Free Republic

The United Arab Emirates has one of the most repressive governments in the world. The Gulf dictatorship brutally cracks down on internal dissent and enables abusive conditions for its massive migrant labor force. It also plays a key role in the bloody war in Yemen, running a network of torture prisons in the “liberated” parts of the country. That makes it all the more shocking that the UAE is so rarely criticized by leading U.S. think tanks, who not only ignore the Gulf dictatorship’s repression, but give a privileged platform to its ambassador, Yousef Al-Otaiba. Otaiba is a deeply influential...

Hackers competing in a contest at a Las Vegas convention breached the security of several voting machines, pointing to glaring deficiencies in the security of US elections. The Hill: Tech minds at the annual "DEF CON" in Las Vegas were given physical voting machines and remote access, with the instructions of gaining access to the software. According to a Register report, within minutes, hackers exposed glaring physical and software vulnerabilities across multiple U.S. voting machine companies' products. Some devices were found to have physical ports that could be used to attach devices containing malicious software. Others had insecure Wi-Fi connections,...

Scandal: When federal officials arrested Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's IT aide, Imran Awan, as he tried to flee for his native Pakistan, it was the latest twist to an already twisted scandal involving several House IT workers who possibly stole highly sensitive information from several Democrats. Stranger still has been the Democrats' nonresponse to this unfolding scandal. Back in February, the Capitol Hill police opened a criminal investigation into Awan and four other House employees who provided IT services for several Democrats, including those serving on the House intelligence, foreign affairs and homeland security committees. Investigators were looking into whether...

It wasn't that long ago that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was trying to browbeat the Capitol Police over a laptop in the Muslim IT hacking case. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite. The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered...

Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and the CIA, on Friday called Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election the "most successful covert influence operation in history." "Frankly, [the Russian meddling] is the most successful covert operation in history," Hayden told a national security panel in response to a question from moderator Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff. Hayden said the original cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee was not that surprising -- and even from an intelligence perspective, impressive. "I just have to admit as a former director of NSA, [Russia's hack and theft of email]...

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “negotiating” with the Capitol Police over whether to stop blocking access to a computer seized from her as part of a criminal cybersecurity investigation, Fox News reported Wednesday. Soon after resigning as head of the Democratic National Committee in wake of it being hacked, the Florida Democrat’s top information technology (IT) aide, Pakistan-born Imran Awan, was named as the lead suspect in a separate information breach involving House data. But instead of cooperating with Capitol Police, she used a hearing on the law enforcement group’s budget to threaten “consequences” for Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa...

House Democrats professing moral outrage over the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have remained apparently indifferent to the likely penetration of their congressional computer systems, declining to distance themselves from five Pakistani House server administrators who are the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.... Capitol Police seized a laptop computer tied to Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — who resigned in July 2016 as DNC chairman following the committee’s hacking — during the investigation. The laptop was tied to Imran, her top IT person since 2005 who is under criminal investigation. But instead of praising the Capitol...

WikiLeaks #Highrise Shows CIA Tool to Redirect Texts By Edward Szall WikiLeaks #Highrise Shows CIA Tool to Redirect Texts July 13, 2017 WikiLeaks has released documents showing an alleged CIA hacking tool called ‘Highrise’ which enables the redirection of SMS messages from Android mobile devices (WASHINGTON, DC) An alleged CIA hacking tool allowing SMS messages to be redirected is the latest covert spy device unveiled by WikiLeaks. Named ‘Highrise,’ the tool is the latest disclosed in a series of leaks named ‘Vault7,’ which WikiLeaks claims come from within the CIA. Described in a statement from WikiLeaks as an Android application,...

A London-based businessman who was investigated last year by the opposition research firm behind the so-called Trump dossier will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, The Daily Caller has learned.Bill Browder says that he will “definitely” be testifying about a complaint he filed with the Justice Department last year in which he accused Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier, and a former Soviet intelligence officer named Rinat Akhmetshin of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law requiring agents of foreign governments to disclose their lobbying and consulting work.Founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn...

President Trump brought up Russia’s interference in the U.S. election at the start of his first face-to-face meeting Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, sparking “a very robust and lengthy exchange” at the G-20 Summit, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said. “The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement,” said Mr. Tillerson, who attended the highly anticipated meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. Mr. Tillerson provided a readout of the meeting for reporters. He said that despite Mr. Putin’s denial on interference,...

Since May, hackers have been attacking the U.S. energy infrastructure, including at least one company which manages a nuclear power plant in Kansas. The New York Times reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued an urgent report about the attacks last week: Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan…Wolf Creek officials said that while they could not comment on cyberattacks or security issues, no “operations systems” had been affected and that their corporate network and the internet were separate from the...

The former chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign shot back at President Trump in a series of tweet Friday, hours after Trump said "everyone" at the G-20 summit was talking about him. Over seven tweets, John Podesta said he was on a road trip with his wife when he pulled over to see "that our whack job POTUS" was tweeting about him. Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017 "Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to...

Pres. Trump tweets this from the G20: Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

John Podesta said he has no idea whether intelligence agencies asked Democratic National Committee officials for their Russian-hacked servers or whether they turned them over for investigation. "That was a matter for the DNC," the former Clinton campaign chairman told host Maria Bartiromo. Podesta insisted he fulfilled his obligations by turning over Hillary Clinton's private servers, which were suspected to be vulnerable to hacks by Russia or others. A year ago the FBI concluded that while Clinton and her associates had been "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," they did not "intend to violate laws."...

Princeton Community Hospital in rural West Virginia will scrap and replace its entire computer network after being struck by the cyberattack paralyzing computers globally. The cyberattack, known as Petya, froze the hospital's electronic medical record system early Tuesday, leaving doctors unable to review patients' medical history or transmit laboratory and pharmacy orders, said Rose Morgan, the hospital's vice president of patient care services. Officials were unable to restore services, and found there was no way to pay a ransom for the return of their system. So, after consulting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and cybersecurity experts, officials made the...

Merck & Co. the global pharmaceutical firm with extensive operations in the Philadelphia area, said this morning its computer networks had been the target of a massive hack.

Computer systems from Russia to the United States were struck on Tuesday in an international cyberattack that bore similarities to a recent assault that crippled tens of thousands of machines worldwide. As reports of the attack spread quickly, the Ukrainian government said that several of its ministries, radiation monitoring at the Chernobyl nuclear facility, local banks and metro systems had been affected. A number of companies — including the Danish shipping giant Maersk; Rosneft, the Russian energy giant; Saint-Gobain, the French construction materials company; and WPP, the British advertising agency — also said they had been targeted.

The Royal Navy's largest ever warship squeezed under the Forth Bridge late last night after the captain had to wait for the right tide. HMS Queen Elizabeth, which weighs 65,000 tonnes, made its way under the iconic bridge in Scotland just before midnight.

Several official Ohio government websites were hacked and filled with pro-Islamic State propaganda Sunday morning. The sites included the official Ohio governor site, as well as the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, Casino Control, Ohio First Lady, Office of Workforce Transformation, Office of Health Transformation, Inspector General and Medicaid. The sites' homepages were replaced with a black background and accompanied by music. The top of the page reads, "Hacked By Team System DZ." Below that, the sites said: "Anti: Govt all word. You will be held accountable Trump, you and all your people for every drop of blood flowing...

EXCLUSIVE: House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committee Members Compromised By Rogue IT Staff Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission. Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.