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The director of the National Security Agency warned that the hacking group Anonymous could have the ability within the next year or two to bring about a limited power outage in the US through a cyber attack. Gen. Keith Alexander, the agency's director, provided his assessment in meetings at the White House and in other private sessions, according to people familiar with the gatherings.

An unpatched critical flaw in 64-bit Windows 7 leaves computers vulnerable to a full 'blue screen of death' system crash. The memory corruption bug in x64 Win 7 could also allow malicious kernel-level code to be injected into machines, security alert biz Secunia warns. Fortunately the 32-bit version of Windows 7 is immune to the flaw, which has been pinned down to the win32k.sys operating system file - which contains the kernel portion of the Windows user interface and related infrastructure.Proof-of-concept code showing how to crash vulnerable Win 7 boxes has been leaked: the simple HTML script, when opened in...

The pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continues to inspire opponents to come up with creative solutions to circumvent it. A new anti-SOPA add-on for Firefox, titled “DeSopa,” is such a counter measure.When installed, users can click a single button to resolve a blocked domain via foreign DNS servers, bypassing all domestic DNS blockades and allowing the user to browse the site though the bare IP-address (if supported). “I feel that the general public is not aware of the gravity of SOPA and Congress seems like they are about to cater to the special interests involved, to the detriment of...

1. Introduction For many years people have wanted to protect their right to privacy. As technology changes, it seems that privacy evolves away more and more. I2P is a protocol used for an encrypted multi-proxy on the Internet. While, this sounds simple, there is actually a lot of work going on with I2P to achieve this. Unlike some multi-proxies, I2P will allow you to tunnel many more applications through it than just web browsing, making it a very robust protocol.I2P is available for all platforms, not just Linux. For this example I have used Debian Sid to perform the installation. With...

> According to the indictment, the suspects entered into deals with various internet advertisers in which they would be paid for generating traffic to certain websites or advertisements. But instead of earning the money legitimately, the FBI said the defendants used malware to force infected computers to unwillingly visit the target sites or advertisements -- pumping up click results and, therefore, ill-gotten profits to the tune of $14 million. The malware was also designed to prevent users from installing anti-virus software that may have been able to free the infected computers. > In the first case, if a user searched...

An unnamed computer virus is compromising the security of U.S. Reaper and Predator drones as they fly missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Pakistan. Wired reports the virus was found about two weeks ago and hasn't kept the drone pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from conducting missions. There haven't been any reports of classified data breaches, but the virus has resisted the military's best efforts to remove it.

Microsoft’s security used to be a joke. Its operating systems were riddled with bugs that were exploited by hackers and mocked at conferences such as Black Hat, the Las Vegas confab for security technology. But yesterday, one of the independent security researchers at the conference praised Microsoft’s progress on improving security. Chris Paget, chief hacker at security consulting firm Recursion Ventures, is a well-known figure at the twin Black Hat and Defcon conferences in Las Vegas, having demonstrated a live interception of a cell phone call last year. In her talk this year, she said she hated the limitations of...

`NK programmers hired in S.Korea to make security software` AUGUST 08, 2011 07:54 The CEO of a computer security company repeatedly looked around in an interview with a Dong-A Ilbo reporter. The executive seemed wary of whether somebody was listening to what he was saying. He started talking after placing on a table two mobile phones with different numbers. He showed nervousness in the interview, saying, “If what I say is leaked (to a third party)...” What the CEO was afraid of was none other than North Korea. He told Dong-A, “North Korean programmers are developing information security programs for...

Wireless drone sniffs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, phone signals By: Declan McCullagh August 4, 2011 11:19 AM PDT LAS VEGAS--Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it's war flying. A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas. "Nobody's really looking at this from a threat perspective," said Mike Tassey, a security consultant who works for the U.S. government intelligence community. "There's some pretty evil stuff you can do from...

The world's most extensive case of cyber-espionage, including attacks on U.S. government and U.N. computers, is set to be revealed Wednesday by online security firm McAfee, and analysts are speculating that China is behind the attacks. The spying was dubbed "Operation Shady RAT," or "remote access tool" by McAfee -- and it led to a massive loss of information that poses a huge economic threat, wrote vice president of threat research Dmitri Alperovitch "What is happening to all this data — by now reaching petabytes as a whole — is still largely an open question," Alperovitch wrote on a blog detailing the threat. "However,...

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved an internet snooping bill that requires internet service providers (ISPs) to keep records of customer activity for a year so police can review them as needed. Here's what this bill means for you and what you can do about it. What Is This Internet Snooping Bill, Exactly, and Why Is It Bad? The lovingly titled Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCFIPA of 2011) requires ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses. It's a record of your personal information...

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses,...

Boing-boing notices that “yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-10 for H.R. 1981, a data-retention bill that will require your ISP to spy on everything you do online and save records of it for 12 months. California Rep Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill, called it a ‘data bank of every digital act by every American’ that would ‘let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.’” The databank is “for the children”. HR 1981 is actually titled “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″. Its sponsors say “the Protecting Children from Internet...

A group of computer hackers claims to have breached NATO security and accessed hordes of restricted material. The group called Anonymous says it would be "irresponsible" to publish most of the material it stole from NATO but that it is sitting on about 1 gigabyte of data. Anonymous posted a PDF file Thursday, and broadcast a link to it from its Twitter page, showing what appeared to be a document headed "NATO Restricted."

The FBI is executing search warrants at two Long Island, N.Y., homes and one Brooklyn, N.Y., home of three suspected members of notorious hacking group Anonymous early Tuesday morning, FoxNews.com has learned. More than 10 FBI agents arrived at the Baldwin, N.Y., home of Giordani Jordan with a search warrant for computers and computer-related accessories. The targets of the FBI searches are all in their late teens to early 20s.

Prosecutors cited a report prepared by a software program called CacheBack, which the state argued showed 84 web searches for chloroform being made on the Anthony computer. The defense would later contradict the CacheBack report with a separate report generated by another program, NetAnalysis. That report returned only one search result for chloroform. Last week, CacheBack CEO John Bradley posted a statement on his website, acknowledging that the 84-search result was an error, and criticizing the state for its use of flawed data. It was Bradley who introduced those results as a witness for the defense. On the stand, he...

Security: The Pentagon has disclosed perhaps the largest theft of sensitive data by an unnamed foreign government. The threat to our electronic infrastructure is real, growing and as dangerous as a North Korean missile. In outlining America's cyberwarfare strategy last Thursday at the National Defense University, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn disclosed that 24,000 sensitive files containing Pentagon data at a defense company were accessed in a cyberattack in March, likely by a foreign government. He didn't disclose the identity of that government, but in a bit of an understatement he acknowledged, "We have a pretty good idea." So...

The Obama campaign website was hacked on Tuesday and invited supporters to two fake anti-government events hosted by an unnamed "Commy Obama."The campaign's application for mobile devices, such as iPhones and iPads, directed users to two events titled "Rules of Politics" scheduled for noon on Tuesday in Washington."1. Politicians and other public servants lie," read the event description provided on the Obama campaign website. (Full screenshot here.) "2. Politicians tell you what you want to hear and offer to provide things for 'free' to get votes. 3. When government buys, the people pay."The 430-word message lists 21 total anti-government criticisms,...

LulzSec the hacker group that has been a thorn in the side of major institutions ranging from Sony to the CIA, says it is going away -- but not quietly. The group said late Saturday it would disband. In what it says is its final act of mayhem, it publicly unloaded a trove of documents containing a significant amount of compressed data. "Our planned 50-day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance...our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011," LulzSec says in its final message. . The group says it chose to end its campaign...

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan will punish people who create or wilfully spread computer viruses with fines and prison terms of up to three years under a new law enacted by parliament. Under the law, police can seize email communication logs of suspects from Internet service providers, among other information. The action, which has met with opposition from privacy and free speech advocates, brings Japan a step closer to concluding the Convention on Cybercrime, a Europe-led effort. The convention is the first international treaty to combat crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks. Japan has signed the treaty but...