Free Republic

Somebody must have thought they were hiding something by smashing those computer hard-drives the FBI recovered from the home of Imran Awan, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s former information technology (IT) aide. But odds are excellent they were wrong. Federal law enforcement authorities may have already recovered and read whatever was on those hard drives. “It depends on what happens, but even if it is hit with a hammer, it probably doesn’t damage the platters that actually hold the data, which remains recoverable,” said Tom Hakim, engineering supervisor for werecoverdata.com, a New York-based lab that specializes in difficult digital...

The sordid story of the Pakistani IT staffers employed by Democrat House members until they were banned from those networks over suspected data theft gets stranger by the day, with one of the brothers, Imran Awan, detained last week as he was trying to leave the country after wiring $300,000 to Pakistan. What makes the story even more bizarre — hard to do given that Wasserman Schultz had reportedly continued to pay Awan until his arrest and has been generally uncooperative with police, even berating them to return computer equipment that was taken as evidence as part of the investigation...

The nation's top state election officials say they'll keep fighting a Department of Homeland Security order that designates state and local election systems as "critical infrastructure," and aren't happy with the message they got this week that the designation will remain. For the moment, that fight means lobbying congressional delegations to use whatever power is at their disposal to make DHS back off. Barring that, a separation of powers lawsuit may be their last option, but it's not clear yet if any state or coalition of states is willing to take that step just yet. Week Twenty-Two of the Trump...

Sorry to go so deep on a weekend, but seeing Brennan broadcast in a 22 minute interview is enough to blow the blood pressure cuff: I have never been more certain of something, yet simultaneously never able to prove it, as I am about two events. The first is that Jack Lew and the White House in 2010/2011 coordinated the DOJ attack, with Eric Holder, against political opposition using the IRS. The second event is that journalist Michael Hastings was killed by the dispatch of CIA Director John Brennan. Director John Brennan spent almost his entire formative career inside the CIA and...

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed. The recommendation, delivered to the White House last month, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Action has been delayed, some administration officials said, because relieving Rogers of his duties is tied to another controversial recommendation: to create separate chains of command at the NSA and the

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite. The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation. In a highly unusual exchange, the Florida lawmaker uses a hearing on the...

Online Armageddon "An Army of Davids" unites against a campaign of intimidation. Somewhere between the time in October 2010 he threatened to sue Patrick Frey and the decision last week to make a similar threat toward Ali Akbar, Brett Kimberlin crossed a Rubicon of desperation and burned the bridge behind him. In the past three weeks, Kimberlin and his allies have escalated their deceitful war against conservative bloggers to the point that it cannot be ignored, and must now be fought to a conclusion with the entire political world watching. A convicted perjurer and drug smuggler, Kimberlin became infamous as...

Full title: Pagliano Emails Detail Attempts to Hack Clinton Unsecure Email Server 10 Times in Two Days in November 2010 – U.S. Secret Service Informed of Hacking Attempts Pagliano Warned Bill Clinton Aide Justin Cooper, ‘We’d Be Susceptible to Such an Attack’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new State Department documents detailing repeated efforts to hack into the unsecure non-state.gov email system used by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November 2010. The hacks are detailed in email exchanges between State Department IT official Brian Pagliano and Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper. The emails show the system...

In early December 2016, Adam was doing what he’s always doing, somewhere between hobby and profession: looking for things that are on the internet that shouldn’t be. That week, he came across a server inside New York University’s famed Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing, headed by the brilliant Chudnovsky brothers, David and Gregory. The server appeared to be an internet-connected backup drive. But instead of being filled with family photos and spreadsheets, this drive held confidential information on an advanced code-breaking machine that had never before been described in public. Dozens of documents spanning hundreds of pages detailed the...

A former congressional information technology (IT) aide allegedly threatened to have his stepmother’s Pakistani relatives kidnapped if she talked to U.S. law enforcement authorities, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group. “Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, claimed in the documents filed April 14 in Fairfax County, Va., in the case of Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company v. Abid A. Awan and Samina Ashraf Gilani. Imran Awan...

MI6 spy Gareth Williams hacked into restricted information about former US President Bill Clinton, it has been claimed. The 31-year-old codebreaker was discovered inside a padlocked bag in a bathtub at his London home in 2010, sparking a real-life mystery worthy of any 007 thriller.

Snips from excerpt only website: His body was found in an extra-large North Face bag, a type which is favoured by explorers because of its 140 litres of storage capacity, durable material, double stitching, twin haul handles and locking zips.  Erotic asphyxiation is defined as the intentional restriction of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal. There were also rumours that Mr Williams was the victim of a professional ‘hit’. Other theories included the suggestion that he had been murdered by Russian agents.  Tests on his body were ordered to establish whether he was poisoned, as happened when Polonium 210...

Five commando units trained for strikes, sabotage North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report. The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country. According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.” The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established...

North Korea is so isolated that rather than bring the Internet to its hackers, it brings them to it—in a swank hotel in China. The luxury hotel that has been called a command post for North Korean hackers would make for a unique holiday getaway and give you lots to talk about back home. “Surprisingly Great Hotel - Clean, Tasteful.... and North Korean!” says a trip advisor review for the Chilbosan Hotel in Shenyang, China. For just $53, you get “a deluxe twin room,” including a North Korean breakfast considerably more substantial than those enjoyed by the vast majority of...

Annoyed with the U.S. missile strike last week on an airfield in Syria, among other things, hacker group Shadow Brokers resurfaced on Saturday and released what they said was the password to files containing suspected National Security Agency tools they had earlier tried to sell.“Is appearing you are abandoning ‘your base’, ‘the movement’, and the peoples who getting you elected,” the group wrote in broken English in a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump posted online on Saturday.The hacker group, believed by some security experts to have Russian links, released in January an arsenal of tools that appeared designed to...

Kim Jong Un may be behind biggest bank heist in history he man behind the biggest bank heist in history may have been Kim Jong-un. Federal prosecutors are preparing to finger North Korea for orchestrating the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year, according to a report.

Wikileaks confirms Seth Rich as source of DNC Leak and provides proof– Wikileaks released a series direct messages from US alleged “Russian spy” Guccifer 2.0 to acress model Robin Young (according to Young). In the stream of texts the discussion leads to the DNC leaker. His name is “Seth”… ** In November Julian Assange said Russia did not hack into the DNC servers. “ Direct Messages from U.S. alleged Russian spy @GUCCIFER_2 to actress-model @robbin_young (according to the latter) https://t.co/uMsB9WgxRQ — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 8, 2017

PARIS — France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from the United States over new spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden. French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel said in separate reports published Monday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored tens of millions of phone communications in France and hacked into former Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s email account. The allegations come on top of revelations already leaked by Snowden and published in June that the US had a vast, secret program called PRISM to monitor Internet users, which French prosecutors...

Critical American infrastructure like the electric grid will remain vulnerable to catastrophic cyber attacks from Russia and China for at least 10 years, according to a Pentagon study.A report by a Defense Science Board task force concludes that the decade-long cyber vulnerabilities must be mitigated while the Pentagon quickly creates new cyber deterrence capabilities, including offensive cyber weapons designed to inflict damage on adversaries and their leaders.The 44-page report, "Task Force on Cyber Deterrence" was made public Feb. 28. It is based on a two-year study by a panel of military and defense experts.The report presents a dire picture of weaknesses...