Free Republic

The Sun-Sentinel has an article this morning about how a hackers are using a Web site that is posing as the Palm Beach County government Web site: Leaving out the first “.” in www.pbcgov.com lands unwitting visitors on a hoax site. Making the wrong move on that site could enable hackers and spammers to secretly take over a computer, using it to send viruses and mass e-mails without the owner knowing. Michael Butler, the county director of network services, says there’s a Trojan Horse for them to take over your machine. When you visit the hoax site, an official-looking message...

U.S. concerns about the potential for cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure extended to the American electrical power grid on Wednesday and experts pointed the finger anew at Chinese hackers, among others. As a result, electric utilities are likely to face new pressures from the U.S. Congress and government regulators to tighten security and preparations against computer intrusions that would wreak widespread havoc. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters the power grid is vulnerable to potentially disabling computer attacks, while declining to comment on reports that an intrusion had taken place. "The vulnerability is something that the Department of Homeland...

Foreign hackers have reportedly managed to break into the computer network controlling the nation's power grid. The discovery has raised alarm about how such unauthorized access could be used to harm the U.S., though the discovery may motivate actions to strengthen the security systems surrounding the nation's infrastructure. A Wall Street Journal report that foreign hackers have repeatedly penetrated the U.S. power grid computer network has delivered a loud wake-up call. Cyber-spies from countries including China and Russia have breached the electrical infrastructure's computer network and left software tools behind that would have allowed them to control or destroy infrastructure...

Chinese and Russian cyber spies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. According to Fox News, the spies are also from other countries, and they were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war. The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn't target a particular company or region, said...

Deployments of smart grids should be slowed until security vulnerabilities are addressed, according to some cybersecurity experts, citing tests showing that a hacker can cause a major blackout after breaking into a smart-grid system. The idea behind smart grids, a burgeoning energy sector in which even Google is playing a role, is that automated meters and two-way power consumption data can be used to improve the efficiency and reliability of an electrical system's power distribution. A washing machine in a household hooked up to a smart meter, for instance, could be set up to run only at lower-cost, off-peak hours,...

A China-based cyber spy network has hacked into government and private systems in 103 countries, including those of many Indian embassies and the Dalai Lama, an Internet research group said here Saturday. The Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), which carried out an extensive 10-month research on cyber spy activities emanating from China, said the hacked systems include the computers of Indian embassies and offices of the Dalai Lama.

Hackers who sympathize with radical Islamic groups increasingly are using hijacked accounts at online file-upload and distribution services to disseminate large files, such as videos of attacks on Western forces in the Middle East, new research suggests. Services like RapidShare, Ziddu, and MegaUpload allow users to share large files, yet each places certain restrictions on non-paying users, such as limiting the number, speed, and size of files that free users can upload and download. But according to analysts at iDefense, a security intelligence firm owned by Verisign, hackers from various online jihadists forums have in recent months begun posting lengthy...

Last week, while trying out breaking-in tools developed by Chinese hackers, an Israeli Network security company, Applicure, brought down the Hezbollah Web site (hizbollah.tv), using no more than 10 bots, which are computers controlled by hackers. Reports of hackers taking out Web sites by bombarding them with massive amounts of information commonly appear in the news media. But often it's hard to estimate both the magnitude of the phenomenon and the ease with which even laymen can use existing web tools. Those attacks geared at bringing down Web sites are know as either denial of service attacks (DOS) or distributed...

Mac owners have been urged to be wary of a new threat that targets the Apple computer as well as Windows-based PCs. Researchers at security firm Sophos have discovered the OSX/RSPlug Trojan horse, which is being distributed on websites offering fake HDTV software. "Mac users are no different to Windows users when it comes to falling for social-engineering tricks like this - they are just as likely to install and run this program on their computer if they believe it will help them watch high-definition TV," said Graham Cluley of Sophos. Apple Mac malware: Caught on camera from Sophos Labs...

http://www.covertradioshow.com # The Daily Blast for March 23, 2009 PodCast Link: http://covertradioshow.com/podcast.cfm?pid=159 SNIPPET: “CHINA Chinese Hackers Target Senate Computers Cyber hackers believed to be based in China have tapped three times into the computer network in US Sen. Bill Nelson’s office, the Florida Democrat said Friday. Two attacks on the same day this month and another one last month targeted work stations used by three Nelson staffers — a key foreign-policy aide, the deputy legislative director and a former Nelson NASA advisor, according to Nelson’s staff.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson says hackers breached the computer network in his Washington office, but didn't access any classified information.

""Wikileaks" explained in an earlier email that it was making public the information on Coleman's donors, including their credit card numbers, because of the "Coleman campaign's effort to impugn the election processes in the State of Minnesota." As a result of Wikileak's mass email of a spread sheet containing credit card information for thousands of Coleman donors, the Coleman campaign sent an email to its supporters today suggesting that they cancel their credit cards."

The as-Ansar forum was a place where l33t jihadi hackers claimed credit for attacks on many alleged Zionist websites, back in early January.

...Islamists gloat anyway.

LUBBOCK, Texas: A hacked electronic highway sign in northern Texas carried a warning not seen much since the American Revolution. On Friday, the sign briefly flashed: "OMG The British R coming. They R watching you." KCBD-TV reported the electronic sign was in a construction area in southwest Lubbock.

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead." Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19. "It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason —...

A little-discussed provision in President Obama's economic stimulus plan would demand that every American submit to a government program for electronic medical records without a choice to opt out, and it has privacy advocates more than a little alarmed. Patients might be alarmed, too, privacy advocates said, if they realized information such as documentation on abortions, mental health problems, impotence, being labeled as a non-compliant patient, lawsuits against doctors and sexual problems could be shared electronically with, perhaps, millions of people.

President Barack Obama is going to get his blackberry. On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration -- but that is probably the National Security Agency -- added to a standard blackberry a super-encryption package.... and Obama WILL be able to use it ... still for routine and personal messages. It's not clear whether he yet has the device. With few exceptions, government Blackberries aren't designed for encryption that protects messages above the "SECRET" status, so it's not clear whether Obama is getting something new and special. The exception: the Sectera Edge from General Dynamics, which allows for TOP...

i have an unsecured wireless network in my apartment. I recently was on my laptop and the touchpad mouse was disabled saying it had been disabled because a new pointing device had been added to my computer, that was weird because i had not plugged a mouse into the laptop. After that I notice a file i had never seen before on my desktop and I have no idea how it got there. so i checked the properties of the file and it said it had been last accessed at a time that i was not even home, and no...

"IT'S NOT SO MUCH THAT THE HAMAS OFFICER WAS KILLED... ...it's that he was killed operating a mortar that his subordinates were not firing, because they refused to come out of hiding."

Link only - Hackers take down ring of key progressive blogs

"THE BRIEF LIFE AND EXQUISITE MARTYRDOM OF A HAMAS MORTAR CREW" Snippet: "Via Hamas' al-Aqsa TV station, said to be filmed in Jabaliya on 06 January 2008. At about 1'15" the crew is hit by an apparent Israeli counter-strike."

In the wake of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, it didn’t take long before pro-Hamas supporters organized themselves and started to defacing thousands of pro-Israeli web sites in order to use them as vehicles for propaganda — Israel is meanwhile hijacking TV signals. For the time being, pro-Israeli sites remain automatically probed for web application vulnerabilities through search engines reconnaissance of the Israeli web space by JURM-TEAM and TEAM-Evil, two groups working together and using identical templates for the defaced sites.Compared to previous hacktivism (politically motivated hacking)  activities on behalf of this group consisting primarily of mass web...

Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a conference in New York that computer attacks pose the biggest risk "from a national security perspective, other than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our major cities." "Other than a nuclear device or some other type of destructive weapon, the threat to our infrastructure, the threat to our intelligence, the threat to our computer network is the most critical threat we face," he added. US experts talk of "cybergeddon," in which an advanced economy -- where almost everything of importance is linked to or...

US President-elect Barack Obama was among a number of high-profile people whose Twitter accounts were hacked overnight. After breaking into Twitter's system, the hackers posted defamatory and offensive messages to the celebrity profiles, news.com.au reports..

"OPERATION CAST LEAD The IDF's Fight Against Terror in Gaza" # A blessed New Year to everyone here and abroad. Today's thread beginning January 1, 2009 (U.S.A. Time)

The chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission says homosexual activists have launched a criminal attack on his ministry. Recently, Dr. Ted Baehr says he learned about the distribution of a number of emails and blog posts that were supposedly from him or his organization. However, the emails were links to pornography, including homosexual content.

Microsoft warned Saturday of a "huge increase" in attacks exploiting a critical unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE), and said some originated from hacked pornography sites. Other researchers confirmed that attacks were increasingly coming from compromised Web sites. Microsoft noted the upswing in attacks on the company's Malware Protection Center blog late Saturday. "The trend for now is going upwards," said researchers Ziv Mador and Tareq Saadecom on the blog. "We saw a huge increase in the number of reports today compared to yesterday." Hackers have been exploiting a data binding bug in IE for more than a week ,...

Hackers on Tuesday hijacked the Web site CheckFree.com, one of the largest online bill payment companies, redirecting an unknown number of visitors to a Web address that tried to install malicious software on visitors' computers, the company said today. The attack, first reported by The Register, a security news Web site, began in the early morning hours of Dec. 2, when Checkfree's home page and the customer login page were redirected to a server in the Ukraine. CheckFree spokeswoman Melanie Tolley said users who visited the sites during the attack would have been redirected to a blank page that tried...

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) November 23, 2008 Iran and Hamas declare digital war against Israel: Hamas recently participated in a digital communications exhibition in Tehran and was involved in establishing a group calling itself “The Digital Intifada.” Its objective was to develop websites to fight Israel and encourage the criminal activity of hacking Israeli websites.

WASHINGTON - Before he ran for president Barack Obama quit smoking. Now that he's won the job, he may have to break another addiction: Checking his BlackBerry for e-mail. The president's e-mail can be subpoenaed by Congress and courts and may be subject to public records laws, so if a president doesn't want his e-mail public, he shouldn't e-mail, experts said. And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones

Another major international financial institution has had its computer system attacked by unknown cyber-hackers, FOX News has learned. The discovery of the assault last week threw into crisis the Washington, D.C. based International Monetary Fund (IMF), which offers emergency financial aid to countries faced with balance-of-payments problems, and provoked a shutdown of IMF computers that lasted for several days. In October, FOX News reported that the computer system at the World Bank had also been hacked over a period of months. FOX News has been unable to determine what, if any, information may have been obtained by the hackers. The...

Last week, the computer hacker Gary McKinnon was given a Thursday deadline to apply for an oral judicial review, which is the last legal challenge that could stop his extradition to the United States. As he runs out of time and chances, it seems to me and others from across the political spectrum that we should look again at the fundamental case for extradition. There are strong arguments for allowing McKinnon to stand trial in the UK and serve any sentence in this country. The London-based hacker, who is alleged to have broken through Pentagon and Nasa security, has recently...

Newsweek says feds told Obama's team it had 'a problem way bigger than you understand' Computer systems used by the election campaigns of both President-elect Barack Obama and his Republican rival Sen. John McCain were broken into earlier this year, and a large number of files related to the evolving policy positions of the two candidates were stolen, according to a story posted online today by Newsweek magazine. The attacks appear to have been perpetrated by an unidentified "foreign entity" looking to steal information that might be useful in future negotiations with the next U.S. president, Newsweek reported, quoting several...

With barely time to savour his triumph, Barack Obama has been confronted with various international crises to test his mettle. The U.S. President-elect faces threats from Russia, Israel and Afghanistan as it emerged his election team's computers were hacked by a 'foreign entity' during the election. Officials at the FBI and the White House believe the hackers sought to gather information on the evolution of both his and Senator John McCain's policy positions with the idea of using that information in negotiations with the next administration. Obama technical experts later speculated the hackers were Russian or Chinese, and security ended...

I’m leaving blow-by-blow coverage of election results to the approximately one million sites that will be looking at them in detail all through the night, but in the true spirit of election day, here’s a really nasty trick to consider. As an article by Scott Berinato in this month’s Wired magazine describes, distributed denial-of-service attacks can shut down the web servers of companies and organizations within minutes, even if they’ve taken measures to protect themselves. How do they work? Hackers penetrate inadequately protected computers (yours?) and install software (a “bot”) that hides in the background until it’s triggered by a...

SAN FRANCISCO — Savvy Internet users know that downloading unsolicited computer programs is one of the most dangerous things you can do online. It puts you at great risk for a virus or another time bomb from a hacker. But even some sophisticated surfers could get taken in by a sneaky new attack in which criminals create fake YouTube pages — dead-on replicas of the real site — to push their malicious software and make it look like it's safe stuff coming from a trusted source.

Indictment of Palin Hacker per Fox!!!!

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Hackers, believed to be of Iranian origin have destroyed a number of Sunni Internet websites, including the alislamnet.com website, which belongs to Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni, a Saudi preacher, and another website that specializes in the prophet's Sunna [line of conduct] and its sciences, in addition to other websites. This campaign is believed to be in retaliation for a similar campaign that was led by Sunni hackers against Shiite websites. The hackers drew the Iranian flag on an unidentified face and wrote at the top of the website's main page in both Arabic and Persian the following Koranic...

Scandal, crime, politics—the story had nearly all the makings of a blockbuster, a surefire Drudge link, no less. So why did it seem that nobody in big-time journalism wanted to report it? At about 4 a.m. on Sept. 16, images of e-mails from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account were posted to a bulletin board on the site 4Chan.org. The pilfered e-mails were posted by someone with the nickname “rubico,” whose account was linked to the address rubico10@yahoo.com.

In what is slowly turning into a endless loop of hacktivism activities, Bill O’Reilly’s BillOreilly.com has been compromised during the weekend, with personal details including passwords in plain text for 205 of the site’s members already leaking across Internet forums, as a response to his remarks regarding Wikileaks as a “one of those despicable, slimy, scummy websites” which recently published private information of Sarah Palin’s private email.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A federal grand jury ended its session Tuesday without indicting a Democratic state lawmaker’s son in an investigation of someone hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail. That doesn’t mean the investigation is over.

Reality bit for the Emmys. If ratings estimates hold, last night's show could go down as the least-watched Emmy telecast on record. From 8-11 p.m., the ABC telecast averaged 12.2 million, down 6 percent from last year's Nielsen-challenged affair, and on par with the record-low 12.3 million who caught the show in 1990. This year was the fourth straight year of ratings decline for the Emmys, which last topped 20 million viewers in 2000. Judging by the numbers, slightly more people were interested in this year's Emmy telecast than last, at least until the show started. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel-hosted red-carpet...

WBIR tv in Tennessee has the story, tried to post link, but it's Gannett and would not allow. Sorry if it's been posted. It's the Kernell boy

One of his most memorable bills fits the Obama MO: February 26, 2005 Income tax proposed? *HB2027 by *Kernell. Taxes, Privilege - Enacts a 1 percent privilege tax on employer's payroll and dedicates revenue to funding special payments to certain hospitals and funding some portion of a reenacted Tennessee Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool. - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 6; Title 56; Title 57; Title 67; Title 68; and Title 71.

Two days after someone broke into the email account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, unknown intruders have hacked the website of conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly and posted personal details of more than 200 of its subscribers. The breach into BillOreilly.com came as retaliation for remarks O'Reilly made on FoxNews condemning the attack on Palin's Yahoo email account, according to Wikileaks, a site that makes it easy for whistleblowers, hackers and anyone else to leak documents. As proof, Wikileaks posted a screenshot of the BillOreilly.com administrative interface that showed the names, email addresses, passwords, and home town of 20 subscribers...

Anchorage (Alaska) – FBI agents are using proxy server logs to track down the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. The hacker gained access to the Republican Vice Presidential candidate’s account by resetting the password. He then posted details of his adventures up on a popular online forum, but that information is now leading reporters and federal investigators to the suspect – a Tennessee university college student and son of state democratic representative Mike Kernell. A few days ago, someone going by the name of “Rubico” gloated on 4chan.org that he managed to hack into Sarah Palin’s...

Palin Hackers Behind Sick Pranks 4:23pm UK, Sunday September 21, 2008 The hackers who broke into Sarah Palin's email account are behind a host of sick pranks - including harassing a dead boy's parents by pretending to be his ghost.

Investigating David Kernell Daily News & Comments At this point, all we know about the University of Tennessee student who is rumored to be the subject of an investigation into the Governor Sarah Palin email hack-attack is that he is the son of State Representative Mike Kernell (D) from Memphis. WBIR is reporting: The son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell confirmed on Thursday. To be CLEAR, at this point no charges have been filed. At this point,...

US Presidential Campaign Hacktivism: first Palin, now O'Reilly by Davey Winder Sunday, 21 September 2008 !Visitors to the conservative Fox News reporter Bill O'Reilly's website might be forgiven for thinking all was as normal. Yet more than 200 of its paid subscribers details have been posted in public after the site was hacked, apparently in retaliation over comments O'Reilly made following the Sarah Palin email hack. The US Presidential election trail was always going to be a dirty one. The notion of an open and transparent campaign really is sweet, but laughable. Things have started to get really muddy this...