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Vietnamese government agents apparently targeted several U.S. lawmakers and journalists with spyware using public posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, according to an investigation by Amnesty International and a consortium of media outlets. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) were all tagged in posts earlier this year that featured malicious links to install Predator, a spyware similar to Pegasus, the investigation found. McCaul, who serves as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was allegedly targeted in a reply to a tweet from Taiwan’s Ministry of...

The staffer, who works for Senator Eric Schmitt, shared the details of the briefing on condition that he not be identified by name. Chinese hackers who subverted Microsoft's email platform earlier this year managed to steal tens of thousands of emails from US State Department accounts, a Senate staffer told Reuters on Wednesday. The staffer, who attended a briefing of State Department IT officials, said the officials told lawmakers that 60,000 emails were stolen from 10 different State Department accounts. Although the victims weren't named, all but one of them was working on East Asia and the Pacific, he said.

Below is my column in the New York Post in response to the attack this week by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. I am honestly saddened by the ad hominem attacks that have become common place with many academics like Tribe. There was a time when legal disagreements could be passionate but not personal. The use of personal insults and vulgar trash talking were avoided in our profession. Now even law deans have called Supreme Court justices “hacks” to the delight of their followers. I have always said that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of the 14th Amendment theory...

Actor Mark Hamill is calling on other Twitter users to boycott the site on Aug. 1 in an apparent attempt to protest Elon Musk’s ownership of the social media platform that's rebranding as "X." "This will only be effective if EVERYONE refrains from tweeting (X-ing?) on August 1st a/k/a #TweetlessTuesday. Let's show the owner the POWER OF THE PEOPLE. Honestly, would it kill you to keep your thoughts to yourself for 1 d--- day? Read a book!" Hamill told his fans Sunday. The "Star Wars" actor also made another call to boycott Twitter on Saturday. "Looking forward to taking a...

Health-care giant says an unknown party made patient information available on an online forumHCA Healthcare HCA - which operates about 180 hospitals and other health-care facilities, said some patient information, including names, emails and phone numbers, were leaked online. The company said an unknown and unauthorized party made the information available on an online forum. The information includes patients’ names, cities, ZIP codes, emails, phone numbers, service date and more. However, payment information, clinical information and other sensitive information such as social security numbers weren’t leaked. [Snip] The company has disabled user access to the affected storage location as a...

The City of Fort Worth says it was targeted by a group of hackers because of the state's stance on gender-affirming care. City officials say the hackers stole information from a website used to track city work orders, but no sensitive information has been released. On Friday, June 23 the City's Information Technology Solutions Department was told about a post that said the City's website had been hacked. Staff found that data posted online came from an internal information system used to track work orders, not the City's public website. "The City of Fort Worth has confirmed that the posted...

The vendor helps CalPERS identify member deaths and make sure that correct payments go to retirees and their beneficiaries.. The personal information of about 769,000 retired CalPERS members was exposed in a third-party data breach that was reported earlier this month. CalSTRS also said it was impacted by the breach and KCRA 3 is trying to learn how many of its members were impacted. CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, is the nation's largest public pension fund. It serves more than 2 million members in its retirement system and more than 1.5 million in its health program. CalSTRS, the...

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy got ransom requests from the Russia-linked extortion group Cl0p at both its nuclear waste facility and scientific education facility that were recently hit in a global hacking campaign, a spokesperson said on Friday. The DOE contractor Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the New Mexico-based facility for disposal of defense-related radioactive nuclear waste, were hit in the attack, which was first reported on Thursday. Data was "compromised" at the two DOE entities after hackers breached their systems through a security flaw in the file transfer tool...

Jack Teixeira’s defense team said that their client no longer had access to classified material and the government was exaggerating the threat he posed. Jack Teixeira, the US airman accused of leaking top-secret Pentagon documents in an online chat forum, was slapped with additional federal charges on Thursday [June 15, 2023]. The charges are in addition to the two counts filed by prosecutors against Teixeira after his arrest in April.

So I just saw the Trump commercial re: Desantis. He accuses Desantis of wanting to cut Medicare funding among other things. All dark and foreboding in black and white (of course). And here's my favorite part: "Desantis even voted to raise the retirement age to 70"!! Anyone even halfway responsible who looks at the Social Security trust fund numbers knows the retirement age will have to be lifted. Americans are living longer. There's no other option. Well, there is one other option -- raising SS taxes and/or raising or eliminating the income cap. Both Democrat solutions. Of course Trump has...

Nancy Sinatra "These Boots Are Made For Walkin" on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 27, 1966

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) advocated for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to be the lead 2024 presidential candidate, arguing he has earned the right to be “at the head of the class.” Cramer argued the Republican Party is “in desperate need of some new leadership” and that former President Donald Trump may struggle to achieve the GOP nomination depending on “who else is in the race,” he said during his appearance on NBC's Meet the Press. “Gov. DeSantis … has certainly earned the right to be at the head of the class … not just through his political rhetoric, but through...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of the House and Senate were informed Wednesday that hackers may have gained access to their sensitive personal data in a breach of a Washington, D.C., health insurance marketplace. Employees of the lawmakers and their families were also affected. DC Health Link confirmed that data on an unspecified number of customers was affected and said it was notifying them and working with law enforcement. Sample stolen data was posted on the site for a dozen apparent customers. It included Social Security numbers, addresses, names of employers, phone numbers, emails and addresses. In an email to all...

Sam Bankman-Fried was allegedly directed by Bahamas regulators to gain unauthorized access to his collapsed crypto platform after quitting as CEOFTX made the bombshell claims in an emergency legal filing in the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Thursday Bankman-Fried was accused of 'hacking' FTX systems to transfer digital assets to Bahamas government while he was 'effectively in custody'SEC chair Gary Gensler is now under scrutiny over his failure to prevent the implosion of FTX The collapsed cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX claims former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried 'hacked' its systems after filing for bankruptcy to transfer 'digital assets' to Bahamian regulators.FTX...

A former Seattle tech worker convicted of several charges related to a massive hack of Capital One bank and other companies in 2019 was sentenced Tuesday to time served and five years of probation. U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik said sentencing former Amazon software engineer Paige Thompson to time in prison would have been particularly difficult on her "because of her mental health and transgender status," the Department of Justice said in a statement.U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said his office was "very disappointed" with the sentencing decision, adding prosecutors had asked for Thompson to serve seven years in prison....

A data hack reveals the right-wing Liberty Counsel may have violated IRS rules against political activity. The hacktivist site Enlace Hacktivista released a 25-gigabyte Liberty Counsel database containing nearly seven years of donor records, which show that 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations controlled by the evangelical organization encouraged supporters to vote for Donald Trump -- an apparent violation of IRS rules prohibiting those entities from endorsing political candidates, reported The Intercept.“Noticing a worrying trend of far-right and anti-abortion activists aligning themselves with the evangelical Christian movement, hiding their funding sources behind laws that allow church ministries to keep their donations secret, we...

President Donald Trump blasted Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a “broken down hack” just days after the Senate Minority Leader questioned whether the GOP would be able to flip the chamber in November’s midterm elections. “Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate,” Trump said on his Truth Social media site late Saturday. “This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get...

The Chinese government tried to obtain sensitive internal information and build a network of influence and informants inside the Federal Reserve, according to a new report released Tuesday by Republican staff members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The report from the committee staff of Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the ranking member, did not conclude whether the attempts, which included the detention of a Federal Reserve employee, were successful. Since at least 2013, the report found, China has targeted the Federal Reserve System and sought to recruit U.S.-based economists to share information in exchange for money...

snip "In a first-ever joint appearance Wednesday with the director of Britain’s MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency, Wray raised the possibility that China might be inching closer to invading Taiwan, noting that Beijing has been taking steps to shield its economy from sanctions that would come after such a move." snip “The widespread Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has been shown to be plain wrong,” McCallum said. “But the Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate...

Help, please. I can't get into my Yahoo account due to an incorrect password. Verification code email from them isn't arriving in my regular email account.