Free Republic

Where is www.cpac.org? I just tried to go to their site and it's down. Servers go up and down, just ask JimRob, but that's not what's happening here. Their DNS entry is gone. Pardon my geek, but ping returns "Unknown Host" and Arin WhoIs shows no match. Likewise for "cpac.org" This is suspicious to me, because highjacking someone's DNS entry is a common hacker attack, I believe it may have happened to FreeRepublic once.

(CNET Networks Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)A Windows feature that automatically searches for Wi-Fi connections can be exploited by hackers, a security researcher has warned. The feature is part of Windows XP and 2000 and was exposed as being vulnerable at hacker conference ShmooCon on Saturday by vulnerability researcher Mark Loveless. Loveless claimed that hackers can take advantage of the feature to include a user's PC in a peer-to-peer network, giving them access to information on its hard drive. When a PC running Windows XP or Windows 2000 boots up, it will automatically try to connect to a wireless network. If...

Sober Helps Catch Child Porn Offender By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews December 20, 2005, 3:13 PM For once the never-ending Sober worm actually did some good. A 20 year-old child porn offender turned himself in earlier this week after mistaking a message generated by the worm as an actual communiqué from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. The e-mail said "an investigation was underway," which apparently spooked the man into believing the authorities were aware of his online activities. He was charged after police found pornographic images of children on his computer. A spokesman for the Paderborn, Germany police credited the worm...

December 17, 2005: StrategyPage doesn’t just report on Cyber War, sometimes we get caught in the middle of it. We got an electronic nastygram from China recently when, as we were installing a new server, at a hosting site (to improve response time, and lessen the workload on the volunteer staffers who maintain the server). There was a gap of a few days between the time the new server went online, and the hardware firewall (which is a bear to configure) got installed. Into that opening, some Chinese hackers got onto the server and tried to take it over. Actually,...

Dec 15, 9:36 AM EST Elections supervisor: Some Diebold voting machines can be hacked TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Some Diebold-made voting machines, which are used in Florida and elsewhere throughout the country, can be hacked to change the results of an election, according to tests conducted for Leon County's elections supervisor and a monitoring group.Ion Sancho said tests by two computer experts showed an insider could secretly change election results and the number of ballots cast on Diebold's optical-scan machines. The tests caused Sancho this week to scrap Leon's Diebold machines for a system made by Election Systems and Software,...

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, a security institute says. A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute has said. The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity. ?These attacks...

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute said. The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity. "These attacks come from someone with intense discipline. No other organization could do this if they were not a military organization," Paller said in a conference call...

Virus writers have begun taking advantage of Sony-BMG's use of rootkit technology in DRM software bundled with its music CDs. Sony-BMG's rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with "$sys$". A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file "$sys$drv.exe" in the Windows system directory....

Sony is apparently borrowing a tactic from hackers for its digital-rights management technology, and some security experts question the practice. Security researchers have identified a rootkit -- software used by hackers to hide their malicious code from anti-virus and anti-spyware defenses -- within the copy protection scheme Sony BMG Music Entertainment uses to prevent music CDs from being copied to computers. The digital rights management (DRM) technology that Sony BMG uses limits the number of times a CD can be "ripped" to a computer. To prevent the DRM software from being easily circumvented, the copy protection's creator -- a U.K.-based...

Hurricane Katrina is bringing out the worst in people on the net as well as on the streets of New Orleans. Spam emails purporting to offer links to news about Katrina are been used to tempt potential victims onto a site hosting Trojan malware. The site exploits well-known IE vulnerabilities to install a variety of Trojans including Cgab-A, Borobot-P, Borobot-Q, Borodldr-H and Inor-R. Security firm Sophos reports that subject lines used in the malicious emails include, but are not limited to, the following: Re: g8 Tropical storm flooded New Orleans. Re: g7 80 percent of our city underwater. Re: q1...

As an enlightened, modern parent, I try to be as involved as possible in the lives of my six children. I encourage them to join team sports. I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they listen to and the shows they watch, the company they keep and the books they read. You could say I'm a model parent. My children have never failed to make me proud, and I can say without the slightest embellishment that I have the finest family in...

WASHINGTON - Social Security numbers, birth dates and other private data on roughly 33,000 Air Force officers -- about half the branch's officer corps -- were stolen from a military computer database, the service informed its personnel late last week.Officials of the Air Force Personnel Center, based at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, said the intrusion occurred sometime in May or June, apparently by someone who used a legitimate user's log-in information to gain access to the system.The exposed data did not include financial records, but contained such personal information as marital status, number of children and academic...

At least two popular websites used by Middle Eastern terrorist groups to disseminate video, communiques, and other propaganda were temporarily disabled early Saturday by a hacker calling him/herself "The Ghost XXXV." Visitors to the two militant forums were greeted with the image of a vampire, the signature and e-mail address of "Ghost XXXV", and the following message: "yOuR sItE hAs bEeN hAcKeD... You Can Run But You Can't Hide. Astalavista Baby!" By 10am eastern, the claim of responsibility left by "Ghost XXXV" on one victim had been erased and replaced with a message from a site administrator known as "Terrorist007"...

Attackers are also focusing on Web browsers and media players, SANS says JULY 25, 2005 (REUTERS) - Flawed backup software has emerged as the latest target for hackers looking for corporate secrets, according to a survey released today. The survey by the nonprofit SANS Institute found new holes in widely used software products, even as computer users are getting better at patching some favorite hacker targets. Attackers are now focusing on desktop software, like Web browsers and media players, that may not get fixed as frequently as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and other software widely used by business, the...

BizNetDaily page hijacked!

Hacker Caught In January 2005, Jeremy Hammond and the hacker group collectively known as the "Internet Liberation Front" gained illegal access to the ProtestWarrior server. Thousands of customer credit card numbers were then stolen for the purpose of making millions of dollars in donations to various leftwing organizations. In early February, ProtestWarrior discovered the illegal breach and the identity of the criminals responsible. Using the hacker recruiting ground www.hackthissite.org, Jeremy Hammond put together and led a team of politically motivated "hacktivists" to probe the ProtestWarrior server for months until an exploit was found. When an obscure vulnerability was discovered in...

In January 2005, Jeremy Hammond and the hacker group collectively known as the "Internet Liberation Front" gained illegal access to the ProtestWarrior server. Thousands of customer credit card numbers were then stolen for the purpose of making millions of dollars in donations to various leftwing organizations. In early February, ProtestWarrior discovered the illegal breach and the identity of the criminals responsible. Using the hacker recruiting ground www.hackthissite.org, Jeremy Hammond put together and led a team of politically motivated "hacktivists" to probe the ProtestWarrior server for months until an exploit was found. When an obscure vulnerability was discovered in the PW...

A Wood Green man accused of being the "world's biggest computer hacker" caused $700,000 dollars worth of damage after hacking his way into 97 of the US Government's most secure computers, a court heard. Unemployed engineer Gary McKinnon allegedly used software available on the internet to break into systems at the at the Pentagon, NASA, US Army, US Navy and US Air force. The US Army Military District of Washington network had to be shut down at one stage amid fears the hacking was the work of the al-Qaeda terror network. McKinnon claims he was searching for evidence that the...

A British man appeared in court today over allegations that he hacked into the US military computer system causing damage worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.Gary McKinnon, 39, faces extradition to the US over claims that he accessed 97 government computers over a one-year period. District judge Christopher Pratt granted him bail to reappear for an extradition hearing on July 27.He was ordered to provide £5,000 security, report to his local police station, not to apply for any international travel documents and not to use any computer equipment allowing him to access the internet as bail conditions. "On one instance,...

British man accused of breaking into military, NASA computers LONDON - A British man accused by the United States of hacking into scores of military computers and disrupting operations was arrested in London on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing, police said. Unemployed programmer Gary McKinnon, 39, is accused of gaining illegal access to 53 computers owned by the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. Army and Navy between February 2001 and March 2002. He was taken to a central London police station and is due to appear in court on Wednesday for an extradition hearing brought on behalf of the...