Free Republic

The Approaching Chinese Cyber Storm By Frederick W. Stakelbeck FrontPageMagazine.com | July 29, 2005 On numerous occasions in the past, China’s authoritarian regime has publicly stated that the U.S. is its ideological enemy. Comments made by Chinese defector Chen Yonglin to Australian authorities in June support the theory that China’s leaders view the U.S. as their main adversary. “The U.S. is considered by the Chinese Communist Party as the largest enemy, the major strategic rival. The U.S. occupies a unique place in China’s diplomacy,” noted Yonglin. With inflammatory statements like those noted by Chen Yonglin, it is easy to understand...

Forget the Fantastic Four. As I write, the forces of Good (the White Hats) and Evil (the Black Hats) are fighting for control of the Internet as we know it. At stake is the exploitation of flaws affecting the once-invincible Cisco router hardware, which currently carries most of the Internet's traffic on a daily basis. Once a working exploit for the Cisco IOS Shellcode is available on the Internet, it'll be only a matter of days before someone finds a way to craft it into a network worm. And then it's going to be a rough ride for everyone who...

Enemy at the door ... al-Muhajiroun propaganda   Hackers fight terrorists By PETE BELL Sun OnlineTHE INTERNET has become the latest frontline in the war against terror. With the world wide web increasingly used as the main instrument of propaganda and communication for extreme religious groups like al-Qaeda, MI5 and patriotic hackers have formed an unlikely alliance to close down their sites.Prime Minister Tony Blair announced this morning the Government would be looking at options to tackle the problem.Alarmingly, experts believe al-Qaeda’s master hacker is running the terrorist group’s central communications hub from the UK.Impressionable youngsters are targeted through...

More than 422 new Internet security holes were found during the second quarter, according to data released Monday by the SANS Institute. This represents an increase of 10.8 percent compared with the number found in the first quarter, and a jump of 20 percent compared with the second quarter of last year, the institute said in its quarterly report. If companies and individuals don't take corrective action, the agency warned, their systems could be used by remote hackers for identity theft, industrial espionage, and distribution of spam and pornography. In order to be included on the quarterly list, the vulnerabilities...

Austin group complains of hack attack Online political warriors savage opposition Web sites. Andrew Price/unamerican-stateswoman Kfir Alfia, a co-founder of the Austin-based group ProtestWarrior, which counters anti-war protests, says that attacks on left-leaning Web sites last year were made by a man who is no longer a member. By Asher Price AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, July 14, 2005 In the 1992 movie "Sneakers," Martin Bishop and his crackerjack hacking partner Cosmo infiltrate the Federal Reserve mainframe in 1969 and orchestrate a $25,000 donation from the Republican Party to the Black Panthers, as well as a generous contribution from Richard Nixon to...

Last year a German teenager named Sven Jaschan released the Sasser worm, one of the costliest acts of sabotage in the history of the Internet. It crippled computers around the world, closing businesses, halting trains and grounding airplanes. Which of these punishments does he deserve? A) A 21-month suspended sentence and 30 hours of community service. B) Two years in prison. C) A five-year ban on using computers. D) Death. E) Something worse. If you answered A, you must be the German judge who gave him that sentence last week. If you answered B or C, you're confusing him with...

LONDON - A well-organized group of hackers has engaged in an "industrial scale" attack designed to cull commercially and economically valuable data from vital computer networks across Britain, the government warned Thursday. In one of its most high-profile warnings about sophisticated electronic attacks, the normally secretive National Infrastructure Security Coordination Center said hackers believed to be from Asia have targeted parts of the country's "critical national infrastructure." The attacks have been going on for several months and have involved the communications, energy, finance, health, government and transport sectors, the NISCC said. Most of the attacks have been against central government...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (June 10) - E-mails claiming pop star Michael Jackson, on trial on sex abuse charges, has tried to kill himself are being spread by hackers as a means to break into computers, a British antivirus firm said on Friday. The hackers have sent e-mails with the subject "Re: Suicidal attempt" and the message text: "Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt", said security software specialists at Sophos. Jackson is awaiting a California court verdict on charges of child molestation. The e-mail asks recipients to click on a link that takes them...

Spoofing flaw resurfaces in Mozilla browsersBy Joris Evers, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: June 6, 2005, 1:52 PM PT Forward inEMAILFormat forPRINT Web browsersSecurity threats A 7-year-old flaw that could let an attacker place malicious content on trusted Web sites has resurfaced in the most recent Firefox browser, Secunia has warned.The flaw, which also affects some other Mozilla Foundation programs, lies in the way the software handles frames, which are a way of showing Web content in separate parts of the browser window. The applications don't check whether the frames displayed in a single window all originate from the same...

Ezboard Inc. Victim Of Vicious Internet Attack By D.L. McCracken Jun 1, 2005, 11:30 Ezboard systems touted as the "largest online community network site on the planet", was virtually brought to its knees Tuesday as the result of "a very precise and malicious internet attack resulting in the loss of a significant amount of current and historical board postings and interrupted services across all systems", according to Ezboards' CEO, Robert Labatt's message to Ezboard members. Tuesday's attack caused denial of service errors throughout the system and affected millions of users across approximately 9,000 message boards. The attack resulted in massive...

CHICAGO, June 1 (UPI) -- A computer enthusiast downloads the latest saucy Paris Hilton ad, from the Carl's Jr. chain, from the Internet and sends it to his office colleagues. Later that evening, his company finds 67 of its 92 computers have been invaded and are being controlled remotely by hackers, who have sent out a million e-mails touting Viagra, the male potency supplement. "They did not realize that the 30 second clip had a virus attached to it," said Gregory Evans, chief executive officer of LIGATT Security, an IT consulting company in Los Angeles, referring to a client. By...

Simple question. Has EZBoard been hacked? Certainly, there is a major outage under way over there. There was a rumor of malicious code and hacking. I reckon a few of you also use EZBoard. I welcome your observations.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online "vigilantes" have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them. These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say "Warning - This was a Scam Site," or "This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed." The efforts by the self-proclaimed "hero hackers" come amid a surge in online schemes known as "phishing" in which victims are lured to fake...

In an attempt to pre-empt computer hackers, Microsoft is developing "virtual" PCs to scour the web for previously unseen attack code. At the software giant's Cybersecurity and Systems Management lab, based in Washington State, US, researchers are building a squad of the virtual PCs - created in software rather than hardware - to explore the darker corners of the world wide web. To any website they visit, the machines appear to be a normal home computer. But the PCs are seeking out code designed to attack a computer and will sound an alarm if any code is executed in contravention...

"The website of a Catholic civil rights group was hacked over the weekend, apparently by Islamic extremists. William Donohue, president of the New York City-based Catholic League, said the breach began yesterday, one day after his comments about the controversial new Hollywood film on the Crusades, "The Kingdom of Heaven," were published in the New York Post. "

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 - The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet. Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated. Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving...

PSP UMD format cracked; game ISOs appear Posted May 5, 2005, 6:36 AM ET by Barb Dybwad Related entries: Gaming, Handhelds Another step forward in the race to crack open the PSP: Paradox has worked out how to get a dump from a UMD disc, and has released the ISO files for several PSP games (Wipeout: Pure US, Ridge Racers Japanese, and Vampire Chronicles: The Chaos Tower Japanese). Also of note, UMD discs use the standard ISO9669 format, so the released ISOs can be burned to regular CDs or DVDs. Know that the games are not yet playable in this...

The Russian police's cybercrime division has warned that Russian hackers are the best in the world. "Everyone knows that Russians are good at maths," said Lieutenant General Boris Miroshnikov of the division known as Department K. "Our software writers are the best in the world, that's why our hackers are the best in the world." Speaking at the e-Crime Congress in London on Tuesday, Miroshnikov said that the casual teenage hackers of the past developed their techniques as they grew older. "It used to be naughty boys (doing this)," he said. "But now they've grown up. They realize if you...

Personal Data of 59,000 People Stolen By Associated Press March 22, 2005, 9:08 AM EST CHICO, Calif. -- Hackers gained personal information of 59,000 people affiliated with a California university -- the latest in a string of high-profile cases of identity theft. California State University, Chico spokesman Joe Wills said nearly all the current, former and prospective students, faculty and staff who were affected have been notified of the theft, which happened about three weeks ago. Hackers gained access to the victims' names and Social Security numbers. "We still have no indication that the information was used for anything other...

Freerepublic's Canadian cousin, Freedominion has been under hack seige for two days now. Noxious emails to all members yesterday were followed up today first by all comments being reworded as a profane reference to Republicans, and now by the following oddball words strewn throughout all posts: 'Limecat', H4X, KHAAAAAAAAN, ROAR and AKJREJOIFJKJEWOIUOIWE