Free Republic

STOCKHOLM (AFX) - Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party has reported hundreds of incidents of unauthorized computer access to the police, and alleges that 'someone linked to the Liberal Party' had hacked into its internal network, reported Dagens Industri. The hacking enabled unauthorized people to view secret Social Democrat (SD) information about strategies and plans for the forthcoming Sept 17 election campaign. snip --- 'We are now looking into whether we can find out any information via our network about what has been claimed, I have asked anyone in the Liberal Party who has information about this to come forward,' he...

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site remained offline Thursday, and federal and state authorities were investigating why it crashed on the eve of this week's defeat in a high-profile primary. The site, Joe2006.com, appeared to have suffered from a so-called "denial of service" attack, in which computers overwhelm a site with fake traffic, preventing real visitors from getting through or, in this case, causing it to crash, said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant in Brookline, Mass. Lieberman said the situation is hindering his efforts to reach out nationally for campaign donations. "But of course that's the world...

File it under the category of "be careful what you wish for." In early August at the Black Hat Conference, an annual meeting of computer security experts in Las Vegas, Microsoft handed out 3,000 test copies of its new operating system, Windows Vista, and challenged attendees to help spot security glitches. A short time later, Joanna Rutkowska obliged. In a packed ballroom at Caesar's Palace, the 25-year-old Polish programming whiz delivered a devastating presentation in how to hack an earlier but similar test version of Vista. Before a crowd of fellow researchers and hackers, she bypassed security measures and implanted...

Jerusalem Israel July 17, 2006 Followers of the controversial author and politician Obadiah Shoher retaliated against the Moroccan hackers (Team Evil) who defaced hundreds of Israeli websites on June 28 this year. 380 websites hosted by the Moroccan provider Omihost.com were completely erased, and their front pages read, We support SamsonBlinded. Team Good. The Shoher’s group denies prior knowledge of the cyberattack, but praises the hackers’ efforts. The Samson Blinded’s founder Obadiah Shoher said, “That was a laudable application of the eye for an eye principle. Breaking the websites is a relatively simple job, and I’m sure that our unknown...

ISRAEL today hacked into the television station of Hezbollah, emblazoning images on the screen showing pictures of corpses and claiming the Shiite militant group's leader Hassan Nasrallah was a liar. One of the images shown on Al-Manar television portrayed the body of a fighter lying face-down, wearing khaki trousers with a text beneath in Arabic reading: "This is the photograph of a body of a member of Hezbollah's special forces". "Nasrallah lies: it is not us that is hiding our losses," continued the text, which appeared during the evening news and stayed on the screen for several minutes. A photograph...

The University of Abertay, Dundee is taking the lead in training the next generation of computer security experts by offering Britain's first degree course in "ethical" computer hacking. Not just anyone can take the Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures course. Applicants will have to go through Home Office and Foreign Office security clearance to take the course, so that the University doesn’t produce hackers with malicious intent. According to a report by The Times, hacking accounts for £10 billion in damage to British firms alone, and poses a global terrorist threat. The course operates on the premise that it takes a...

China is showing more indications that it's growing Cyber War capability is actually being put to use. An increasing amount of criminal Internet use is coming out of China. Parallel with that is Chinas formation of a civilian reserve of Internet experts, to help out in wartime. Meanwhile, there is the murky situation regarding who controls all the criminal Internet activity in China. Since China is a police state, and much emphasis, and effort, is put on controlling the Internet, this sudden growing in criminal hacking in China looks suspicious. National governments, especially police states, have been known to cut...

Security researchers and legal experts have voiced concern this week over the prosecution of an information-technology professional for computer intrusion after he allegedly breached a university's online application system while researching a flaw without the school's permission. Last Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District of California leveled a single charge of computer intrusion against San Diego-based information-technology professional Eric McCarty, alleging that he used a Web exploit to illegally access an online application system for prospective students of the University of Southern California last June. The security issue--which could have allowed an attacker to manipulate a database...

A dirt-cheap, do-it-yourself hacking kit sold by a Russian Web site is being used by more than 1,000 malicious Web sites, a security company said Monday. Those sites have confiscated hundreds of thousands of computers using the "smartbomb" kit, which sniffs for seven unpatched vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Firefox, then attacks the easiest-to-exploit weakness.For $15 to $20, hackers can buy the "Web Attacker Toolkit," said San Diego-based Websense in an online alert. The tool, which uses a point-and-click interface, can be planted on malicious sites -- or on previously-compromised computers -- to ambush unsuspecting users."It puts a bunch of...

Al-Qaeda is using hacking techniques as part of its war against the US, the head of a security company which works for the US military has claimed. Paul Innella, chief executive of Tetrad Digital Integrity, told last week's WebSec Conference that a laptop recovered from a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan revealed that the group has been researching hacking techniques. Innella claimed that the laptop contained information on how to map computer networks and exploit software vulnerabilities. He also said the laptop had software capable of modelling the impact of an attack on a US dam and calculating the damage...

The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs "the worst consumer scam to date." Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K. But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam -- and scandal -- has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks,...

Online Stores Are Caught In Jihad Web By HOWARD ALTMAN Published: Feb 20, 2006 When Stacey Turmel placed an order online with Davida, an English motorcycle accessory company, she was looking for protective gear with style and comfort. But after plunking down $255 for a two-tone Deluxe Jet helmet, she found herself dragged into the shadowy world of global jihad. Turmel, a St. Petersburg lawyer, has learned that she was among several Davida customers whose personal and credit information was placed on a public Web site - 3asfh.net. The site, hosted temporarily by a Tampa-based Web-hosting company, has been used...

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA -- A US computer hacker on Monday pleaded guilty to hijacking around 400,000 computers, including military servers, and infecting them with malicious software. In the first such prosecution of its kind, "botmaster" Jeanson Ancheta, 20, admitted infecting the computers with software that caused them to send spam, show ads and launch crippling attacks on Internet sites. In federal court in Los Angeles, Ancheta admitted conspiring to violate both the Computer Fraud Abuse Act and an anti-spam law, to causing damage to US defense computers and to hacking into computers to commit fraud. His plea comes after...

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, a security institute says. A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute has said. The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity. ?These attacks...

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment as the first state in the nation to bring legal action against SONY for illegal "spyware." The suit is also the first filed under the state’s spyware law of 2005. It alleges the company surreptitiously installed the spyware on millions of compact music discs (CDs) that consumers inserted into their computers when they play the CDs, which can compromise the systems. The Attorney General’s lawsuit alleges the New York-based company violated a new Texas law protecting consumers from the hidden spyware. The company accomplished this by using...

PARIS - A Paris-based media watchdog has released a free guide with tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past Internet censors in countries from China to Iran. Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French Foreign Ministry and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can be downloaded in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French. "Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Julien Pain, head of...

Somewhere out on the Internet, an Electric Bong may be in danger. The threat: a well-crafted Google query that could allow a hacker to use Google's massive database as a resource for intrusion. "Electric Bong" was one of a number of household devices that security researcher Johnny Long came across when he found an unprotected Web interface to someone's household electrical network. To the right of each item were two control buttons, one labelled "on," the other, "off."

/begin my translation 40,000 Chinese Hackers  to Attack Japan via S. Korean Servers...on Aug. 15  Chinese hackers reportedly plan a massive hacking attack against various Japanese Internet sites on Aug. 15,  using S. Korean servers as 'intermediaries' for their offensive. S. Korean servers, which Chinese hackers will use to elude the tracking of their own IP addresses, include not only servers in S. Korean universities, but also in some government institutions, which would surely raise a major concern. Wen-hui-bao in Hong Kong reported on July 2, "Zhong-guo Hong-ke-lian-meng(Zhong-hong-meng,) one of the five largest hacking organization in the world, plans to launch...

Mark Hacking will spend at least 30 years in prison for the murder of his wife before the state parole board even considers a possible release date for the 29-year-old man. "This is just a hearing," said Mike Sibbett, chairman of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. "There is no guarantee that he will ever receive a release date." Mark Hacking pleaded guilty to shooting his wife, Lori Kay Soares Hacking, in their Salt Lake apartment on July 18 and disposing of her body in a Dumpster at the University of Utah. News of the 2035 initial hearing date...

/begin my translation China: The Biggest Hacker Group Plans Massive Attack Against Japan 2005-07-02 Chinese hacker organization, 'Hong-ke-lian-meng', the largest in China and the fifth largest in the world, announced that they would mount massive hacking attack against anti-Chinese sites in Japan between this month and September, according to Hong Kong daily, Wen-hui-bao. The paper reported that this attack would be larger than the one in last April when massive anti-Japanese protests erupted all over China.  It is rather unusual that the hacking plan was publicized beforehand. It reflects the serious anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese, due to Japan's offensive remarks on...