on July 20, 2010. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)

U.S. Air Force personnel in the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center on July 20, 2010. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)

OTTAWA — The escalating threat of cyber attacks requires a rethink in the government’s security priorities, experts and opposition critics said Friday in the wake of a stark warning from the American defense secretary about potentially devastating Internet-based threats.

Leon Panetta warned his own nation Thursday that businesses needed to better protect their own systems, as does government, to prevent a “cyber Pearl Harbor” – a cataclysmic cyber attack that would take down large parts of North American networks and be more devastating than the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Panetta’s warning comes after concerns raised earlier this week in Canada about potential Chinese spying through state-backed telecommunications firm Huawei, and the country’s ability to secure information after Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle admitted he took secrets from a secure facility using a USB key.

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Web attacks on big US banks originated in Iran, unconfirmed reports say

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H/T TL

ARSTechnica:

 Two reports say a series of denial-of-service attacks were launched from Iran.

by – Sept 21 2012, 7:30pm EDT

Iranians have mounted a series of denial-of-service attacks over the past year that target major US banks and other companies, according to two published reports that cite unnamed US officials.

The reports, published on Friday by The Washington Post and Reuters, came a few days after websites for both Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase experienced unexplained service disruptions. US Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said on Friday that he believes a unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind the disruptions, but provided no evidence to support the claim. Neither bank has confirmed that the disruptions were the result of attacks, so it’s possible equipment failure or other internal causes are responsible.

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Saudis attempt to block Vatican plan for .catholic web addresses

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Telegraph.Uk

 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has attempted to block a Vatican bid to create new web addresses ending in .catholic, arguing that it “cannot demonstrate that it possesses a monopoly over the term ‘Catholic’”.

Pope John Paul II performed an exorcism on a

The Vatican wants to create .catholic web addresses Photo: ALAMY

By , Technology Correspondent

3:10PM BST 14 Aug 2012

The objection is one of more than 160 sent by the Saudis to ICANN, the body in charge of web addresses, over its plan to allow hundreds of new “top-level domains” to supplement .com, .co.uk and other existing suffixes.

“Many other Christians use the term ‘Catholic’ to refer more broadly to the whole Christian Church regardless of denominational affiliation,” the Saudi Communication and Information Technology Commission said in its complaint.

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Team Poison’ hacker who posted Tony Blair’s details is jailed

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Telegraph.Uk

 A hacker who stole Tony Blair’s personal details and bombarded the anti-terrorism hotline with calls was jailed for six months today.

Team Poison: the interview

Photo: ALAMY

2:17PM BST 27 Jul 2012

Junaid Hussain, 18, put the sensitive information on the internet for all to see after accessing former special advisor Katy Kay’s e-mail account and copying her contacts.

His barrister claimed his crimes were no worse than the antics of Bullingdon Club members.

Using the online alias ‘Trick’, Hussain posted phone numbers and addresses, as well as the ex-PM’s email address and National Insurance number.

Other data related to his wife Cherie, sister-in-law Lyndsey Booth, his children and friends, as well as sitting MPs and Lords.

Hussain also bombarded the national anti-terror hotline with prank calls, leaving the numbers ‘permanently engaged’ after calling it 111 times in three days.

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Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

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I wonder who leaked this? And so close to an election…

New York Times:

By
 WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.
Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press

Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.

Multimedia
Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.  

 

Site changes, comments and spam

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Because of the number of spam comments and spam link backs I have been getting, so many in fact that it was tantamount to an attack of sorts, I have installed a new system for comments on the site. Some of you have already figured it out and are using it and I thank you for that. But I should probably explain it anyway.

I dislike captcha. I have to squint like hell to see the words, such as they are, and I get it wrong often several times in a row sometimes just giving up on it. This seems easier and as effective as captcha and almost ‘fun’ in a facile way. So please after you post your comment look under the edit field you typed in, and solve the little puzzle thingy and then it will be posted right away.

This will save me litterally an hour or more a day of clicking and sorting fake from real.

Thanks for your understanding and continued patronage.

Eeyore

‘Anonymous hackers’ arrested in police swoops

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Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of guys.

From The Independent

(H/T Sheik Yermami)

25 suspected members of the Anonymous hacker movement have been arrested in police raids across Europe and South America.

International police agency Interpol said the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain were carried out by officers working under the support of Interpol’s Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime.

The suspects, aged between 17 and 40, are believed to have planned co-ordinated cyber-attacks against institutions including Colombia’s defence ministry and presidential websites, Chile’s Endesa electricity company and national library, as well as other targets.

Yesterday’s arrests followed an investigation in mid-February which also led to the seizure of 250 items of IT equipment and mobile phones in searches of 40 premises in 15 cities, Interpol said.

Police in Spain announced the arrest of four suspected Anonymous hackers in connection with attacks on Spanish political party websites. These four were among the 25 announced by Interpol.

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Meanwhile, someone did a great parody (no idea who) on ‘Anonymous’ threatening another big scary geopolitical entity, Gilligan’s Island

Anonymous might get you thrown in jail

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From European Son.

Has the internet protest movement Anonymous gone too far? Well, let’s put it this way: according to media reports, Anonymous’s new online campaign uses spamming. Worse still, click on an innocent looking link from a friend, and you might go to jail. Ignorance, it turns out, is no defense when it comes to “cyber war.”

Frankly, it’s time the authorities shut Anonymous down.

Perhaps it started innocently enough, with people protesting Scientology while wearing the Guy Fawkes mask as seen in the movie V for Vendetta.

A loose network of “hactivists,” Anonymous has supported Wikileaks and democracy protests in the Middle East. But it’s also attempted to hack Facebook — and promises to achieve that goal this year, and to steal account information along with it. And, it also recently hacked the security info site, Stratfor, stealing bank account numbers and cash from those accounts, which it then gave to charities, we’re told.

As European Son reported in November 2011, one Anonymous group also attacked Muslim Brotherhood websites. Anti-MB types might applaud, but the Anonymous hactivists also accused the MB of copying Freemasonry. Whenever you hear “Freemasonry”mentioned in Islamic or Middle Eastern circles you know that the speakers have absorbed the “Zionist Masonic” conspiracy theory of the… read more.

Iran, Venezuela Plotting Attacks “Worse than 9/11”

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From Stonegate:

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci
January 13, 2012 at 4:30 am

Tensions are mounting between the U.S. and Venezuela as the State Department decided to expel Livia Acosta Noguera, the Venezuelan consul in Miami, declaring her “persona non grata.” The Venezuelan consul was implicated in an alleged plot to launch cyber attacks on U.S. nuclear power facilities. The decision was taken as a direct result of the revelations made by the documentary The Iranian Threat, aired by the U.S Spanish language channel Univision.

In the film, the Venezuelan consul was caught on camera backing Iranian-sponsored cyber-attack against U.S. targets in 2007, when she was vice-secretary in the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico. According to the documentary, these cyber-attacks would be “worse than 9-11.” The State Department did not want to comment on this decision. However, a U.S. high official stated that this expulsion is a serious issue, as “we do not take it lightly when we declare somebody persona non grata.”

Before the expulsion, four members of the Congress — Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican), Mario Diaz-Balart (Republican), David Rivera (Republican) and Albio Sires (Democrat) — wrote a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, expressing their “grave concern” over the “diplomatic credentials” of the Venezuelan Consul. “According to a documentary by Univision Network titled ‘The Iranian Threat‘ […] [the Venezuelan consul] interacted with members from the Iranian and Cuban embassies and with students posing as extremists […] in order to coordinate a cyber attack against the United States Government and our critical infrastructure systems at the White House, FBI, and CIA. If true, these actions demonstrate [Venezuelan consul’s] willingness to undermine U.S. interests and potential threat to our national security posed by [Venezuelan consul’s] activities. With this is mind, we respectfully request the Department of State to investigate these allegations, and if found true, declare her a persona non grata and require her immediate departure from the United States,” they wrote.

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Hackers set to publish stolen emails after Stratfor breach

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The National Post:

  Dec 27, 2011 – 6:56 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 27, 2011 8:09 PM ET

Youtube

Youtube

In the past year, hacker group Anonymous has launched attacks on companies perceived to be enemies of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

  • Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous group said they are getting ready to publish emails stolen from private intelligence analysis firm Strategic Forecasting Inc, whose clients include the U.S. military, Wall Street banks and other corporations.

Strategic Forecasting Inc, which is also known as Stratfor, disclosed over the weekend that its website had been hacked and that some information about its corporate subscribers had been made public.

The hacking group known as Antisec has claimed responsibility for the attack and promised to cause “mayhem” by releasing stolen documents.

Antisec has already published what it claims are the names of thousands of corporate and government customers, as well as email addresses, passwords and credit card numbers of individual subscribers to its services. Customers on the list published by Antisec include Bank of America, Exxon Mobil Corp, Goldman Sachs & Co, Interpol, Thomson Reuters, the U.S. military and the United Nations. Continue Reading →

STRATFOR Hacked by ‘anonymous’

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As much as I think ‘anonymous’ are a cross between spoiled children and terrorists, making quasi or under-informed judgments about the world then applying their ‘skills’ at thievery and destruction and vandalism on whoever’s property on the internet and information they decide doesn’t meet their personal criteria of whatever it is that they use as a standard, I think STRATFOR owes a lot of us an apology for sloppy security at their own site, and not informing us directly by email.

I think I shall have to cancel my subscription.

 

U.S. authorities probing alleged cyberattack plot by Venezuela, Iran

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Washington Times:

U.S. officials are investigating reports that Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats in Mexico were involved in planned cyberattacks against U.S. targets, including nuclear power plants.

Allegations about the cyberplot were aired last week in a documentary on the Spanish-language TV network Univision, which included secretly recorded footage of Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats being briefed on the planned attacks and promising to pass information to their governments.

A former computer instructor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico told Univision that he was recruited by a professor there in 2006 to organize a group of student hackers to carry out cyberattacks against the United States, initially at the behest of the Cuban Embassy.

In an undercover sting, instructor Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo and several selected students infiltrated the hackers and secretly videotaped the Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats.

Reports about Iran’s involvement in the suspected plot come amid the Islamic republic’s refusal to return a sophisticated, unmanned U.S. spy plane that crashed inside its borders this month. Iranian officials have laid claim to the drone, vowing to research it for its technology.

Calling the reports “disturbing,” State Department spokesman William Ostick said federal authorities are examining the cyberplot allegations but added that U.S. officials “don’t have any information at this point to corroborate them.”

Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, called for hearings in the new year about Iranian activities in Latin America.

Some House lawmakers called for the expulsion of a Venezuelan diplomat in the U.S. who is implicated in the suspected plot.

The Univision documentary fanned fears among lawmakers that Iran’s recent diplomatic outreach in the region, particularly to Venezuela’s anti-American leftist President Hugo Chavez, might be a front for nefarious activities.

Earlier this year, U.S. prosecutors charged an Iranian official based in Tehran with trying to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States by bombing a Washington restaurant.

“If Iran is using regional actors to facilitate and direct activities against the United States, this would represent a substantial increase in the level of the Iranian threat and would necessitate an immediate response,” Mr. Menendez said.

An aide to Mr. Menendez told The Times that the Univision report, which also said that Iranian extremists were recruiting young Latin American Muslims, is “one of a variety of concerns we have about Iran’s efforts to engage with countries and other actors in the region.”

Next year’s hearing will examine Iran’s “political and commercial outreach, as well as more nefarious activities,” the aide said.

“We monitor Iran’s activities in the region closely,” Mr. Ostick said. “That vigilance led to the arrest of the individual responsible for the recent assassination plot” against the Saudi ambassador.

“We constantly monitor for possible connections between terrorists and transnational criminals.”

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Iran blocks US ‘virtual embassy’ website

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H/T Shab

From The Hill:

       By Jeremy Herb – 12/07/11 06:05 PM ET

Iran blocked a “virtual embassy” website less than 24 hours after the State Department launched it on Tuesday, a State spokesman said Wednesday.

The Associated Press reported from Tehran Wednesday that the website could no longer be accessed in Iran.

The U.S. has not had an embassy in Iran since the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.

The embassy website shuttering drew a quick rebuke from the Obama administration.

“We condemn the Iranian government’s efforts to deny their people the freedom to access America’s recently launched Virtual Embassy Tehran,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “The Iranian government’s systematic efforts to deny information to its citizens—to control what the Iranian people see and hear—is doomed to fail in a 21st century when technology is empowering citizens around the globe.”

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have risen in the past week after Iran claimed it shot down an unmanned and captured it. The Senate also passed an amendment last week by a 100-0 vote calling for sanctions against firms and governments that do business with the Iranian central bank. Continue Reading →