Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

Late last week it was learned that some 40 million charge cards were obtained using physical processing systems located in Target retail locations nationwide. Though no details of the how the hack attack was executed have been released by Target, the FBI or other agencies investigating the breach, it is likely that the processing machines themselves were compromised. Target claims that the hack was sophisticated, but on the technical side, once hackers found a way into the credit card processing machines, probably via remote entry from servers somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia, the theft of credit card data itself...

Share on Tumblr digg ScreenshotHow the New York Times web site looked during the hack. The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a Pro-Assad regime hacker group, claims it gained control over a handful of web domains of major media sites including Twitter, The New York Times, and Huffington Post U.K. The group said in a tweet that it took over the Twitter.com domain. The SEA said it was able to change some of the basic information in Twitter's domain registry, such as the admin name and the email address for contacts, at DomainTools.com, here. However, it looks like that information has been...

Outgoing DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano Warns of ‘Serious’ Cyber Attack, Unprecedented Natural Disaster By Mike Levine @mlevinereports Follow on Twitter Aug 27, 2013 10:39am Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano delivers farewell remarks today at the National Press Club in Washington reflecting on four-plus years as a member of President Obama's cabinet. Credit: Mike Levine/ABC News The outgoing Homeland Security Secretary has a warning for her successor: A massive and “serious” cyber attack on the U.S. homeland is coming, and a natural disaster — the likes of which the nation has never seen — is also likely on its...

Earlier this week, I wrote about the dirty tricks campaign against journalist Amir Taheri following his revelation that, in a private meeting in Iraq last July with Iraqi leaders, Barack Obama tried to persuade them to delay the agreement being hammered out with the US government on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to this account, which quoted Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshya Zebari (pictured), Obama had thus privately sought to undermine an American government foreign policy initiative – an explosive revelation. Taheri subsequently dismissed as tendentious Camp Obama’s response which he said deliberately confused two separate agreements under...

In order to combat a wave of cyberattacks that have rattled the US banking industry since last year, the FBI has given certain banking executives extensive briefings of their classified investigations. The collaboration is part of a new policy being initiated by the FBI to try and foster closer cooperation between authorities and the private sector. It reportedly involved a number of bank officials being given high-level security clearance before a video conference briefing last month. During the briefing, the FBI’s executive assistant director Richard McFeely urged bank executives to share any data they have on cyberattacks they’ve suffered.

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

Middle East- and North Africa-based criminal hackers are preparing cyberattacks this week against the websites of high-profile U.S. government agencies, banks and other companies, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The attacks, dubbed #OpUSA, for Operation USA, will begin Tuesday, the department said in a warning bulletin circulated to the private sector last week. The bulletin was first obtained and posted online by blogger and cybercrime expert Brian Krebs.

Hackers launched a coordinated cyberattack on Israel over the weekend in an attempt to “wipe Israel off the map of the Internet,” defacing some 20,000 Israeli Facebook accounts and nearly 2,000 Israeli websites. The anarchist hacking collective known as Anonymous formally launched “Operation Israel” on Sunday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The stated goal of the attack was to wreak havoc on Israeli servers, government websites, and Internet users. The hackers penetrated and defaced multiple Israeli websites including government, schools, banks, and a website for children with cancer, according to regional media reports. Among the government websites breached were...

How To Protect Your Computers, Networks From Anonymous Israel Cyber AttackBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel --- April 2, 2013 … Threats have been made against the people of Israel for thousands of years. The latest threat now comes from a less macho, publicity seeking Internet group called Anonymous. Anonymous says that on April 7, 2013 it will "erase Israel from the Internet." It ain't gonna happen. Not today, not April 7 and not next year. “OpIsrael,” which is being organized by anti-Zionist hackers, are said to be targeting the 100 largest Websites in Israel, including banks, credit card...

A Dutch web-hosting company caused disruption and the global slowdown of the internet, according to a not-for-profit anti-spam organization. The interruptions came after Spamhaus, a spam-fighting group based in Geneva, temporarily added the Dutch firm, CyberBunker, to a blacklist that is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam. Cyberbunker is housed in a five-story former NATO bunker and famously offers its services to any website “except child porn and anything related to terrorism". As such it has often been linked to behaviour that anti-spam blacklist compilers have condemend. It retaliated with a huge 'denial of service attack'. These work...

The 2009 cyberattack by the U.S. and Israel that crippled Iran’s nuclear program by sabotaging industrial equipment constituted “an act of force” and was likely illegal under international law, according to a manual commissioned by NATO’s cyber defense center in Estonia. “Acts that kill or injure persons or destroy or damage objects are unambiguously uses of force,” according to “The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare.” Michael N. Schmitt, the manual’s lead author, told The Washington Times that “according to the U.N. charter, the use of force is prohibited, except in self-defense.” Under the charter, states...

The Defense Science Board's new report on protecting the Pentagon's computer networks calls for the development of a special force armed with its own bombers, cruise missiles, and cyber weapons to respond to a devastating cyber attack. Kind of like a mini, conventionally-armed Strategic Command for cyber deterrence. We've heard Pentagon leaders acknowledge that they are building up their offensive cyber capabilities to deter destructive cyber attacks that could harm thousands or even millions of Americans. However, the new report says that the U.S. must go further to "ensure the President has options beyond a nuclear-only response to a catastrophic...

Last week, the American computer security firm Mandiant released a detailed study shedding light on the secret cybercorps of the Chinese government. The “Shanghai Group,” or Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army, is believed to operate out of a nondescript 12-story building (above) on the outskirts of Shanghai. Over the past six years, Mandiant claims to have tracked thousands of attacks on American industry, business, government and military targets originating from that area. Given the ubiquity of information technology, the threat of cyberattacks will continue to grow. The scope of these assaults can range from accessing confidential information and...

WASHINGTON – The United States now is facing two serious national security challenges, but they aren’t expected to be addressed effectively because of the serious budgetary headaches Congress has created, and a virtually deadlocked legislature on just about every issue pending, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. And the White House apparently isn’t paying attention. The first is the growing concern of the impact that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event – either natural or manmade – could have on the national grid system, on which the Department of Defense has a 99 percent dependency. The other concern...

The wave of distributed denial of service attacks that hit U.S. banks in October was next to nothing compared to what could happen if cybercriminals actually carry through with their plans for next year. According to a report released today by McAfee Labs, an impending attack on U.S. financial institutions—dubbed Project Blitzkrieg—isn’t only a possibility, it’s a “credible threat.” “McAfee Labs believes that Project Blitzkrieg is a credible threat to the financial industry and appears to be moving forward as planned,” the report reads. “Although Project Blitzkrieg hasn’t yet infected thousands of victims and we cannot directly confirm any cases...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

Wife's bank card was denied use yesterday. Bank said their on line service was not working. I suggested Iran was mounting a cyber attack due to the war footings around Israel. Wife said I was paranoid. I did find a September article (FreeBeacon.com/iran-cyber-attacks-step-up) about Iran cyber attacking banks. Officials tried to blame The Video LOL but the article said it was Iran being upset about sanctions. Article said attacks were ongoing. Any Freepers know of a good website that reports current cyber attacks?

The U.S. is at war, a cyber war. And businesses and government are at risk, said Eric Rosenbach, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy in an interview with CNBC. "I read my intel brief every morning at 5:30 a.m. and it's never a very good news story at all," Rosenbach said. "There are a lot more attacks, and I hate to admit it but I fear that there will be some type of spectacular attack against the United States or one of our allies before there is comprehensive legislation and real appreciation to take this seriously." Just one...

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States, episodes that contributed to a warning last week from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.” (snip) Among American officials, suspicion has focused on the “cybercorps” that Iran’s military created in 2011 — partly in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz — though there is no hard...