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If the U.S. intelligence community believes that Russia poses a greater cyber spying threat than China, what will it make of this? Russia and China signed a cyber-security deal on Friday, which experts say could firm up Russia’s ties with the east and may become a foundation for binding cyber security ties in the future. According to the text of the agreement posted on the Russian government’s website on Wednesday, Russia and China agree to not conduct cyber-attacks against each other, as well as jointly counteract technology that may “destabilize the internal political and socio-economic atmosphere,” ”disturb public order” or...

A former commander of U.S. nuclear forces is leading a call for taking U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles off high alert, arguing that keeping them less ready for prompt launch would reduce the risk of miscalculation in a crisis. It also could keep a possible cyberattack from starting a nuclear war, he said, although neither Washington nor Moscow appears interested in negotiating an agreement to end the practice of keeping nuclear missiles on high alert. Retired Gen. James Cartwright said in an interview that “de-alerting” nuclear arsenals could foil cyber intruders by reducing the chance of firing a weapon in...

The United States on Thursday disclosed a cyber intrusion this year by Russian hackers who accessed an unclassified U.S. military network, in a episode Defense Secretary Ash Carter said showed the growing threat and the improving U.S. ability to respond.

AVS WinVote machines used in three presidential elections in state ‘would get an F-minus’ in security, said computer scientist who pushed for decertification Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report. The AVS WinVote machines, used in three presidential elections in Virginia, “would get an F-minus” in security, according to a computer scientist at tech research group SRI International who had pushed for a formal inquiry by the state of Virginia for...

Evidence that Russian computer hackers penetrated security at the White House and State Department was brushed aside by National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh. “Since the Administration has no hostile designs on Russia we don’t consider their gaining access to confidential correspondence at the State Department or White House a threat to our security,” Stroh maintained. “In a way, this could be a good thing. They will see that we bear them no ill will. That could open up new avenues for better relations between our two countries.” “It would be far more worrisome if our correspondence had been illicitly...

Bad news today for HBO, which is attempting to marry the recent debut of their HBO Now streaming service with season 5 of Game of Thrones. As of last night, the first four episodes of the new season, nearly half of the ten total episodes, have been leaked online to various torrent sites. After appearing online yesterday afternoon, the episodes have already been downloaded almost 800,000 times, and that figure will likely blow past a million downloalds by the season 5 premier tonight.

Russian hackers last year were able to breach a White House computer system after a successful cyber-attack on the State Department, a news report said Tuesday. The report by CNN says the hackers were able to get sensitive information, including non-public details about President Obama’s schedule. White House officials responded by saying the attack last year was made public and that no classified information was compromised. And they declined to comment on CNN’s assertion that Russia was the culprit. …

CNN has made news with this headline: “How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House.” Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president’s schedule. While such information is not classified, it is still highly sensitive and...

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...