Free Republic

BuzzFeed News sued the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Tuesday to force the release of information that the news outlet hopes will help it defend against a lawsuit related to the Steele dossier. BuzzFeed is seeking digital information that could shed light on the cyber attacks against the DNC during the presidential campaign. The news outlet faces three separate lawsuits related to its publication of the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC. The suit against the DNC seeks information that could help defend against a defamation lawsuit filed by...

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was...

Last month, a local California newspaper left more than 19 million voter records exposed online. Gizmodo confirmed this week that the records were compromised during an apparent ransomware attack. The Sacramento Bee said in a statement that a firewall protecting its database was not restored during routine maintenance last month, leaving the 19,501,258 voter files publicly accessible. Additionally, the names, home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of 52,873 Sacramento Bee subscribers were compromised. “We take this incident seriously and have begun efforts to notify each of the individuals on the contact list and to provide them resources to help...

Smart TVs represent the lion’s share of new televisions. According to market research firm IHS Markit, 69 percent of all new sets shipped in North America in 2017 were internet-capable, and the percentage is set to rise in 2018. Eighty-two million of these sets have already found their way to consumers. Internet connectivity brings a lot of appealing functionality to modern televisions—including the ability to stream content through popular apps such as Hulu and Netflix, as well as to find content quickly using voice commands. But that functionality comes with substantial data collection. Smart TVs can identify every show you watch using...

Thieves have discovered a new way to exploit older ATM's into spitting out every dollar they hold. It's called jackpotting because of the speed of the bills flying out, resembling how slot machines used to pay out coins. The Secret Service has warned financial institutions to expect a wave of jackpotting over the next week to 10 days, based on its investigation of ATM crimes in several parts of the country. The U.S. appears to be the latest target. In 2016, jackpotting yielded $13 million from ATM's. Twelve European countries and Mexico have also been hit recently. Ahmed Banafa, from...

Hackers stole several hundred million dollars' worth of a lesser-known cryptocurrency from a major Japanese exchange Friday. Coincheck said that around 523 million of the exchange's NEM coins were sent to another account around 3 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET Thursday), according to a Google translate of a Japanese transcript of the Friday press conference from Logmi. The exchange has about 6 percent of yen-bitcoin trading, ranking fourth by market share on CryptoCompare.

Dutch intelligence services had eyes and ears for years on the Russian outfit that hacked the Democratic National Committee, even infiltrating a surveillance camera at the Cozy Bear headquarters and recording hackers' faces, Dutch media reported. That trove of intelligence gathered by the Netherlands since 2014 has been crucial to the U.S. investigation into the Russian campaign influence operation, the reports from Nieuwsuur and Volkskrant said. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike reportedly first noticed the DNC hack by two Russian intelligence groups on June 14, 2016; CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a blog post at the time that they were called...

Two Dutch intelligence services uncovered substantial evidence detailing how a Russian-backed hacking group infiltrated the Barack Obama White House, the U.S. Department of State, and the Democratic National Committee, according to a ground breaking report from broadcaster NOS and newspaper Volkskrant. The evidence was uncovered by a Dutch cyber defense team gained access to the "Cozy Bear" hacker group's systems, including a hallway security camera that allowed the Dutch team to maintain visual surveillance of the hackers.

Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be...

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...