Free Republic

It was inevitable that someday, hackers would have the ability to exert control over the U.S. electrical grid.  According to the computer security firm Symantec, someday is today. Hacking attacks over the last several months that targeted U.S. energy companies have been able to gain "operational control" over systems, thus threatening blackouts across the U.S., says Symantec.  The hacker group known as DragonFly 2.0 was able to gain control in at least 20 places, according to the firm. Wired: Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says...

The Virginia State Board of Elections voted Friday to discontinue use of all touch-screen voting machines throughout the state because of potential security vulnerabilities, forcing 22 cities and counties to scramble to find new equipment just weeks before voting begins for the November gubernatorial election. Behind closed doors at an emergency meeting in Richmond on Friday afternoon, the board heard about specific vulnerabilities identified after a cybersecurity conference this summer in Las Vegas, where hackers showed they could break into voting machines with relative ease. After the July Defcon conference, Virginia’s Department of Elections asked the state’s IT agency to...

In recent weeks, officials inside Germany’s security agencies have been fondly circulating an article from the website of Foreign Policy magazine that was published on Aug. 3 with the headline, “Russian Hackers Can’t Beat German Democracy.” The article speculates about what Russia could do to disrupt the German federal election, which takes place on Sept. 24, and argues that the Russians will certainly attempt to interfere. Notably, though, the magazine concludes that the Kremlin is unlikely to succeed. Germany, the article argues, is excellently prepared for dealing with any attack because politicians and voters alike have been sensitized to the...

Security data breach equifax Equifax data leak could involve 143 million consumers Posted 25 minutes ago by Ron Miller (@ron_miller) Data leaks have become so commonplace that it’s incredibly easy to become numb to them, but credit reporting service Equifax announced a doozy today that when all is said and done could involve 143 million consumers. This is bad. It was a treasure trove of information for the bad guys out there and included Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. As though that weren’t bad enough, 209,000 people had their credit card info...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Navy's top officer said that post-accident investigations have turned up no evidence of a cyberattack in the collisions involving the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald. The two collisions each involved an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and a merchant vessel, and the similarity of the circumstances led many to speculate that the casualties might have been caused by hacking. In an address to Navy staff, chief of naval operations Adm. John S. Richardson moved to dispel these rumors. He said that the accident investigators have given cyber factors "an amazing amount of attention," but so far...

Imagine someone remotely controlling your brain, forcing your body’s central processing organ to send messages to your muscles that you didn’t authorize. It’s an incredibly scary thought, but scientists have managed to accomplish this science fiction nightmare for real, albeit on a much small scale, and they were even able to prompt their test subject to run, freeze in place, or even completely lose control over their limbs. Thankfully, the research will be used for good rather than evil… for now. The effort, led by physics professor Arnd Pralle, PhD, of the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences,...

The Navy will investigate whether two US destroyers were hacked before they collided with merchant ships in a pair of recent crashes, according to a top Navy admiral. "2 clarify Re: possibility of cyber intrusion or sabotage, no indications right now ... but review will consider all possibilities," tweeted Admiral John Richardson, referencing sweeping new investigations announced Monday into two recent accidents involving Naval warships in the Pacific.

In a major development, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Rep. Dana Rohrabacher that he is ready to provide information proving Russia did not hack the Democratic National Committee.

State election officials still don’t know which 21 of their jurisdictions Russian hackers targeted, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. Secretaries of state — who are the top election officials in 40 states — told TheDCNF they were shocked to learn of the Russian hacking when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials first divulged it at a June 21, 2017, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing. “We can’t find any secretaries of state who say they have been told they are part of this list of ‘targeted’ states.” said a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of...

Last week the respected left-liberal magazine The Nation published an explosive article that details in great depth the findings of a new report — authored in large part by former U.S. intelligence officers — which claims to present forensic evidence that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked by the Russians in July 2016. Instead, the report alleges, the DNC suffered an insider leak, conducted in the Eastern time zone of the United States by someone with physical access to a DNC computer. This report also claims there is no apparent evidence that the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 —...

I am embarrassed to post this, my first vanity after being registered lo, these many years. Last week, one of my credit card accounts was hacked. I received an email verifying that my login was changed, and to report it if I had not made those changes. I had not done so, and immediately called the credit card company. Apparently, someone posing as me had tried to logon, and requested to reset the password. they then changed my adress to one in Miami, FL. (this is where it gets interesting). The card company said they texted a code to my...

If the DNC got hacked and they were not sure what happened, wouldn't they be required or at least offer to buy identity theft protection for their contributors?

Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney outlines how the 2016 DNC emails were actually taken by a leaker using a portable storage device, and not taken by a computer hack initiated by the vast Russian enterprise. Mr. Binney’s outline on Tucker Carlson mirrors a previous new discussion that was reported within The Nation –See Here– A generally far-left media outlet. The reality that it was an internal leak further advances the possibility that DNC employee Seth Rich was actually the person who took the DNC email data after becoming disenfranchised by the DNC intentionally undermining Bernie Sanders and aiding candidate...

Remember when the Russians hacked the DNC email and records system last year? Yeah, about that… Cyber experts have been digging through all of the available material for over a year now trying to pin down exactly what happened but the answers to date have been less than satisfying. This isn’t the first time, but now another report has come out saying that the standard explanation we’ve been given (Russia, Russia Russia) doesn’t appear to hold water. The interesting aspect here is that this one isn’t coming from some right wing source with an ax to grind against Hillary Clinton,...

"Cuba is resolutely opposing the U.S. sanctions and pressure against North Korea and expressing full support for the just steps of North Korea in bolstering up defense capabilities including ICBM test-fires…we express our deep thanks to the Korean people who are sending  solidarity to the Cuban people's just cause."That was Ulises Rosales Del Toro, Stalinist Cuba’s  “Vice President of the Council of Ministers”  (i.e. eunuch  apparatchik) conveying his master’s (Raul Castro’s) support to  Kim Yong Nam, Stalinist North Korea's "President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly," (another eunuch apparatchik.) The shout-out between these Stalinist eunuchs took place this week...

With Merkel and Macron at the helm, there is little political will within the EU to avert the next migrant catastrophe. With less than 50 days until the German election, Germany’s intelligence services have warned of a large migrant wave set to hit the country, comparable to the one that overwhelmed Europe two years ago. “The new large refugee wave is already under way,” wrote Austria’s leading newspaper Kronen Zeitung today, citing German Security services. The story was broken by the German newspaper Die Welt in its Sunday edition: Security services believe that the number of asylum seekers in Germany...

While the headlines over the past week have been swamped with coverage over the candidates bidding for the 2016 presidential election and a “trans-racial” NAACP leader lying about her race, critically important issues that are detrimental to our national security have gone virtually unnoticed. For instance, on Friday we learned that as many as 14 million current and former civilian U.S. government employees had their information compromised in an unprecedented attack by Chinese hackers. In a late Friday news dump, the Associated Press announced that the hackers stole, “Social Security numbers, military records and veterans’ status information, addresses, birth dates,...

Full Title: Accused Russian Hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin Claims The FBI Offered Him Cash, An Apartment, An U.S. Citizenship If He Confessed To Hacking Hillary's Emails On The Orders Of Donald Trump Accused Russian Hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin, a 29 year old Russian citizen currently held in the Czech Republic and wanted on extradition by both Russia and the United States in connection with separate hacking incidents, claims that the United Sates FBI visited him and offered him cash, an apartment, and U.S. citizenship if he confessed to hacking Hillary's emails on the orders of then candidate Donald Trump. (Note: When it...

BRUSSELS (AP) - Belgian authorities say that a U.S. youth in Pittsburgh tried to hack into the Brussels airport computer system and disable it the night after the March 22 attacks that killed 32 people. The federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday that at its request, the FBI interrogated the American minor and said he confessed. The statement said the hacking attempt was unsuccessful and stressed that "it appeared there were no terrorist motives."

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...