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NEW YORK (AP) - A former CIA software engineer charged with leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks says it’s cruel and unusual punishment that he’s awaiting trial in solitary confinement, housed in a vermin-infested cell of a jail unit where inmates are treated like “caged animals.” Joshua Schulte, 32, has asked a Manhattan federal judge to force the federal Bureau of Prisons to improve conditions at the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he has been held for over two years under highly restrictive conditions usually reserved for terrorism defendants. In court papers Tuesday, Schulte maintained he is held in conditions “below that...

A major cyberattack on big US telecom companies has led officials to recommend that people use encrypted messaging apps. Microsoft named the attack "Salt Typhoon," and it's affecting companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. Officials haven't released a timeline for when everything will be fixed, but they did say that a lot of different types of information were accessed in the breach. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advised using encrypted messaging apps like Signal or iMessage to reduce the chances of messages being intercepted. This essentially means to stop using SMS because it's not...

A ransomware attack against blood-donation nonprofit OneBlood, which services more than 250 American hospitals, has "significantly reduced" the org's ability to take, test, and distribute blood. In a notice today, OneBlood revealed the intrusion disrupted a "software system," and had forced the organization to use manual processes and procedures to remain operational. The outfit provides blood for healthcare facilities across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. "Manual processes take significantly longer to perform and impact inventory availability," OneBlood spokesperson Susan Forbes explained in a statement. "In an effort to further manage the blood supply we have asked the more...

A senior U.S. cybersecurity official has revealed that Chinese hackers are strategically positioning themselves within the United States’ critical infrastructure networks, potentially preparing for a future conflict with the U.S. Morgan Adamski, executive director of U.S. Cyber Command, stated that ongoing cyber operations linked to China are designed to give Beijing an advantage if tensions between the two nations escalate. Speaking at the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia, Adamski explained that Chinese cyber activities have targeted key systems, including those related to energy, water, and communications. https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1860089868182867989? https://x.com/ReutersWorld/status/1860028012458061948? These efforts are part of a broader strategy to prepare for...

Multiple U.S. broadband providers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies, have been breached by a Chinese hacking group tracked as Salt Typhoon, the Wall Street Journal reports. The purpose of the attack appears to be intelligence collection as the hackers might have had access to systems used by the U.S. federal government for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. It is unclear when the intrusion occurred, but WSJ cites people familiar with the matter, saying that "for months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data." Salt Typhoon is...

Hezbollah's new Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, delivered his first speech in his new position today (Wednesday), but his remarks were cut off mid-speech. At the same time, a cyber attack was reported in Lebanon. Later, Hezbollah managed to restore the broadcast of the speech. "The question that is being asked is - what is the leader's plan of action?" Qassem said. "My plan is the continuation of Nasrallah's plan in all respects - political, cultural, and jihad. We will continue to carry out the war plan that we decided on together with the organization's leadership, we will stay on the war...

It can cause more harm than good! Key Features ·CrowdStrike shows the havoc that can be wreaked by supposed security software. ·Most people don't need third-party antivirus software. ·Most modern-day threats are aimed at exploiting humans, not computers.

SNAP recipients across Georgia are facing a tough challenge, as hackers have reportedly wiped out funds from their food assistance cards, leaving many without essential support. It was nearly $1,000 Branaita Jones says a thief took from her Georgia SNAP account hundreds of miles away. “I called the food stamp people and they said somebody took my food stamps in New York,” Jones told Channel 2′s Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln. The Department of Human Services says recipients like Jones are one of thousands who’ve reported stolen funds from their EBT cards. [snip] The Georgia Department of Human Services announced plans...

"It could have been worse," one owner incredibly concluded. It’s a tale as old as… the Internet of Things era. Robot vacuums made by Ecovacs have been reported roving around people’s homes, yelling profanities at them through the onboard speakers after the company’s software was found to be vulnerable to intrusion. ABC News in Australia reports that there were recently multiple instances across the U.S. when owners of Ecovacs vacuums noticed their devices acting unusually. “It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something,” Daniel Swenson told the outlet. “You could hear snippets of maybe a voice.” He opened the...

Donald Trump says a federal case needs to be brought against Kamala Harris after it was revealed Iran sent sensitive materials to her campaign about her rival... ...on Wednesday, the FBI claimed the cyber-terrorists sent unsolicited emails containing stolen information from the Trump campaign to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, is now questioning why the Biden or Harris campaign did not turn over this information or report it to authorities... There's no evidence that any of the recipients of the hacked information responded, officials said, and...

Adrian Lamo, the computer hacker who reported Chelsea Manning to authorities for sharing classified documents with WikiLeaks, was found dead in an apartment in Wichita, Kansas, last week, according to local reports. Lamo, whose cause of death has yet to be reported but has been deemed unsuspicious by police, was 37, the Wichita Eagle reported. “With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian’s friends and [acquaintances] that he is dead,” his father, Mario Lamo, posted on Facebook on Friday. “A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son.” Lamo...

The feds warned that “a group of malicious cyber actors,” whom security experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as APT6, “have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government and commercial networks” since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert obtained by Motherboard. The alert, which is also available online, shows that foreign government hackers are still successfully hacking and stealing data from US government’s servers, their activities going unnoticed for years. This comes months after the US government revealed that a group of hackers, widely believed to be working for the Chinese government, had for...

Paging all terrorists! Thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were injured in southern Lebanon on Tuesday when their new pagers all simultaneously exploded — causing horrifying burns to their groins and hands as the devices detonated on their belts and in their pockets. Lebanese officials said 2,800 people were injured and eight killed in what Hezbollah officials claimed was a hacking attack by Israel.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was hit by an apparent cyberattack over the weekend, which has caused major internet outages affecting the airport's phones, email, and other systems. Port of Seattle officials are continuing to work on Monday to restore the airport's systems, which is the third day that the airport has been impacted by the attack. The airport has encouraged travelers to use their mobile phones to get their boarding passes, and to allow extra time at the airport to get to their gates. “We’re working around the clock to get necessary systems back online and to mitigate impacts to...

Oh woe is us! Hackers have found vulnerabilities in voting machines and, gee whiz, there is just no way to fix them before the November election. At least that is what the Politico cybersecurity reporter Maggie Miller would like you to believe.However, there is a certain word very conveniently missing from her story on Monday and that missing word is "paper," as in "paper ballots," which you will find nowhere in "The nation’s best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines — but no time to fix them."

bout four months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data. The breach, which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes, said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group.

A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment today charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.   The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019.  It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.  According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions...

Ten days after a cybersecurity threat shut down dozens of routine services and threw a wrench into daily city business, Cleveland City Hall is planning—finally—to reopen Thursday at noon. On June 10, the city announced a "cyber attack" had hindered regular operations, leading to a sudden shut down, which meant hundreds of employees working remote and residents shut out from the building. Days later, the attack was categorized as ransomware, meaning hackers had penetrated an open door in the city's digital infrastructure and potentially held files or servers hostage. It's unclear if Clevelanders' personal data was comprised, as is possible...

Hackers targeted several high-profile TikTok accounts, including hotel heiress Paris Hilton’s — and planted malicious code on the official page of CNN, according to reports. The malware is being spread through TikTok via its direct messaging function, Forbes reported on Tuesday. The hack is a so-called “zero-day” attack — meaning that the hacker learned of the vulnerability before the software developers who thus have “zero days” to prevent it. Certain attacks are exploited through vulnerabilities that sometimes take the developers days or weeks to discover. CNN was forced to take down its TikTok account for several days after a hacker...

We already know that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was completely unjustified and unnecessary for many reasons …***Now we're learning that due to a secret Obama-era program, the Presidential Information Technology Committee (PITC), there's a very good chance that the Biden Administration has had control of the originals of many, or all of the documents at issue this entire time.The PITC was created in March 2015 by Executive Order in response to an October 2014 incident in which Russian hackers breached Executive Office of the President computers. ...A 2015 Memorandum of Understanding between the members of the PITC set out the...