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As Newt Gingrich noted yesterday, the surrender by Sony Pictures to a shadowy group of North Korean hackers has set a chilling precedent... just wait 'til they grab hold of one of our nuclear plants(like the Israelis already did  to Iran)... BIG defeat for the US and Japan here, and a terrifying incident, to be sure (that's why they call it 'terrorism')- so now this little tinpot-nothing-of-a-country has substantial unchecked power/influence right inside the United States of America? Can you imagine Ronald Reagan/Cap Weinberger letting this go down without KJU being made to seriously regret it? Of course, Obama...

Matt Johnston December 17, 2014The US government is planning to announce Thursday that North Korea is directly to blame for the devastating and unprecedented attack on Sony, according to multiple reports. Now we wait and see how the US Government may respond to that attack now that they've placed their blame. That threat is likely retaliation for the controversial comedy "The Interview," which depicts the assassination of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. US Investigators have been able to parse through enough evidence now to claim that North Korea is "centrally involved." On Tuesday, an online threat was posted against theaters...

In the most shocking development yet, the Sony attackers have threatened a 9/11-like attack on movie theaters that screen Seth Rogen and James Franco’s North Korean comedy “The Interview.” They also released the promised “Christmas gift” of files. The contents of the files are unknown but it’s called “Michael Lynton,” who is the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “The world will be full of fear,” the message reads. “Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming...

The Sony hackers have threatened a 9/11-like attack on movie theaters that screen Seth Rogen and James Franco’s North Korean comedy “The Interview,” substantially escalating the stakes surrounding the release of the movie. The attackers also released the promised “Christmas gift” of files. The contents of the files are unknown but it’s called “Michael Lynton,” who is the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “The world will be full of fear,” the message reads. “Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.)...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) SEOUL-Despite its poverty and isolation, North Korea has poured resources into a sophisticated cyber-warfare cell called Bureau 121, defectors from the secretive state said as Pyongyang came under the microscope for a crippling hack into computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment. A North Korean diplomat has denied Pyongyang was behind the attack that was launched last month but a U.S. national security source said it was a suspect. Defectors from the North have said Bureau 121, staffed by some of the most talented computer experts in the insular state, is part of the General Bureau of Reconnaissance, an elite spy...

....the hacker group Anonymous made good on a threat to crash the city's website because of recent laws the city has passed regulating homeless behavior. Besides the city's website, fortlauderdale.gov, the police department website, flpd.org, also was affected, as was the city's email system.

The FBI warned U.S. businesses that hackers have used malicious software to launch destructive attacks in the United States, following a devastating cyberattack last week at Sony Pictures Entertainment. The five-page, confidential "flash" warning issued to businesses late on Monday provided some technical details about the malicious software that was used in the attack, though it did not name the victim. An FBI spokesman declined comment when asked if the software had been used against the California-based unit of Sony Corp. The Sony attack resulted in five films being leaked online, including the updated version of "Annie." In the attack...

An army is attacking the United States. Its war is being waged without bullets or fanfare. Denied by its government, these soldiers operate in shadows and in silence. Yet, glimpses of their operations are seen on a daily basis—hackers and spies attacking and stealing from U.S. businesses and the U.S. government. Until now, a complete view of their operations and of the military department that gives them their orders remained hidden. Yet, China’s spy and cyberoperations all share one thing in common: they’re all orchestrated under the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department (GSD), the Chinese military’s top-level department dedicated...

Two Twitter accounts belonging to American racial segregation org Ku Klux Klan, @KuKluxKlanUSA and @YourKKKCentral, have been seized by Anonymous as part of the hacker-activist entity's new campaign, #OpKKK. At 6:31pm PST Anonymous said it has knocked the website belonging to "Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" -- the group responsible for the Ferguson threats -- offline....

Washington is not doing nearly enough to stop Chinese hackers who reportedly broke into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) computer system in September from stealing critical information from U.S. government agencies and American businesses, says Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). “They have a more sophisticated spying apparatus than the KGB had,” Wolf told CNSNews.com. “We’re losing jobs, technology, everything is leaving. It’s like they’re coming in and literally taking whatever they want to take. And so sometimes you find out about it and sometimes you don’t, but there needs to be a coordinated effort [to stop them],” Wolf continued....

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