Free Republic

Pranksters be warned Eight-grader Domanik Green was arrested on felony charges in Holiday, Fla. Wednesday after breaking into his teacher’s computer to change the background picture to two men kissing. Green, 14, who was released the day of his arrest, said that he broke into the computer of teacher he didn’t like after realizing that faculty members’ passwords were simply their last names, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Green, who previously faced a three-day suspension for a similar prank, said that many students got in trouble for breaking into teachers’ computers.

France’s culture minister is to call an urgent meeting of French media groups to assess their vulnerability to hacking after the public service television network TV5Monde was taken over by individuals claiming to belong to Islamic State, blacking out broadcasts as well as hacking its websites and Facebook page. All TV5Monde broadcasts were brought down in a blackout between 10pm and 1am local time on Wednesday to Thursday by hackers claiming allegiance to Isis. They were able to seize control of the television network founded by the French government in 1984, simultaneously hacking 11 channels as well as its website...

The BBC was feared to have fallen victim to an ISIS cyber-attack this evening as 'hackers' appeared to post Islamic State propaganda during a live broadcast. Viewers were left stunned as the words 'Je suIS IS' appeared on TV screens following a feature on the BBC News Channel. Above the red and white writing was the word 'CYBERCALIPHATE'.

“If you’re using one device,” former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told Megyn Kelly last night in a discussion of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, “then nothing’s personal.” Of course, we know now that Hillary used multiple devices despite her claims otherwise after the exposure of her private e-mail system, but that’s hardly the worst of it. The former intelligence commander tells Kelly that penetration of Hillary’s communications by hostile powers was not just possible but “likely,” and the odds are “very high” that both friends and foes had a ringside seat to American diplomatic strategies for several...

Fast ID Online and passwordless authentication, still dealing with hackers in a cyberworld With the roll-out of the Apple Pay thumb-scanning payment system late last year, biometric identification has been introduced into the daily lives of Americans. But Apple Pay is only the beginning of a biometric revolution coming to the United States and countries around the world. Heads of global technology companies, along with top officials in the federal government, have been working for several years on creating a “universal” system for identification of every citizen using the internet. And it goes by the friendly label, FIDO. FIDO, an...

For the second day in a row, I have gotten a strange security warning when trying to enter the National Review website. It warns me of spyware, gives me a phone number to call, and even has a voice message. I have not found a way to escape that message short of shutting down my computer. It seems to be a fake security warning. Has anyone else encountered this problem? If so, do you know what is going on and what to do about it? Thanks.

The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks. Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says. The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony. "If body dumped at...

The Office of the Inspector General of the State Department found in its latest investigation that Clinton aides had “created an appearance of undue influence and favoritism” in a number of cases including that of Ambassador Howard Gutman. The investigation is largely a whitewash. There is no mention of the fact that one whistleblower related to the case, Richard Higbie, had his emails deleted by a hacker. Or that the main whistleblower, Aurelia Fedenisn, was harassed at home and had her law firm burgled.It goes almost without saying that Richard Nixon went down for much less than that.There is also...

I need some advice from Freeperland folks who are savvy with computer issues. Last evening, I received a call from a "Windows Security Center". They knew my name and obviously my phone number. Gave me a spiel that Windows software security had been compromised/corrupted and according to their records, knew I had Windows 7. To prove they were legit, they had me start my computer and prompted me through a series of commands to bring up my specific Windows license number. She read it off and that license numbers was listed on my machine. She prompted me to run a...

The Operation Arid Viper campaign has successfully stolen more than 1 million files with current malware campaigns underway, though it's not the usual suspects, according to Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro. The Arab-speaking group, with ties to Gaza, have targeted foreign government offices, critical infrastructure, military, universities, and other high-profile targets. The attacks likely occurred starting in mid-2013 and a full investigation into their actions is underway.   "Whoever the real culprits are, it is clear that they are part of the Arab world, evidence of a budding generation of Arab hackers and malware creators intent on taking down their...

When hackers steal money from banks, they usually go for Bonnie and Clyde attacks, taking whatever they can take in a single grab, one Kaspersky executive told The New York Times, as the security research discovered a different type of bank cyber heist, one likened to Ocean’s Eleven in terms of planning, but also when it comes to the significant amount of stolen cash. Following a well planned operation, that involved months of spying through the use of sophisticated software, unknown hackers originating from Russia, China and Europe managed to steal at least $300 million from a large number of...

In a report to be published on Monday, and provided in advance to The New York Times, Kaspersky Lab says that the scope of this attack on more than 100 banks and other financial institutions in 30 nations could make it one of the largest bank thefts ever — and one conducted without the usual signs of robbery. The Moscow-based firm says that because of nondisclosure agreements with the banks that were hit, it cannot name them. Officials at the White House and the F.B.I. have been briefed on the findings, but say that it will take time to confirm...

Many of the allegations made by former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson regarding alleged computer intrusions by the U.S. government are disputed in a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. “The OIG’s investigation was not able to substantiate the allegations that Attkisson’s computers were subject to remote intrusion by the FBI, other government personnel, or otherwise,” reads the inspector general’s report. In her book “Stonewalled,” Attkisson had issued a wide-ranging set of claims — that her CBS News work computers and her personal computer had been hacked, that a strange wire was found hanging from the cable TV/broadband box

The academically free have different ideas of what free speech means than the rest of us do. At the Modern Language Association’s 2015 convention in Vancouver, Canada, Rosaura Sanchez, a former protester-and-activist-turned-Latin American and Chicano literature-professor at UC-San Diego, claimed that professors do face “consequences to speaking out on campus” She went on to allege that she has been “surveilled and recorded” while at protests by campus administrators. Most people do not use freedom of expression in order to keep the expressed thought a big secret. Sanchez asserted that on her campus “dissenters names are placed in a black book,”...

The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant. It's called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific...

Subheadline: Chinese hackers pillaged U.S. defense, contractor networks for critical data China obtained more than 50 terabytes of data from U.S. defense and government networks, notably the Joint Strike Fighter’s stealth radar and engine secrets, through cyber espionage, according to newly disclosed National Security Agency documents. A NSA briefing slide labeled “Top Secret” and headlined “Chinese Exfiltrate Sensitive Military Data,” states that the Chinese have stolen a massive amount of data from U.S. government and private contractors. The document was made public by the German magazine Der Spiegel in a two articles detailing how NSA in the mid-2000s was capable...

The proposed changes to the CFAA and related laws, posted online by the White House early last week, would broaden the definition of computer crime and stiffen penalties for existing crimes, including doubling the maximum penalty for many violations from 10 years to 20 years. "Hanging out in an IRC chat room giving advice to people now makes you a member of a ‘criminal enterprise,’ allowing the FBI to sweep in and confiscate all your assets without charging you with a crime.”

Sharyl Attkisson was one of the most distinguished investigative journalists in television news, covering everything from the dangers of certain prescription drugs to mismanagement at the Red Cross to TARP to K Street. Over a career that spanned more than 20 years at CBS News, she received numerous awards for her work, including multiple Emmys. In her memoir Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, Attkisson looks back on the final years of her network career. One concludes from her book that Attkisson encountered more difficulty practicing her profession at...

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of their final report investigating the CIA's controversial detention and interrogation program. As part of their study, the Democrats compiled twenty case studies, which were intended to address claims made by the CIA regarding the efficacy of its interrogations. One of those case studies focused on the identification and arrest of Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, who was freed from a US prison just days ago. Al Marri served as a "sleeper" operative for al Qaeda inside the US in 2001....

It was a mere two months ago that Israeli cyber-security researchers hacked into a device that plugs into the diagnostic port of a car and determined they could remotely control the vehicle from anywhere in the world. At the time, the simulated attack seemed like the automotive version of a canary in a coal mine. If researchers could breach this one device, perhaps other aftermarket products that plug into diagnostic ports were also vulnerable? In short order, another cyber-security firm now reports finding serious flaws in a device used by more than 2 million motorists. Researchers at Florida-based Digital Bond...