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For a website like AshleyMadison.com that prides itself on secrecy and anonymity, a breach like this can be catastrophic. The site’s subscribers pay to have access to other married people looking to have affairs. They all, presumably, felt that their private information was safe. “The quick answer is: not that safe,” says Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, the director of the Cyber Security Initiative at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center.He says Ashley Madison’s clients know now the truth of the web: everything is hackable.“Largely, you should not have an expectation of ultimate security and privacy,” Sulmeyer explains. “And...

Computer hackers likely working for the Syrian regime and Hezbollah have managed to penetrate the computers of Israeli and American activists working with the Syrian opposition, exposing sensitive contacts between the sides. Al-Akhbar, a newspaper serving as Hezbollah’s mouthpiece in Lebanon, published a series of articles over the weekend purporting to divulge correspondence between Mendi Safadi, a Druze Israeli and former political adviser to Deputy Regional Cooperation Minister Ayoub Kara, with members of the Syrian opposition around the world, taken from taken from Safadi’s computer. The article also contains screenshots of word documents and text message exchanges saved on Safadi’s...

<p>Hackers swiped Social Security numbers from 21.5 million people -- as well as fingerprint records and information from background check investigations -- in the massive breach earlier this year of federal employee data, the government acknowledged Thursday.</p> <p>The Office of Personnel Management included the findings in a report Thursday on developments in the investigation into a pair of major hacks.</p>

The Trump Hotel Collection, a string of luxury hotel properties tied to business magnate and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, appears to be the latest victim of a credit card breach, according to data shared by several U.S.-based banks. Contacted regarding reports from sources at several banks who traced a pattern of fraudulent debit and credit card charges to accounts that had all been used at Trump hotels, the company declined multiple requests for comment. But sources in the financial industry say they have little doubt that Trump properties in several U.S. locations — including Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas,...

Infidelity. Sexual fetishes. Drug abuse. Crushing debt. They’re the most intimate secrets of U.S. government workers. And now they’re in the hands of foreign hackers. It was already being described as the worst hack of the U.S. government in history. And it just got much worse. A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers’ haul: information about workers’ sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity. Those details, which are now presumed to be in...

The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than...

Have you been following the hack story? Chinese hackers compromised key US Govt database and stole the records of everyone who had a security clearance, including their SS number, and personal, medical, financial, and family and relative information. they also appear to have stolen similar data for most everyone who is, or who has been, a government employee. The databases were unencrypted and not subject to any real security protection including the most basic intrusion detection systems. As reported, the security that is standard on an iPhone is superior to what the US Govt was using, in spite of having...

While the headlines over the past week have been swamped with coverage over the candidates bidding for the 2016 presidential election and a “trans-racial” NAACP leader lying about her race, critically important issues that are detrimental to our national security have gone virtually unnoticed. For instance, on Friday we learned that as many as 14 million current and former civilian U.S. government employees had their information compromised in an unprecedented attack by Chinese hackers. In a late Friday news dump, the Associated Press announced that the hackers stole, “Social Security numbers, military records and veterans’ status information, addresses, birth dates,...

The first reports of the massive penetration of Office of Personnel Management files and security clearance applications — apparently by Chinese hackers most likely working for, or with, that country’s military intelligence apparatus — included grumbles from the affected employees that the administration didn’t handle the situation very well. Those early grumbles were but the snap responses of a few individual employees the media chose at random. Now that the millions of people potentially affected by the hack have been given a few days to digest the news and consider the Administration’s response, their attitude has soured into what government...

Hackers have breached a database containing a wealth of sensitive information from federal employees’ security background checks, the Obama administration said Friday — news that experts say could deal a devastating blow to U.S. intelligence gathering. The revelations came just a week after officials disclosed a previous massive cyber intrusion into the same federal personnel office, compromising records of more than 4 million current and past employees in a breach that administration officials have privately blamed on Chinese hackers. The stolen records in the hack disclosed Friday included data on intelligence and military personnel, The Associated Press reported. A senior...

Those of us who have had security clearances in the past endured plenty of lectures on the need to secure sensitive material. The Office of Personnel Management in the Obama administration apparently needed to listen a little more carefully. A hack by China’s intelligence service not only exposed four million current federal employees, but also thirty years of data from security clearances, with the most personally sensitive information possible now exposed to foreign spies:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Data stolen from U.S. government computers by suspected Chinese hackers included security clearance information and background checks dating back three decades, U.S. officials said on Friday,...

A hack announced last week affected all current and retired federal employees, and hackers got their hands on much more personal information than previously announced, the American Federation of Government Employees said Thursday.A December breach of government systems containing personal information of millions of federal employees was worse than originally thought. A union of federal workers said Thursday that the attack, announced last week, had stolen confidential information of every single federal employee, past or present -- far more than was previously revealed. The government disputes those claims. It's the latest in a spree of damaging hacks against the government,...

Hackers from China breached the federal weather network recently, forcing cybersecurity teams to seal off data vital to disaster planning, aviation, shipping and scores of other crucial uses, officials said. The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, according to three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service. Even then, NOAA did not say its systems were compromised.

Half of Turkey—44 of 81 provinces, 40 million people including those living in Istanbul and Ankara, suffered a massive power outage that lasted a solid twelve hours. It happened on Tuesday, March 31st. It happened because Iran wanted it to happen. The blackout in Turkey was caused by a cyber hack that originated in Iran. This cyber attack was payback, a taste of what Iran has to offer. Everything went down. Computers, airports, air traffic, traffic lights, hospitals, lights, elevators, refrigeration, water and sewage, everything simply stopped. In an instant, Turkey was transported back to the stone ages.

The recent cyber theft of millions of personnel records from the federal government was sophisticated and potentially crippling, but hackers with just rudimentary skills could easily do even more damage by targeting voting machines, according to security experts. In many cases, even the electronic ballots could be manipulated remotely, according to a new report. The report found that the AVS WINVote machines Virginia has used since 2002 have such flimsy security that an amateur hacker could change votes from outside a polling location. “This means anyone could have broken into the machines from the parking lot,” said Cris Thomas, a...

<p>PHOENIX - A state-run website is down following a cyber-attack from hackers claiming to be the Middle East Cyber Army.</p> <p>The Arizona Capitol Times reports (http://bit.ly/1Ge0hUT) the Department of Weights and Measures' website was displaying messages like "In Allah we trust" on Sunday before it was shut down by agency officials.</p>

In case you missed it yesterday, there was a massive hack possibly exposing the personal information of at least 4 million U.S. federal government employees. This morning reports show the hack came from the Chinese government, which has been engaged in a series of adversarial behaviors with its military toward the U.S. throughout the past two weeks. They're denying it and ironically asking for more trust. China responded Friday to allegations it was involved in a hacking attack on U.S. government computers by saying such claims are unproven and irresponsible, and that it wishes the United States would trust it...

The Obama administration is scrambling to assess the impact of an unprecedented data breach involving the agency that handles security clearances and employee records. According to the Washington Post, Chinese hackers breached the Office of Personnel Management in December and gained access to personal information of up to 4 million current and former employees. A congressional aide familiar with the situation, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to discuss it, says the OPM and the Interior Department were hacked. A second U.S. official who also declined to be identified said the data breach could potentially affect...

An anonymous group of hackers has been in control of the Republican Party of Kentucky’s website since Sunday. RPK Chairman Steve Robertson told Pure Politics he has contacted the website’s designers and host, but because of the Memorial Day holiday staffers will not be able to begin addressing the problem until later Monday. Robertson was notified of the hack Sunday afternoon, he said. The reason for the attack at this point in time is unknown. “I don’t know anything other than it’s been hacked and the people who can address it will be able to begin addressing it this evening,”...

It’s no secret that uncurbed climate change and population growth are going to (and already have) put stress on the planet. But the situation is getting so bad that one prominent NASA scientist says we have to start thinking about terraforming Mars and that, in order for the human race to survive at current levels, we will eventually “need at least three planets.” “The entire ecosystem is crashing,” Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center said Thursday. “Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the human animal. People allege we’re short 40-50 percent...