Free Republic

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Justin G. Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, pleaded guilty today for his role in a harassment scheme that targeted senior U.S. government officials. Liverman’s plea admits guilt to a conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer intrusions, identity theft, and telephone harassment. According to the statement of facts filed with the plea agreement, beginning in November 2015, Liverman conspired to attempt to intimidate and harass U.S. officials and their families by gaining unauthorized access to victims’ online accounts, among other things. For example, Liverman publicly posted online documents and personal information unlawfully obtained from a victim’s personal...

The dramatic decision by five Arab countries to sever ties with Qatar over its alleged coddling of the Muslim Brotherhood and its flirtation with their archenemy Iran has caught the pugnacious emirate’s closest regional ally, Turkey, off balance and wondering whether it too may be targeted. Turkey’s initial reaction to the announcement by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen that they were suspending diplomatic ties as well as air and sea travel to and from Qatar was a call for dialogue. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference, “We see the stability in the Gulf region as our own...

CNN host Anderson Cooper claimed Wednesday that his Twitter account was hacked, and was used to send a tweet that called President Trump a "pathetic loser." "Just woke up to find out someone gained access to my twitter account," Cooper tweeted Wednesday. "I have not sent a tweet in days or replied to any tweets. We are looking into how this happened."

Two Senate Republican campaign staffers have resigned after they were caught breaking into a fundraising database kept by the House Republican campaign committee, according to a new report by Politico.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin's crosshairs, The Associated Press has found. Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting. "It's utterly confounding," said Philip Reiner, a...

For 25 seconds in 1987, in the middle of WGN-TV anchor Dan Roan’s sportscast, thousands of Chicagoans’ feeds were replaced with a low analog whine and the eery image of a masked man nodding over and over as if in a state of mania. “If you’re wondering what’s happened, so am I,” Roan said to his audience once WGN regained control of the signal. What he couldn’t have known is that the rest of the world would still be wondering to this day.9:14pm CST today marks 30 years since one of the most unusual hacks in history: the Max Headroom...

Hackers stole data from 57 million Uber users and drivers in 2016. The hackers stole names and driver's license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the U.S., as well as rider names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. According to Bloomberg, the company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, and did not report the incident. Hackers stole data from 57 million Uber users and drivers, a breach that the company concealed for more than a year. Uber released a statement on the 2016 attack, and also published resources for riders and drivers. According to...

Humanity has a massive password problem. We might call it The Password Pandemic. Computers keep getting faster and cheaper, making passwords easier to crack, while human operators do not change their bad password habits. This is a losing proposition, with the advantage clearly toward hackers and cyber criminals. Most users of the Internet now know that they need to use “strong” passwords, and that they should use a different password for each site. With a dozen or several dozen online accounts, this quickly becomes unmanageable. Exasperated, people just use the same (usually weak) password across several accounts. Hackers know this,...

The majority of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks were not even written until after the DNC knew it had been hacked, raising questions about the effectiveness of Democrats’ decision to turn to a private firm instead of the FBI. DNC CEO Amy Dacey learned of the breach in late April, but of the 27,500 DNC emails published by Wikileaks, fewer than 7,000 pre-date April 29. A Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of the published emails shows that the majority were written between May 5 and May 25 — after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was brought in to...

Experts: North Korea Targeted U.S. Electric Power Companies by ANDREA MITCHELL and KEN DILANIAN WASHINGTON — The cybersecurity company FireEye says in a new report to private clients, obtained exclusively by NBC News, that hackers linked to North Korea recently targeted U.S. electric power companies with spearphishing emails. The emails used fake invitations to a fundraiser to target victims, FireEye said. A victim who downloaded the invitation attached to the email would also be downloading malware into his or her computer network, according to the FireEye report. The company did not dispute NBC's characterization of the report, but declined to...

It was a case of spies watching spies watching spies: Israeli intelligence officers looked on in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for the code names of American intelligence programs. What gave the Russian hacking, detected more than two years ago, such global reach was its improvised search tool — antivirus software made by a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab, that is used by 400 million people worldwide, including by officials at some two dozen American government agencies. The Israeli officials who had hacked into Kaspersky’s own network alerted the United States to the broad Russian...

Did The iCloud Celebrity Nude Picture Scandal Have Something To Do With Harvey Weinstein? In September of 2014, Apple was getting ready to announce a massive iPhone upgrade: bigger iPhones than anything it sold before. But just a few days ahead of the iPhone 6 press event, an iCloud security scandal broke out. Nude pictures belonging to Jennifer Lawrence and many other celebrities leaked online, originating from iPhone backups. Apple explained at the time that its iCloud security was not breached and that hackers probably used phishing schemes to obtain the usernames and passwords of the celebrities. Here is a...

White House officials believe that chief of staff John Kelly’s personal cellphone was compromised, potentially as long ago as December, according to three U.S. government officials. The discovery raises concerns that hackers or foreign governments may have had access to data on Kelly’s phone while he was secretary of Homeland Security and after he joined the West Wing. Tech support staff discovered the suspected breach after Kelly turned his phone in to White House tech support this summer complaining that it wasn’t working or updating software properly. Kelly told the staffers the phone hadn’t been working properly for months, according...

Early clues have emerged that suggest a state actor was behind the massive hack of Equifax earlier this month, with China suggested as a prime suspect. The startling new details from the investigation into the data breach affecting 142million Americans' personal data came in a Bloomberg report on Friday citing more than a dozen people familiar with the probe.

Political legend Roger Stone appeared before the House Intelligence Committee today during a closed hearing intended to tackle the allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, but rather than Roger standing trial, he flipped the script in proper Stonean fashion and put the entire committee itself on trial. In an exclusive interview, a TGP sat down with Mr. Stone and discussed some of the finer details of the hearing and also touched briefly on the Alabama senate race, the slippery, snakelike DNC operative John Podesta, and the much gossiped about Guccifer 2.0. What follows is a penetrating looks at...

VideoElection officials in 21 states have been notified by the Department of Homeland Security that hackers targeted voter registration systems ahead of last year's presidential election. In most cases, the systems were not breached. A small number of networks were compromised, but those affected were not involved in the actual tallying of votes. In most of the states, the targeting involved preparatory activity, such as scanning computer systems. The states targeted are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

We have been fed a dangerous lie that will cut to the very heart of freedom in America (and elsewhere soon enough). When the politicians and the media talk about “hackers,” they are telling a flat out narrative that barely exists above a whisper in the real world. They have made these “hackers” into “demons working for dangerous nations” to make us fear what is an almost non-existent threat. The real reason they are spinning this tale is far more nefarious. This whole effort is to shut down conservative voices and be lauded as heroes for it. Internet controls, censorship,...

CBS Local — A computer program used to help your PC run faster has reportedly become the latest victim of hackers looking to breach the security of millions of its users. CCleaner, the computer-optimizing tool made by software company Piriform, was successfully infected by malware, according to security firm Cisco Talos. The malware reportedly tried to connect to unregistered websites in order to remotely download even more harmful programs to users’ computers. Security experts say the Trojan horse-style attack hackers launched affected over 2 million CCleaner customers who downloaded the product in August. “By exploiting the trust relationship between software...

Link only, per Gannett rule: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2017/09/14/robocall-reminded-rochester-democrats-vote-early-and-often-tuesday-elections-primary/662568001/

President Trump's Voting Integrity Commission unexpectedly revealed important evidence suggesting that a return to paper ballots is the only way to prevent the possibility of major fraud from sophisticated hacking efforts.  Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times covered the hearings: The country's voting machines are susceptible to hacking, which could be done in a way so that it leaves no fingerprints, making it impossible to know whether the outcome was changed, computer experts told President Trump's voter integrity commission Tuesday. div class="article_body bottom mrf-hidden"> The testimony marked a departure for the commission, which was formed to look into fraud and barriers...