Free Republic

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's military said Friday it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the United States and may have been carried out by North Korea. The suspected hacking occurred late last month when a South Korean officer failed to remove a USB device when he switched a military computer from a restricted-access intranet to the Internet, Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said. The USB device contained a summary of plans for military operations by South Korean and U.S. troops in case of war on the Korean peninsula. Won said the stolen documents...

Note: The following text is a quote: SPEAR PHISHING E-MAILS TARGET U.S. LAW FIRMS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS 11/17/09—The FBI assesses with high confidence that hackers are using spear phishing e-mails with malicious payloads to exploit U.S. law firms and public relations firms. During the course of ongoing investigations, the FBI identified noticeable increases in computer exploitation attempts against these entities. The specific intrusion vector used against the firms is a spear phishing or targeted socially engineered e-mail designed to compromise a network by bypassing technological network defenses and exploiting the person at the keyboard. Hackers exploit the ability of...

Note: The following text is a quote: Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASETuesday, November 10, 2009 Alleged International Hacking Ring Caught in $9 Million Fraud Major Credit Card Processor Victimized in Elaborate Theft of Account Numbers Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and a person known only as "Hacker 3;" have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Atlanta, Ga., on charges of hacking into a computer network operated by the Atlanta-based credit card processing company RBS WorldPay, which is part of...

This week's 60 Minutes broadcast should make everyone afraid, very afraid, of the real, looming specter of cyberwarfare attacks. As I recently blogged, government agencies are already going full-bore to come up with guidelines to protect federal networks. So when an Admiral goes on national television to say hackers have the ability to take down our power grid, he's doing it to deliver a warning. I was actually poised to turn off the segment, which I happened upon by accident following Sunday's last-minute Giants loss. Half-expecting the usual security for dummies piece, I was surprised to see an unusually detailed...

Had a virus alert yesterday from AVAST. As usually, it allowed me to abort connection and proceed. Cyber Security popups came up on my sceen and thinking it was AVAST prompting me, I ran a program. Turns out it was a fake site trying to get info and now it's embedded in my system. CAN ANYONE HELP? It's trying to block FR as a malicious website.

November 4, 2009: South Korea has confirmed suspicions that Internet based attacks earlier this year came from "the norks" (North Korea). The South Korean NIS (National Intelligence Service) has completed its investigation of the route the July attacks took, and has traced the origin back to the North Korean Ministry of Post and Telecommunications facilities. While there was no apparent damage from the July attacks (which hit government sites in South Korea and the United States), similar attacks have made away with secret data. For example, the South Korean military recently reported that someone hacked into a classified network, and...

A hacker's claim that he compromised the successor to President Obama's campaign Web site appears to be a hoax, according to information that surfaced since the matter came to light early Monday. The kerfuffle started when a hacker and blogger with a history of posting evidence of security vulnerabilities in popular and high-traffic Web sites published evidence indicating that poor security at barackobama.com had exposed internal databases at the site. The hacker, identified only as "Unu," claimed that a security flaw in barackobama.com allows anyone to view the user names and passwords needed to administer the site. With that access,...

WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- After interrupting President Barack Obama's address to Congress on health care reform by shouting "You lie!," US Representative Joe Wilson received a formal reprimand from the House of Representatives. His actions also made his online fundraising campaign the target of a distributed denial-of service attack over the weekend, which sent his site and those of about 150 other Piryx (www.piryx.com) web hosting clients offline.

NOTE: The following blog entry is a quote: Blog Details Iranian Hacker: We Work in Cooperation with the Regime Behrouz Kamalian, head of a 15-member Iranian hacker group called "Ashyaneh," stated that the group works in cooperation with most of the government and military organizations in Iran, and that during the Israeli attack on Gaza and on 'Qods Day' (September 18, 2009), the group hacked 1,500 Israeli websites, as well as hundreds of Danish websites in retaliation for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Source: IRNA (Iran), October 17, 2009 Posted at: 2009-10-18

"Project Grey Goose and University at Albany SUNY to investigate major Power Grid blackouts caused by hackers" SNIPPET: "This is an open call for volunteers who wish to participate in a joint Project Grey Goose / University at Albany SUNY open source intelligence investigation into power grid blackouts caused by hacker attacks. The scope is global and includes the U.S. Interested parties should contact me from their work email address with an expression of interest, a brief bio, and your experience, if any, in SCADA systems in general or the power grid in particular. All respondents will be kept confidential....

SNIPPET: "After the 4 July DDoS attacks, wrongly attributed to North Korea, it’s wise to treat reports of DPRK security hacks with some caution. Nevertheless, The Korea Times reports the following: Classified Info on Dangerous Chemicals Hacked Hackers stole classified information on dangerous chemicals in their raid on the South Korean army computer network in what was believed to be an attack by North Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Saturday, quoting government officials." SNIPPET: "The Sydney Morning Herald adds more information: A North Korea cyber warfare unit hacked into a South Korean military command earlier this year and stole some...

Microsoft sends biggest patch on record Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:03pm EDT SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp issued its biggest software patch on record on Tuesday to fix a range of security issues in its programs, including the yet-to-be-released Windows 7 operating system. In a monthly update sent to users of its software, Microsoft released 13 security bulletins, or patches, to address 34 vulnerabilities it identified across its Windows, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, Office and other products. It said six of the patches were high priority and should be deployed immediately. The patches -- which update software to write over glitches...

The FBI on Wednesday announced that it had charged 53 defendants, the largest number ever charged in a cybercrime case, following a multinational investigation into a phishing scheme that operated in the United States and Egypt. Thirty-three of the 53 defendants named in the indictment have been arrested, the FBI said, and several others are being sought. The investigation, dubbed "Operation Phish Phry," began in 2007. Authorities in Egypt have charged 47 defendants linked to the phishing operation. Phishing is a form of social engineering that attempts to convince Internet users, via e-mail or other means, to provide online credentials...

"...In other words, after you've blithely downloaded a plug-in that shares your computer's Internet connection and processing power with other, unknown computers, Octoshape might choose to alter just what it's doing, how it's doing it, or the extent to which it is using your computer, remotely updating the software on your machine to change it, and /they're not going to tell you/. Oh, they'll make a revision to the license agreement available on their website, sure – but when was the last time you actually read all of the details of any software agreement, much less reviewed revisions to the...

“MI5 hiring Asian teenagers to fight cyber terror” London, September 21, 2009 First Published: 00:09 IST(21/9/2009) Last Updated: 02:44 IST(21/9/2009) SNIPPET: “MI5 head Jonathan Evans has told his staff that the recruits were essential to combat cyber terrorism which has been traced to China, Russia and Pakistan — the hackers have also intercepted messages from terrorists in Belmarsh maximum security prison, the newspaper said. In a report to Lord West, the Security Minister, Evans has revealed that during the summer over 1,000 hits were made on computers in Whitehall. Other targets have been air traffic control, power stations and the...

Cyber criminals have created a highly sophisticated Trojan virus that steals online banking log-in details from infected computers. The Clampi virus, which is spreading rapidly across hundreds of thousands of computers in Britain and the United States, infects computers when users visit websites that host a malicious code. Once on the computer, the virus sits unnoticed until the user logs on to bank, credit card or other financial websites. It then captures log-in and password information and sends it to a server run by the attackers. They can then tell the compromised computer to send money to accounts that they...

The shadowy internet group known as Anonymous has hacked into the prime minister's website to protest over proposed internet censorship reforms. An Attorney-General's Department spokesperson confirmed to ninemsn the Prime Minister's website was taken down at 7.25pm last night, but said the site was operational again "within minutes". "Visitors to the site received a service unavailable error," the spokesperson said in a statement. "There was no unauthorised access to site infrastructure." The Australian Communications and Media Authority's website was also affected. A message posted on the Inquisitor website by Anonymous stated that the action was in response to a federal...

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

Hackers are becoming more organised as a new pool of talent coming from eastern European countries – Russia in particular – becomes available, writes CIARA O’BRIEN A number of attacks involving Russian hackers has hit the headlines in recent weeks. The most recent was the charging of Albert Gonzalez, a former US government informant who has already been jailed in connection with hacking cases. He is accused of stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers. Two unnamed Russian co-conspirators were also charged in relation to the theft, said to the biggest case of identity theft seen yet. Mr Harbison,...

Three Indicted in Largest Corporate Identity Theft Case in History Monday, August 17, 2009 DEVELOPING: Three men have been indicted in New Jersey in an identity theft case that the Justice Department is labeling as the largest in history. Authorities say more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen in a corporate data breach involving five different companies. This is a developing story. Please click refresh for updates.