Free Republic

BBC News Online has been shown just how lax security is on wireless networks used in London's financial centre. On one short trip, two-thirds of the networks we discovered using a laptop and free software tools were found to be wide open. Any maliciously minded hacker could easily join these networks and piggy back on their fast net links, steal documents or subvert other machines on the systems to do their bidding. None of the wireless networks we found used anything but their flawed, in-built security systems to protect against hack attacks. On the warpath Many people think of hacking...

Russia’s domestic intelligence service has accused an FBI official of an unauthorized incursion into Russian computer networks in an attempt to procure evidence proving the guilt of two Russian hackers charged by the US on over 20 counts of computer-related crime, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday. Russian law enforcers instigated criminal proceedings against FBI agent Michael Schuler accusing him of unsanctioned access to computer-stored information (Article 272, part 2 of the Criminal Code). The case was launched at the initiative of an investigator of the FSB’s regional directorate for Chelyabinsk Region Igor Tkach. Russian law enforcers moved...

FBI plays cyber-fear card again By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 08/06/2002 at 16:30 EST There's a new warning from the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), an elite cyber squad famous for infecting its own network with SirCam, and which consistently manages to worry us about the wrong things at the wrong time. Today it's a blistering cyber attack from Europe targeting American ISPs and Web sites. Only it seems not to have occurred, in spite of being based on 'credible information'. One has to wonder if the original source might be an IRC channel full of boastful...

ID network launched as Japan introduces Big Brother By Mock Turtle Wednesday, 7th August 2002 The Japanese Government has launched a new compulsory national ID scheme in the face of stiff opposition. Academics and activists have already handed the Home Affairs Ministry a petition demanding the Government halts the programme, which will turn every Japanese citizen into an 11-digit number. The opposition group has filed a court case claiming the new system is unconstitutional and should be stopped as it is a violation to privacy and tempts hackers. The new database stores personal data for every one of Japan's 126...

WASHINGTON--The Recording Industry Association of America's Web site was unreachable over the weekend due to a denial-of-service attack. The apparently deliberate overload rendered the RIAA.org site unavailable for portions of four days and came after the group endorsed legislation to allow copyright holders to disrupt peer-to-peer networks. The malicious flood started on Friday and did not involve any intrusion into the RIAA's internal network, a representative for the trade association said on Monday afternoon. Nobody has claimed credit for the denial-of-service attack, which ended at 2 a.m. PDT on Monday. "Don't they have something better to do during the summer...

Bug opens up Javascript browsers to hackers Microsoft unmoved By Paul Hales: Tuesday 30 July 2002, 11:03 A RECENTLY-DISCOVERED vulnerability opens up Javascript-enabled browsers to make network PCs available to an external attacker. But Microsoft has chosen to ignore it. The hole was discovered by Adam Megacz and the details posted here yesterday. "The exploit," says the posting, "allows an attacker to use any JavaScript-enabled web browser behind a firewall to retrive content from (HTTP GET) and interact with (HTTP POST) any HTTP server behind the firewall. If the client in use is Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+, Mozilla, or Netscape...

Hackers could face life in jail Some hackers could be face long prison sentences Malicious computer hackers could soon face life in prison for some computer crimes. The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that inflicts harsh penalties for computer crimes that harm people or endanger America's critical infrastructure. The same law rewrites the rules on surveillance and lets US police forces and law enforcers install wiretaps if there is an ongoing attack deemed to threaten national security. Civil liberty groups criticised the legislation and said it trampled on rights to privacy, was hastily drawn up and punished...

House OKs life sentences for hackers But time may run out for computer crime bill in Senate WASHINGTON, July 15 — The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Monday to create a new punishment of life imprisonment for malicious computer hackers. By a 385-3 vote, the House approved a computer crime bill that also expands police ability to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order.

House OKs life sentences for hackers By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com July 15, 2002, 6:00 PM PT WASHINGTON--The House of Representatives on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would allow for life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers. By a 385-3 vote, the House approved a computer crime bill that also expands police ability to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order. The Bush administration had asked Congress to approve the Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) as a way of responding to electronic intrusions, denial of service attacks and the threat of "cyber-terrorism." The...

Hackers hit USA Today's Web site 07/13/2002 Associated Press NEW YORK - Hackers broke into USA Today's Web site and replaced legitimate news stories with phony articles, lampooning newsmakers and claiming Israel was under missile attack. The bogus pages were viewable on USAToday.com for about 15 minutes before they were discovered about 11 p.m. Thursday and taken offline, company spokesman Steve Anderson said. Mr. Anderson said the site was shut down for three hours to upgrade security. The hackers appeared to have penetrated the Web server computers from outside company firewalls, he said. All the bogus stories, on seven...

[...]Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshhold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and worms. It comes instead at the meeting points between computers and the physical structures they control.By disabling or taking command of floodgates in a dam, for example, or of substations handling 300,000 volts of electric power, U.S. analysts believe an intruder could use virtual tools to destroy real-world lives and property....

My firewall software frequently logs attempted penetrations of my computer. Among the information it captures is the IP address of the offending PC. My question is, can I use this information to counter-attack the hacker, or notify an unwitting computer owner that his PC or server is infected? How do I go about doing this? I've played with tracer programs before, but never really used the information to follow up.

“A computer sciences graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a highly respected private co-ed tech college in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, proudly published a paper detailing how to hack the secure software technology on Microsoft’s Xbox video game console. Andrew 'bunnie' Huang told a reporter in a telephone interview that he will not 'share the secret code at all, or the key--those are Microsoft copyrighted items,' and said that he had 'been in touch with Microsoft about my work, and we've been really clear about what they think is legal research activity.' The hack bunnie used to...

<p>Computer hackers gained access to the California state government's computer systems in April and sensitive financial and personal information about as many as 265,000 state workers, officials said Friday.</p> <p>The electronic assault on payroll and other records was discovered by the Sacramento Valley Hi Tech Task Force, which determined that none of the information has been used illegally so far.</p>

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. has warned that its Internet Explorer software contains six flaws, some of which could give hackers access to - and even potentially change - personal information about computer users. The Redmond company, which called the severity of some of the flaws "critical," advised users of Explorer versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 to download a patch for the software from the Microsoft Web site at www.microsoft.com/security. The security bulletin issued late Wednesday marks the fourth time this year that Microsoft has issued a fix for Explorer. >{? Among other things, the flaws could allow hackers to...

<p>The FBI this weekend raided the homes of the two online vandals known as the Deceptive Duo and confiscated their computers, according to a friend of the teens.</p> <p>The Duo -- Robert Lyttle, known online as Pimpshiz, and The-Rev -- defaced numerous government and private industry Web sites over the past few weeks in a spree that they claimed was driven by patriotism.</p>

<p>Internet Explorer users who click their browser's back button open the Windows operating system to a malicious hack attack.</p> <p>When users hit the back button on Explorer's toolbar, the browser's security settings for the "Internet" zone can be bypassed, and the browser will automatically execute malicious code embedded into a site's URL.</p>