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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. defense agency responsible for secure White House communications said Social Security numbers and other personal data in its network may have been compromised, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday that was sent to people possibly affected

   ~ Monday, February 10, 2020 Remarks as Prepared for DeliveryGood morning.  I am here to announce the indictment of Chinese military hackers – specifically, four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army – for breaking into the computer systems of the credit-reporting agency Equifax, and for stealing the sensitive personal information of nearly half of all American citizens, and also Equifax’s hard-earned intellectual property.This was one of the largest data breaches in history.  It came to light in the summer of 2017, when Equifax announced the theft.  The scale of the theft was staggering.  As alleged in the...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, February 10, 2020   Indictment Alleges Four Members of China’s People’s Liberation Army Engaged in a Three-Month Long Campaign to Steal Sensitive Personal Information of Nearly 150 Million Americans A federal grand jury in Atlanta returned an indictment last week charging four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with hacking into the computer systems of the credit reporting agency Equifax and stealing Americans’ personal data and Equifax’s valuable trade secrets.The nine-count indictment alleges that Wu Zhiyong (吴志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu Ke(许可) and Liu Lei (刘磊)...

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The United States has charged four Chinese military hackers in the 2017 breach of the Equifax credit reporting agency that affected nearly 150 million American citizens, Attorney General William Barr said Monday. "This was one of the largest data breaches in history," Barr said of the theft, which came to light in the summer of 2017. The indictment charges four members of the Chinese Liberation Army, he said.

Hackers attacked two of Facebook’s official Twitter accounts Friday night. The official Twitter account @Facebook and that of its messaging app, @Messenger, posted identical messages shortly before 7 p.m. Friday evening saying, “Hi, we are O u r M i n e. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter.” A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill the two accounts were hacked, saying they were attacked “through a third-party platform.” “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager is providing free and discounted cybersecurity services for political candidates ahead of 2020 elections . . . DDC is intended to help protect campaigns against phishing, as well as provide them with secure websites and mobile app security, among other services. Matt Rhoades, GOP Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager, co-founded the venture alongside Mook

During his twelve-year reign as FBI Director, Robert Mueller not only protected his criminal friends by silencing those who could expose their bad acts, he projected his friends’ crimes onto others in order to fraudulently appoint a Special Counsel. And the FISA court judge Reggie Walton — who was hacked by Obama officials John Brennan and James Clapper, according to whistleblower evidence — has been involved in more than one of these plots. There is no better Deep State tool for punishing your enemies than a fraudulent Special Counsel (who is not accountable to anyone) with an unlimited budget and...

Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s most powerful and richest men, is levelling severe allegations against the Saudis, and once again, he has nothing to show for them. The media has been set ablaze by an “exclusive” report in The Guardian, a United Nations report, and even a documentary film, all dropped at once, alleging that Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia is personally responsible for “hacking” into a personal phone belonging to Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest men and the owner of Amazon and The Washington Post.The “bombshell” report in The Guardian, published Tuesday evening, was...

Summary New vulnerabilities are continually emerging, but the best defense against attackers exploiting patched vulnerabilities is simple: keep software up to date. Timely patching is one of the most efficient and cost-effective steps an organization can take to minimize its exposure to cybersecurity threats. On January 14, 2020, Microsoft released software fixes to address 49 vulnerabilities as part of their monthly Patch Tuesday announcement. Among the vulnerabilities patched were critical weaknesses in Windows CryptoAPI and Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) server and client. An attacker could remotely exploit these vulnerabilities to decrypt, modify, or inject data on user connections: CryptoAPI...

The New York Times reported on Monday that hackers from the Russian military intelligence unit known as the GRU succeeded in hacking Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of, and that Joe Biden protected from investigation by withholding $1 billion in aid unless Ukrainian officials fired the prosecutor investigating the company.GRU is responsible for other high-profile hacks of the DNC and John Podesta. Seven GRU officers were indicted in 2018 for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 election. The hacking attempts against Burisma began in early November, as the Democrats' impeachment efforts...

As we enter 2020, it appears all too obvious that information warfare (IW) across the globe will worsen. Federal officials expect new attacks for the 2020 elections and have now warned Moscow that they will retaliate if such attacks do occur. Interference in elections, however, is not a Russia only affair. China has interfered in Taiwan's and other Asian elections and is conducting a large, well-funded campaign to insert itself into U.S. media even as it conducts massive influence operations here and globally. Although several worthwhile initiatives have been launched to counter Russian and other cyber and information warfare, the...

If you’re a law enforcement official who has more allegiance to ideology than to the law or to the country, where does that get you? For former FBI analyst Mark Tolson, the answer is jail — however briefly. Tolson is best-known — if he’s known at all — as the man who broke into a pro-Trump operative’s email account in October 2018, took screen-shots of some of the messages, then sent images to a reporter and offered the reporter the password, according to Politico. The unnamed member of the media turned down the opportunity. Tolson, 60, said he did it...

The Mueller investigation is over but the fallout continues. An FBI analyst was apparently so eager to protect Mueller that he hacked the email of a political enemy. We will probably be hearing stories like this for months if not years. Townhall reports: ICYMI: An FBI Analyst Is Going to Prison for Illegal Email Hacking of a Political Enemy…to Protect Mueller While U.S. Attorney John Durham continues his criminal investigation into FISA abuse and other misconduct at the FBI, CIA, DIA and other federal government intelligence agencies, one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller allies was just sentenced to prison. Mark...

Holly Kay bought eight $1,000 Macy’s gift cards at a California mall because a scammer told her to on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Forty minutes later, she bought $13,000 more in gift cards at that store. The ease with which Ms. Kay was able to complete those purchases underscores the growing popularity of gift cards among scammers seeking quick, hard-to-trace ways to take money from their victims. Buying multiple gift cards is often easier than initiating a wire transfer, because the cards are easily purchased and the numbers can be sent instantly by phone or text message to a fraudster...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, December 18, 2019 Member of “The Dark Overlord” Hacking Group Extradited From United Kingdom to Face Charges in St. Louis Defendant Conspired to Steal Sensitive Personally Identifying Information from Victim Companies and Release those Records on Criminal Marketplaces unless Victims Paid Bitcoin Ransoms A United Kingdom national appeared today in federal court on charges of aggravated identity theft, threatening to damage a protected computer, and conspiring to commit those and other computer fraud offenses, related to his role in a computer hacking collective known as “The Dark Overlord,”...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, December 5, 2019 Russian National Charged with Decade-Long Series of Hacking and Bank Fraud Offenses Resulting in Tens of Millions in Losses and Second Russian National Charged with Involvement in Deployment of “Bugat” Malware Reward of up to $5 Million Offered for Information Leading to Arrest or Conviction The United States of America, through its Departments of Justice and State, and the United Kingdom, through its National Crime Agency (NCA), today announced the unsealing of criminal charges in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Lincoln, Nebraska, against Maksim V. Yakubets, aka...

Ohio detected and thwarted an election-related cyber attack earlier this month, the state’s elections chief said. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said the “relatively unsophisticated” hacking attempt on Nov. 5, which was Election Day, originated in Panama but was traced to a Russian-owned company. LaRose told The Columbus Dispatch Tuesday that the would-be attackers were looking around for vulnerabilities in his office’s website. “They are poking around for soft spots,” LaRose said. The ultimate goal of such attacks is disrupting and undermining the credibility of elections, but LaRose said Ohio’s election results are safe because neither the election machines...

In the last few days, media talking heads have been saying the word "CrowdStrike" a lot, defining it as a wild conspiracy theory originating in Moscow. They were joined by Chris Wallace at Fox News, who informed us that president Trump and his ill-informed fans believe in a crazy idea that the DNC wasn't hacked by the Russians but by some Ukrainian group named CrowdStrike that stole the DNC server and brought it to Ukraine , and that it was Ukraine that meddled in our 2016 election and not Russia. A crazy idea indeed. Except that neither Trump nor his...

After Trump secured the nomination, Obama's people filed a wiretapping request. As he was on the verge of winning, they did it again. After he won, they are doing everything they can to bring him down. It was always going to come down to this. One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government. A few weeks after the election, I warned that...

BREAKING: Senate investigators looking into whether a DNC operative who worked w Clinton campaign & Ukraine Embassy to dig up dirt on Trump campaign, originated the Russia-hacked-the-DNC conspiracy theory & poss misled FBI. Senate seeks FBI 302s & imaging of laptop of Ali Chalupa