Free Republic

Iran is recruiting a hacker army to target the U.S. power grid, water systems and other vital infrastructure for cyberattack in a future confrontation with the United States, security specialists will warn Congress Thursday. "Elements of the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] have openly sought to pull hackers into the fold" of a religiously motivated cyberarmy, according to Frank J. Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. Lawmakers from two House Homeland Security subcommittees will hold a joint hearing Thursday about the cyberthreat posed by Iran, as tensions over Tehran's nuclear program continue at a...

For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer. Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down. The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org, that will inform them whether they're infected...

The hacking group “Anonymous” appeared to have shut down the Home Office website on Saturday night, in an apparent protest against extraditions of British citizens to the US and so-called “draconian surveillance proposals.” An apparent “denial of service” attack made it impossible to access the Home Office website for at least an hour. Those trying to access the website were instead confronted by a notice that “Due to a high volume of traffic this page is currently unavailable.” The attack appeared to have been partly in protest at extradition proceedings against Gary McKinnon, 46, who is accused of hacking US...

More than 600,000 Macs have been infected with a new version of the Flashback Trojan horse that's being installed on people's computers with the help of Java exploits, security researchers from Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web said on Wednesday. Flashback is a family of Mac OS malware that appeared in September 2011. Older Flashback versions relied on social engineering tricks to infect computers, but the latest variants are distributed via Java exploits that don't require user interaction. On Tuesday, Apple released a Java update in order to address a critical vulnerability that's being exploited to infect Mac computers with the...

Vatican City, Mar 12, 2012 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The loose-knit group of hackers known as Anonymous have reportedly launched a second attack on the Vatican website, after failing in its initial attempt to bring the site down on March 7.The latest attack on Monday has not yet been confirmed or denied by the Vatican. The vice director of the Holy See's Press Office, Father Ciro Benedettini, said the March 7 attack was not successful, as the hackers failed to post their distinctive logo on the Vatican website.On March 12, the hackers stated on their Italian blog that...

For months, The Real Sabu, as he called himself on Twitter, boasted, cursed and egged on his followers to take part in computer attacks against private companies and government agencies worldwide. “Don’t give in to these people,” he wrote on Monday, ridiculing “cowards” in the federal government. “Fight back. Stay strong.” It turns out that Sabu had become an informant for federal law enforcement authorities. On Tuesday, in what could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the government crackdown on a loose, large confederation of politically inspired “hacktivists,” he was unmasked and revealed to have helped the authorities catch...

Top members of the computer hacker group "Anonymous" and its offshoots were arrested and charged Tuesday after a wide-ranging investigation used the help of a group leader who was working as a secret government informant. Five of the suspects, considered by investigators among the "most sophisticated hackers in the world," were arrested in the United States and Europe and charged in a Manhattan federal court over their alleged role in high-profile cyberattacks against government agencies and large companies, according to an indictment. A sixth man, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a notorious hacker known as "Sabu," pleaded guilty in August to computer...

Chinese hackers gained control over NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in November, which could have allowed them delete sensitive files, add user accounts to mission-critical systems, upload hacking tools, and more -- all at a central repository of U.S. space technology, according to a report released Wednesday afternoon by the Office of the Inspector General. That report revealed scant details of an ongoing investigation into the incident against the Pasadena, Calif., lab, noting only that cyberattacks against the JPL involved Chinese-based Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Paul K. Martin, NASA’s inspector general, put his conclusions bluntly. “The attackers had full functional...

-excerpt- The international police agency said in a statement Tuesday that the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain were carried out by national law enforcement officers working under the support of Interpol's Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime.

If there is one war that Greece could not afford to join, that is with the global computer hacking collective known as Anonymous. Yet as of minutes ago, that is precisley what happened, after Anonymous, as part of what it now calls Operation Greece, took down the Greek Ministry of Justice (http://www.ministryofjustice.gr/). While the pretext for the hacking appears to have been an arrest of the wrong people, is seems to have angered Anonymous to the point where they have left an extended message of demands on the Greek website, warning that unless the IMF withdraws from the country and...

I have a new paper appearing at IEEE S&P with Hristo Paskov, Neil Gong, John Bethencourt, Emil Stefanov, Richard Shin and Dawn Song on Internet-scale authorship identification based on stylometry, i.e., analysis of writing style. Stylometric identification exploits the fact that we all have a ‘fingerprint’ based on our stylistic choices and idiosyncrasies with the written word. To quote from my previous post speculating on the possibility of Internet-scale authorship identification: Consider two words that are nearly interchangeable, say ‘since’ and ‘because’. Different people use the two words in a differing proportion. By comparing the relative frequency of the two...

The director of the National Security Agency warned that the hacking group Anonymous could have the ability within the next year or two to bring about a limited power outage in the US through a cyber attack. Gen. Keith Alexander, the agency's director, provided his assessment in meetings at the White House and in other private sessions, according to people familiar with the gatherings.

Israeli hackers took down a website run by Hamas on Tuesday, and warned that the web company which hosted the site will be their next target. The 'IDF Team' hacker group took responsibility for the attack. The affected website, www.qasssam.ps, is run by Hamas's Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades terrorist force, and often displays content celebrating rocket fire on Israeli civilians from Gaza. The website was unavailable after IDF Team said it would take the site offline. IDF Team added that it had first sent an email to the Nashirnet web hosting company asking them "to remove the Hamas terrorist site. But...

A developing Senate plan that would bolster the government's ability to regulate the computer security of companies that run critical industries is drawing strong opposition from businesses that say it goes too far and security experts who believe it should have even more teeth. Legislation set to come out in the days ahead is intended to ensure that computer systems running power plants and other essential parts of the country's infrastructure are protected from hackers, terrorists or other criminals. The Department of Homeland Security, with input from businesses, would select which companies to regulate; the agency would have the power...

The “anti-fascist” wing of the “Anonymous” hacker group has broken into a website run by the white supremacist American Third Position (A3P), and released a document dump consisting of private forum messages, emails, organizational notes, and other personal information. The documents show numerous connections between Republican candidate Ron Paul and these racist Neanderthals; they’re heavily involved in campaigning for Paul, and according to the messages, have held regular meetings with Ron Paul himself:

Palestinian Authority hackers briefly managed to pull down a few sites in Israel Wednesday night in the ongoing cyberwar launched by Iran and anti-Israel Arabs. Among the sites that fell prey to attacks were the home pages of El Al Airlines, the Dan Bus Company, the Israel Festival, Israel's CinemaTek and Ha'aretz newspaper. The home pages were replaced with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slogans such as "Free Palestine, Death to Israel," "Jew = Nazi" and a promise that "4 more Gilad Shalits will be abducted." The latter hacker remark is a reference to IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas-allied terrorists...

The Jihad Will Be YouTubed by Raffaello Pantucci December 15, 2011 FOREIGN POLICY - The AFPAK Channel SNIPPET: "While clearly the technology to make such videos is something that is universal, it does seem as though it is aspirant jihadists in the West who find it easiest to use. There was no evidence that Gul was being directed by foreign terrorist organizations to produce his material, and his case shows the continued existence of young Westerners producing radical material on their own. It may indeed be the case that the virtual armies have yet to fully emerge as active warriors...

The website of Israel's main stock exchange was floored by a denial-of-service attack on Monday. ... The attacks, unleashed by hackers affiliated with elements of Anonymous and other groups, are the latest in tit-for-tat campaign that began a fortnight ago. It began when a hacker called OxOmar posted thousands of Israeli credit card details online and invited others to make mischief with the information in order to wreck international trust in the cards' issuers. Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon responded to this by comparing the cyberattack to a terrorist assault and threatening reprisals. Elements of Anonymous waded in at...

Kelly Clarkson and Michelle Branch may have unofficially endorsed Ron Paul, but Nicole Scherzinger, No Doubt and Rise Against? Not exactly supporters, as recent tweets from the musical artists may lead people to believe. Early Wednesday morning, very similarly-phrased Ron Paul endorsements popped up on the official Twitter accounts of Nicole Scherzinger, No Doubt and Rise Against. The tweets, which were deleted by each artist after several hours, have been confirmed to Billboard.com as hacks. It's worth noting that all three artists are currently signed to Interscope Records, a curious coincidence that may explain why they're linked in this specific...

June 07, 2010 I SUPPOSE IF I SUGGESTED SUMMARY EXECUTION I WOULD BE CALLED "HARSH"? SNIPPET: "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe Note that he didn't just lift a video and send it to Wikileaks. He also stole and released 260,000 classified US State Department diplomatic cables."