Free Republic

Military Superiority: China's new Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter could be the equal of our F-22s and F-35s, U.S. pilots say, and is just one of the weapons that may thwart America's "pivot" to the Pacific. The J-31, a fifth-generation stealth fighter, will make its official debut at the Zhuhai International Air Show Nov. 11-16 in southern China's Guangdong province. As one U.S. pilot with F-35 experience told USNI News of the J-31 and other new Chinese fighters: "I think they'll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well."...

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth look at The Home Depot’s recent security breach of its payment data systems, in which 56 million credit card accounts and 53 million email addresses of customers were compromised. A root cause of the security breach: a Windows vulnerability in the retailer’s main computer network. “Once inside Home Depot’s systems after gaining credentials from the outside vendor, the hackers were able to jump the barriers between a peripheral third-party vendor system and the company’s more secure main computer network by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system,...

A U.S. security firm has claimed that a sophisticated, Russia-based hacker group is spying on NATO and former Soviet member states, most likely on the orders of the Russian government. In a report issued Tuesday, security firm FireEye said the group, which the firm dubbed APT28, has since 2007 conducted “long-standing, focused operations that indicate a government sponsor — specifically, a government based in Moscow.”

US agency faces questions after records show Lulzsec leader Hector Monsegur, who was informant at time, helped attack that closed UK sites The FBI is facing questions over its role in a 2011 hacking attack on Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in the UK after the publication of chat logs showed that a man acting as an agency informant played a substantial role in the operation. chat records show Monsegur encouraging others to break further into News International systems, claiming to have sources at the Sun, and even apparently helping to break staff’s passwords and to source files for stealing. Monsegur...

Because we just don't already have enough tech security problems to worry about, computer science researchers have just published a potentially catastrophic security exploit.

The hackers are thought to be operating from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said. Some American officials speculate that the breach was intended to send a message to Wall Street and the United States about the vulnerability of the digital network of one of the world’s most important banking institutions. “It could be in retaliation for the sanctions” placed on Russia, one senior official briefed on the intelligence said. “But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell...

Unless you’re a real-life version of Sheldon Cooper, a computer security professional, or, like me, work in the online payment industry, you probably don’t keep up with the latest computer vulnerabilities.  A new one that’s hit the web news like a tsunami in the last 72 hours is simply called “the bash bug” (sometimes called “shellshock”).  Everyone from Time, to Vox*, to tech site C|Net has covered this story. I am not going to get technical here.  You can read any of the above-mentioned articles which provide plenty of detail on that.  To summarize the problem:  a 25-year-old program that’s...

More nude celebrity photos, purportedly including reality star Kim Kardashian, circulated social media Saturday, in what appeared to be the second massive hacking-related leak in less than a month, US media reported. The pictures, which also included nude shots of actress Vanessa Hudgens and US soccer star Hope Solo, appeared briefly on 4chan and Reddit, before being removed, celebrity gossip site TMZ reported.

As you may have heard, Russian hackers have published the passwords for roughly five million Gmail accounts. This follows the publication of millions of passwords for two of Russia's largest email services, Yandex and Mail.Ru.Chances are, your account is not one of the hacked Gmail accounts, because that figure of five million represents only a fraction of the number of Gmail accounts that are active in the world. For instance, the Gmail app has been downloaded one billion times to Android devices. Even back in 2012, Gmail had 350 million users.But a group of programmers have decided to help you check...

This week, a list of nearly five million Gmail addresses paired with passwords appeared online, posted in a Russian Bitcoin security forum. Some people who checked the list and found their Gmail addresses there reported that it contained an old password for them, and often a password that they had reused on multiple sites. There’s speculation that the addresses may hay been stolen from other sites where people used their Gmail address as a log-in

By Richard Davies @daviesnow Sep 9, 2014 9:03am Home Depot (HD) Hack Could Be Biggest Card Breach Ever Morning Money Memo: The huge hacking attack against Home Depot’s payment systems could turn out to be the biggest breach of any retailer’s data so far. The company confirmed the data break-in but did not say how many credit and data cards are affected. The total could be as much as 60 million, according to several experts. That would be far more than the total number of cardholders impacted by the breach at Target stores. There is no evidence that any debit...

The website for actor Kirk Cameron’s upcoming movie “Saving Christmas” was infiltrated by Islamic hackers, the film’s production team said. Sony’s Provident Films alerted producers over the weekend that SavingChristmas.com was taken over by a message from Ayyildiz Tim International Force, a hacker group described as anti-Christian, anti-Israel and anti-American. A member of the production team told TheBlaze Sunday that the attack was “fairly sophisticated” but that they were able to quickly remove the group’s message from the website.

Apple's iCloud storage service and other parts of Apple, along with operations at several large banks, run inside A.W.S. (Amazon Web Services), say people familiar with the service who spoke on the condition they not be named so they could sustain relations with the powerful cloud company. But Apple is usually obsessed with micromanaging every aspect of its technology and services. So some of its users might be surprised to learn that they're storing their backups and other personal data not on Apple servers, but on ones rented from Amazon. It's not totally clear that anyone should care about that, but...

Engadget reports that Apple has fixed a major bug in its Find My iPhone software that allowed hackers to gain access to iCloud accounts. The fix comes just hours after a hacker leaked hundreds of nude celebrity photos on 4chan in return for Bitcoin donations. Apple's Find My iPhone login page was discovered to have been vulnerable to so-called "brute force" hacks. Hackers are usually locked out of sites if they try to gain access using multiple passwords, but it was discovered that the Find My iPhone API allows users to repeatedly try different passwords. Security researcher Alexey Troshichev revealed...

A flaw in the 'Find My iPhone' function of Apple's iCloud service may have helped a hacker to steal nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and '100 other celebrities', it today emerged. The hacker claims he or she broke into stars' iCloud accounts, including those of the Hunger Games actress, Kate Upton and Rihanna, before publishing them on 4chan, the image-sharing forum. A list of the alleged victims of the hack - 101 in total - has also been posted online; most of whom have not seen any photographs leaked by the hacker. A spokesman for Oscar winner Lawrence confirmed to...

Full Title: Nude Photos Of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Ariana Grande Leak In Massive iCloud Hack Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande, and Kate Upton were among a handful of celebrities whose nude photos were leaked late Sunday afternoon following what appears to be a large-scale hack. The photos first appeared on a 4Chan thread (very NSFW). So far, only Lawrence’s publicist Bryna Rifkin has confirmed, in an official statement to Buzzfeed, that the photos were of her client... ...The leaked photos were apparently obtained via a massive hack of Apple’s iCloud. They were then posted on 4chan by users offering more...

Word has leaked that JPMorgan Chase and possibly four other banks have been hacked. Details are scarce at this point, but the FBI and other government agencies are involved in the investigation. The hack allegedly took place earlier in August and hackers have siphoned off huge amounts of sensitive data from Chase, including checking and savings account information. Even more concerning, sources say that the attack goes "far beyond the capabilities of ordinary hackers." Given the timing, some security experts are speculating it was the work of high-level Russian hackers. According to an inside source, there has been no increase...

One of America's largest hospital chains is the latest to fall victim to a group of sophisticated Chinese hackers who compromised 4.5 million patients' data including social security numbers in April and June. The cyber attack is the largest ever reported by a U.S. health care company and should serve as a warning to get more private companies to take their cyber protection more seriously. "Many companies are instituting anti-malware controls to detect malware prior to infection," said Kroll Cyber Investigations Managing Director Timothy P. Ryan in an email interview with The Christian Post. "Other companies are incorporating more robust...

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has begun keeping the personal data of some Chinese users on servers in mainland China, marking the first time the tech giant is storing user data on Chinese soil. The storage of user data in China represents a departure from the policies of some technology companies, notably Google Inc (GOOGL.O), which has long refused to build data centers in China due to censorship and privacy concerns. Apple said the move was part of an effort to improve the speed and reliability of its iCloud service, which lets users store pictures, e-mail and other data. Positioning data centers...

A promotional image for Anonymous’s #OpFerguson.David, a.k.a. Pharoah, doesn’t hold a political office or opine for CNN. But this week, the 14-year-old hacker mounted what might have been one of the more personally damaging attacks against Ferguson, Mo.’s embattled police department: the name — and the address, and the Social Security number — of St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. That’s not all. Pharoah, a self-proclaimed member of the loosely affiliated hacker collective Anonymous, has also obtained the name and Social Security number of a Ferguson police officer he believes was involved in 18-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting last...