Free Republic

Fiat Chrysler has decided to recall about 1.4 million cars and trucks in the U.S. just days after two hackers revealed that they took control of a Jeep Cherokee SUV over the Internet. The company also disclosed in government documents that the hackers got into the Jeep through an electronic opening in the radio and said it would update software to close it. On Thursday, Fiat Chrysler sealed off a loophole in its internal cellular telephone network with vehicles to prevent similar attacks, the automaker said in a statement. The vulnerability exposed by the hack rippled through the auto industry...

The prolonged hacking into the White House Office of Personnel Management, which put the personal information of at least some 21.5 million past and current federal employees in jeopardy, is only the beginning of the security threat to the Obama Administration and its successors, a number of top-level experts in cybersecurity have told Fox News. The attack has been frequently sourced as coming from China. The experts warned that the entire U.S. national security clearance system could be compromised, that future senior government leaders and advisors could be targeted even before taking office, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of government officials...

Over the past three weeks, my family and I spent more than 22 hours driving more than 1,400 miles for our vacation. The trip involved enduring construction traffic, heavy rainstorms and unbelievably frightening, dense and fast traffic along interstates merely two lanes wide. We made it through safely, partly because I pulled over to let my husband drive through the rain (I hate driving in rain) and partly because he has learned to endure my uncontrollable need to provide commentary about his driving skills from the passenger seat -- even though his driving record is better than mine. It defies...

One of the big complaints I’ve had with cars and trucks (including ours) since the 90s is the increasing reliance on onboard computers which control nearly every aspect of the vehicle’s performance. I’m sure there must be a number of benefits to it, but it makes home repair of your car (which I used to quite enjoy) impossible in many cases unless you own a computer test station costing as much as the vehicle. Also, your car can break down because of a computer failure when there’s nothing actually wrong with the mechanical performance of the engine or drive...

Hackers have stolen and leaked personal information from online cheating site Ashley Madison, an international dating site with the tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.” The site, which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members, had its data hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team. At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media, have had their data compromised. The Impact Team claims to have complete access to the company’s database, including not only user records for every single...

That's an excellent question that national security experts can't answer. And that has them worried sick. Hacking social security numbers and passwords is one thing. But fingerprints are biometrics - they can't be changed and could open doors to hackers that would normally be closed to them. National Journal: Though the idea of hacked fingerprints conjures up troubling scenarios gleaned from Hollywood's panoply of espionage capers, not much is currently known about those that OPM said were swiped in the data breach, which began last year and has been privately linked by officials to China. In fact, the agency...

The hack at the Office of Personnel Management shows what happens when lax security gets combined with organizations or governments getting too big. CNN has a pretty interesting rundown on how the hackers may have found a way to get into OPM servers. One way involves figuring out which agency hasn’t had their servers updated in some time. Let’s say there is a U.S. government agency — Agency X — that does not update its server operating system software patches. We don’t know which agency it is because the federal government doesn’t want to reveal everything it knows to...

The Office of Personnel Management is under fire again today after it was revealed hackers, allegedly Chinese, stole 21 million social security numbers during a massive data breach discovered last month (which officials originally said only impacted 4 million people). The social security numbers belong to Americans who have, or who currently are, working for the federal government. This new information comes on the heels of news hackers were able to obtain extremely sensitive information, including classified background check information that can be used for blackmail, belonging to tens of millions of government employees. More bad news: Here’s the kicker:...

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? After spending the last day or so insisting she wouldn’t step down after presiding over the worst data-security failure in history, OPM chief Katherine Archuleta has suddenly found a desire to spend more time with her family. It’s either that or someone in the White House conducted a successful exfiltration. The New York Times’ Julie Davis broke the news on Twitter: BREAKING: Embattled OPM Director Katherine Archuleta resigns in wake of revelations about massive hack of govt computer systems— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) July 10, 2015 ABC, Reuters, and AP all tweeted out...

Katherine Archuleta, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, will resign effective Friday, according to a White House official, one day after it was revealed that sweeping cyberintrusions at the agency resulted in the theft of the personal information of more than 22 million people. Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” the official said. The president accepted her resignation.

<p>Hackers swiped Social Security numbers from 21.5 million people -- as well as fingerprint records and information from background check investigations -- in the massive breach earlier this year of federal employee data, the government acknowledged Thursday.</p> <p>The Office of Personnel Management included the findings in a report Thursday on developments in the investigation into a pair of major hacks.</p>

Just when you thought you were safe, a new hacking toy comes along and rocks your world. Imagine a tool exists that lets hackers pluck encryption keys from your laptop right out of the air. You can’t stop it by connecting to protected Wi-Fi networks or even disabling Wi-Fi completely. Turning off Bluetooth also won’t help you protect yourself. Why? Because the tiny device that can easily be hidden in an object or taped to the underside of a table doesn’t use conventional communications to pull off capers. Instead it reads radio waves emitted by your computer’s processor, and there’s...

German-owned Patriot missiles stationed in Turkey were briefly taken over by hackers, according to media reports on Tuesday.The attack took place on anti-aircraft ‘Patriot’ missiles on the Syrian border. The American-made weapons had been stationed there by the Bundeswehr (German army) to protect Nato ally Turkey. According to the civil service magazine, the missile system carried out “unexplained” orders. It was not immediately clear when these orders were carried out and what they were. The magazine speculates about two weak spots in the missile system which could be exploited by hackers. One such weakness is the Sensor-Shooter-Interoperability (SSI) which exchanges...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unleashed some of the strongest words to date about China's hacking of U.S. computers. "They're also trying to hack into everything that doesn't move in America," Clinton said at a campaign event in Glen, New Hampshire. "Stealing commercial secrets, blueprints from defense contractors, stealing huge amounts of government information. All looking for an advantage."

The government is warning that scammers are targeting victims of the recent massive federal data breach with fake emails made to look like they are from the government. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revealed in early June that millions of federal workers’ data had been exposed by multiple hacks at the agency. Through a contracted identity monitoring company, CSID, the OPM has been notifying the victims. Initially, the OPM sent emails with links to information on a complementary 18 months of identity monitoring services with CSID. But savvy hackers, knowing this would happen, have also been sending fake OPM...

Nearly a month after news broke of a massive breach at the Office of Personnel Management -- and three weeks after first denying, then admitting, that security clearance information was stolen -- OPM has shut down its electronic background check system. The agency said the move is a proactive step, not a reaction to another hack. In a June 29 alert posted on OPM's website, the agency says, "The [Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing] e-QIP system will be down for an extended period of time for security enhancements." There was no word on how background checks would be handled with...

The largest federal employee union filed a class action lawsuit Monday against the federal personnel office, its leaders and one of its contractors, arguing that negligence contributed to what government officials are calling one of the most damaging cyberthefts in U.S. history. The suit by the American Federation of Government Employees names the Office of Personnel Management, its director, Katherine Archuleta, and its chief information officer, Donna Seymour. It also names Keypoint Government Solutions, an OPM contractor

The federal personnel chief said Tuesday that she does not believe “anyone is personally responsible” for the massive hack of federal employee data and security clearance files and instead blamed the breach on old computer systems and the hackers themselves. “We have legacy systems that are very old,” Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told Senate lawmakers at a hearing on the intrusion. “It’s an enterprise-wide problem. I don’t believe anyone is personally responsible.”

A leftover from yesterday that shouldn’t be missed. As you read this, bear in mind that our leader continues to insist he has complete confidence in OPM and its director. Some of the contractors that have helped OPM with managing internal data have had security issues of their own—including potentially giving foreign governments direct access to data long before the recent reported breaches. A consultant who did some work with a company contracted by OPM to manage personnel records for a number of agencies told Ars that he found the Unix systems administrator for the project “was in Argentina...

In responding to China’s massive hack of federal personnel data, the government may have run afoul of computer security again. Over the last nine days, the the Office of Personnel Management has sent e-mail notices to hundreds of thousands of federal employees to notify them of the breach and recommend that they click on a link to a private contractor’s Web site to sign up for credit monitoring and other protections. But those e-mails have been met with increasing alarm by employees — along with retirees and former employees with personal data at risk — who worry that the communications...