Free Republic

SNIPPET: "NEW YORK — A jury convicted a Lebanese-born Swede on Tuesday of plotting to help Al Qaeda recruit by trying to set up a weapons-training post in Oregon and distributing terrorist training manuals over the Internet. The verdict against Oussama Kassir..."

Twelve million computers have been brought into botnets since January, according to a new report — and 18% of all zombie machines are in the US. A new report from security company McAfee says that since January an estimated 12 million computers have been infected with malware and turned into zombies, making them part of botnets, and that these zombie numbers have increased by 50% since last year. At 18%, the US hosts the largest number of infected machines, followed by China with 13%. Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee, said: “The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber-criminals with...

Sensitive data detailing launch procedures for a US military missile air defence system have been found on a second-hand computer hard drive bought on eBay. More than 300 hard disks were studied and researchers uncovered other sensitive information including bank account details, medical records, confidential business plans, financial company data, personal id numbers, and job descriptions. The drives were bought from the UK, America, Germany, France and Australia through computer auctions, computer fairs and on the online auction site eBay. The exercise was carried out by BT's Security Research Centre in collaboration with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith...

Note: The following text is a quote: Swedish National Charged with Hacking and Theft of Trade Secrets Related to Alleged Computer Intrusions at NASA and Cisco Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka "Stakkato," 21, a Swedish national, was indicted today on intrusion and trade secret theft charges. The five-count indictment includes one intrusion count and two trade secret misappropriation counts involving Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco), of San Jose, Calif., which is a provider of computer network equipment and producer of Internet routers. According to the allegations in the indictment Pettersson intentionally committed an intrusion between May 12, 2004, and May 13, 2004,...

WASHINGTON—Timothy Lantz, 57, of Columbus, Ohio, pleaded guilty today in Columbus to one count of transportation of child pornography and one count of failing to update his sex offender registration, Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Gregory G. Lockhart and Special Agent-in-Charge William Plunkett of the FBI in Cincinnati, announced. During today’s plea hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark R. Abel, Lantz admitted transporting and shipping child pornography from Ohio to New York through the Internet and to failing to update his sex offender registration. Lantz admitted that...

In times when more and more scammers/spammers are getting DomainKeys verified, others are finding adaptive ways to increase the probability of bypassing antispam filters. Take for instance this 419s scam artist, that's been pretty active in his scamming attempts as of recently.

Note: The following text is a quote: Two Missouri Brothers Among Those Indicted in $4 Million Nationwide Spamming Conspiracy Millions of E-Mail Addresses Illegally Harvested from Computers at 2,000 Schools KANSAS CITY, MO—Two Missouri men and their company are among those indicted by a federal grand jury in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized more than 2,000 colleges and universities in a scheme that sold more than $4 million worth of products to students, announced Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis., his brother, Osmaan Ahmad...

AMERICA needs to pay a heckuva a lot more atten tion to the cyberthreat. Now. Sure, the Pentagon is refuting a Wall Street Journal report last week that hackers pinched loads of data on the military's newest, high-tech fighter aircraft from contractors' computer networks via the Internet. But even if the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program wasn't actually penetrated by cyberspies, it's still a chilling wake-up call for the United States. The computer systems of the F-35 Lightning were penetrated "repeatedly," according to the newspaper, allowing cyber cat burglars to "copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to...

WASHINGTON — Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up...

Several months ago, my computer crashed on me. Wouldn't even get to the beginning stages of boot up. Lights flickered if you hit the button, but beyond that, nothing. So, I took it to Best Buy where I bought it and where it was still under warrantee. They determined it was a fried motherboard. Consistent with the warrantee, the Geek Squad replaced it. Ever since that time, it takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up. Everything else seems to run fine, but boot up is excruciatingly slow. Any ideas why what normally took 30 seconds or so now takes 5...

A mystery electronic spy network apparently based in China has infiltrated hundreds of computers around the world and stolen files and documents, Canadian researchers have revealed. The network, dubbed GhostNet, appears to target embassies, media groups, NGOs, international organisations, government foreign ministries and the offices of the Dalai Lama, leader of the Tibetan exile movement. The researchers, based at Toronto University's Munk Centre for International Studies, said their discovery had profound implications. "This report serves as a wake-up call... these are major disruptive capabilities that the professional information security community, as well as policymakers, need to come to terms with...

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.

I'll have this as link only.

Yet another embassy web site is falling victim into a malware attack serving Adobe exploits to its visitors. As of last Friday, the official web site of the Embassy of Portugal in India has been compromised (embportindia.co.in). Who's behind the attack? Interestingly, that's the very same group that compromised the Azerbaijanian Embassies in Pakistan and Hungary earlier this month. Assessing this campaign once again establishes a direct connection with the Rusian Business Network's pre-shutdown netblocks and static locations.

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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.”

"What is PIFTS.exe?" or How Symantec Turned A Simple Mistake Into Corporate Disaster.First posted: March 9, 2009Updated: March 10, 2009 On March 9, 2009, Norton Internet Security users around the world encountered a suspicious message which indicated that an unsigned program, PIFTS.exe, was trying to connect to the Internet. Users quickly turned to Google where they only found other users looking for the same answers. Next they began posting questions on the official Norton Internet Security message board. Here is where the situation quickly deteriorated. Forum moderators began pulling every single post which mentioned PIFTS or merely alluded to...

Sorry to post a vanity but I got the parite virus that somehow got on my laptop. I rarely use it for too much and rarely surf the web with this laptop. I lost my desktop icons and was stumped. I have AV programs I have bought for my other machines like Spybot and PC Tools and Iolo System Mechanic to name a few. I was just lazy on this machine because it came with Norton. The machine is about 2 years old so my mistake.

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama's helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC's affiliate in Pittsburgh. Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information. The channel quoted the company's CEO, Bob Boback, who said Tiversa found a file containing the entire blueprints and avionics...

PITTSBURGH -- Target 11 has learned a Cranberry company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered what it said is a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama’s helicopter. Tiversa employees found engineering and communications information about Marine One at an IP address in Tehran, Iran. Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, said, ”We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One,which is the president's helicopter." The company was able to trace the file back to its original source. "What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD had a file sharing program on one of...