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Russian hackers who got into the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, U.S. officials say.

Cyber activist group Anonymous has released an internet video which threatens Israel with an “electronic Holocaust” on April 7, in a massive cyber attack planned to fall just over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 16, known in Israel as Yom HaShoah. The video shows a masked figure in a suit and tie delivering a prepared statement, warning that the group will eradicate Israel from cyberspace “for... crimes in the Palestinian territories”. “We will erase you from cyberspace in our electronic Holocaust,” says the video’s masked figure. "As we did many times, we will take down your servers,...

The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks. Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says. The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony. "If body dumped at...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department seeking any and all communications – including emails – from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00321)). This latest lawsuit will require the State Department to answer questions about and conduct thorough searches of Hillary Clinton’s newly discovered hidden email accounts. Judicial Watch also has nearly...

Two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian have been charged over roles in hacking email service providers in the United States in one of the largest reported data breaches in the nation's history, the Department of Justice said on Friday.

The hacking of dozens of websites worldwide by someone purporting to be connected to the ISIS terror group — including a Montana credit union, an Irish rape crisis center and a local Italian political party — almost certainly has nothing to do with the Islamist militants, law enforcement and security experts said Monday. The FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they are investigating the hacks, which placed a picture of the black ISIS flag and the words "hacked by ISIS, we are everywhere" at the top of the targets' homepages and invoked a Flash audio plugin playing a...

Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee grilled State Department spokeswoman Jen Spaki during Monday’s press briefing, asking why Russian hackers had more access to State Department records than the American public and Congress. Lee began by asking about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email security. “On the issue on the security of the actual server, do you have any reason to believe it was compromised at all?” (RELATED: Hacker Claims Hillary Clinton Created MULTIPLE Private Email Accounts) “We don’t have any reason to believe that,” Psaki responded. “Obviously, her email wasn’t hacked, as there were some reports that previously...

Hacked emails indicate that Hillary Clinton used a domain registered the day of her Senate hearingsSNIPIn March 2013, an adviser to Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, had his email hacked by "Guccifer" -- the Romanian hacker perhaps best known for revealing George W. Bush's paintings to the world. At the time, Gawker reported that Blumenthal was communicating with an account that appeared to belong to Clinton at the "clintonemail.com" domain. The content of some of those emails was published by RT.com. Examining the registry information for "clintonemail.com" reveals that the domain was first created on January 13, 2009 -- one week before...

Matt DeHart, a former American soldier who sought asylum in Canada claiming torture by U.S. agents probing Anonymous hackers and WikiLeaks, was taken from his Ontario prison cell Sunday morning and delivered to U.S. agents at the border. Mr. DeHart, 30, was allowed to make a quick phone call en route to his parents, who are living in Toronto facing their own removal order, said his father, Paul. “He was peaceful and in good health,” Paul DeHart said in an interview but the family remains deeply worried. “We are concerned about Matt’s safety as he transits,” he said. “We said...

Chinese computer and smartphone firm Lenovo Group said its website was hacked on Wednesday, its second security blemish days after the U.S. government advised consumers to remove software called “Superfish” pre-installed on its laptops. Hacking group Lizard Squad claimed credit for the attacks on microblogging service Twitter. Lenovo said attackers breached the domain name system associated with Lenovo and redirected visitors to lenovo.com to another address, while also intercepting internal company emails. Lizard Squad posted an email exchange between Lenovo employees discussing Superfish. The software was at the centre of public uproar in the United States last week when security...

Sinister Circuit Board Peter Shanks via Flickr CC By 2.0 In late summer of 2006, the Japanese division of McDonald’s decided to run a new promotion. When customers ordered a Coca-Cola soft drink, they would receive a cup with a code. If they entered that code on a designated website and were among 10,000 lucky winners, they would receive an MP3 player pre-loaded with 10 songs. Cleverly constructed, the promotion seemed destined for success. Who doesn’t like a Coke and a free MP3 player? But there was one problem the marketers at McDonald’s could not anticipate: In addition to 10...

In a report to be published on Monday, and provided in advance to The New York Times, Kaspersky Lab says that the scope of this attack on more than 100 banks and other financial institutions in 30 nations could make it one of the largest bank thefts ever — and one conducted without the usual signs of robbery. The Moscow-based firm says that because of nondisclosure agreements with the banks that were hit, it cannot name them. Officials at the White House and the F.B.I. have been briefed on the findings, but say that it will take time to confirm...

Happy Sunday! Ready to have your mind blown?By mixing ultra-bright projectors and advanced facial tracking with some damned fine visual design, these guys are able to use their faces as a canvas some truly wild work. ==>>>Watch on as they morph from human, to alien, to cheetah, to robot overlord on the fly.<<<==So how does it work? To oversimplify it: an array of cameras tracks the dots on their faces, akin to the way Hollywood motion capture systems work. They then take some truly amazing texture/animation work and digitally morph it around a model of each guy’s face — essentially...

As President Barack Obama addressed the nation regarding national cyber security efforts, hackers claiming to represent the Islamic State (IS) took over the Twitter account of the Pentagon division in charge of the Middle East. Hackers with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, posted links on U.S. Central Command’s official Twitter page to what it claimed was “confidential data from your mobile devices.” “ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now,” said one tweet sent from CENTCOM’s account.

Did the Obama administration put a journalist under surveillance for reporting critically on its activities? Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says yes — and she wants $35 million in damages from the Department of Justice for it. Attkisson filed a series of legal motions today that claim the DoJ hacked into her computer and attacked her professionally: In a series of legal filings that seek $35 million in damages, Attkisson alleges that three separate computer forensic exams showed that hackers used sophisticated methods to surreptitiously monitor her work between 2011 and 2013. … In the lawsuit and related claims against...

BEIJING — North Korea on Sunday denounced new economic sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama in response to a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that U.S. officials have blamed on the regime. The country's official news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the new sanctions would only "harden its will and resolution to defend ... the dignity of the nation." The new penalties —which cut off access to the U.S. financial sector for 10 individuals and three government entities identified as key operatives engaged in hostile behavior, including the country's intelligence agency — add to sanctions imposed...

The risk is relatively low right now. But we must improve the security of future devices. We're living at the dawn of the age of the Internet of Things. Appliances ranging from light switches and door locks to cars and medical devices now boast internet connectivity. The convenience can't be beat. But what are the security and privacy implications? Is a patient implanted with a remotely controllable pacemaker at risk for security compromise? Vice President Dick Cheney's doctors worried enough about an assassination attempt via implant that they disabled his defibrillator's wireless capability. Should we expect capital crimes via hacked...

“All iCloud accounts could be vulnerable to hacking by a new tool that claims it can break into any user’s login,” Andrew Griffin reports for The Independent. “The tool claims to use an exploit to get through Apple’s security.” “It uses a ‘dictionary attack’ to get into accounts — a hack that involves automatically trying a number of passwords until the right one is found. Sites usually have locks in place to stop such an attack, by only allowing a certain number of tries of one password, but the tool claims to be able to bypass those,” Griffin reports. “A...

**SNIP** Over the past few years, the number of security incidents at federal agencies involving the potential exposure of personal information has skyrocketed -- from about 10,400 in 2009 to more than 25,500 in 2013, according to the Government Accountability Office. There’s no data yet this year on the total number of breaches at agencies in 2014. But with the year almost in the rearview mirror, Nextgov takes a look back at the 10 most impactful, high-profile or otherwise eyebrow-raising federal agency breaches. 1. White House Hacked The Obama administration has made cybersecurity a key priority, so it must have...

US cybersecurity experts say they have solid evidence that a former employee helped hack Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer system — and that it was not masterminded by North Korean cyberterrorists. One leading cybersecurity firm, Norse Corp., said Monday it has narrowed its list of suspects to a group of six people — including at least one Sony veteran with the necessary technical background to carry out the attack, according to reports. The investigation of the Sony hacking by the private companies stands in stark contrast to the finding of the FBI, which said Dec. 19 its probe traced the hacking...