Free Republic

Oracle Corp accused its German rival SAP AG of hacking into its computers to heist secret product information in a lawsuit that highlights the escalating tensions between two of the world's largest business software makers. "This isn't really about protecting intellectual property," said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang. "This is all about the art of war." The complaint, filed on Thursday in the San Francisco federal court, alleges that SAP resorted to high-tech skullduggery in a desperate attempt to maintain its leadership in business applications software -- programs that help companies manage a wide range of administrative tasks. Long the...

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2007 – Defense Department officials have launched an investigation into recent computer hackings of servicemembers’ home computers that compromised personal information and led to the redirection of funds from their military pay accounts. Over the past eight months, nearly two dozen Defense Finance and Accounting Service “myPay” participants have had their accounts accessed by unauthorized personnel, officials said. The myPay program allows DFAS users to manage pay information, leave and earnings statements and W-2s online. The compromise likely came from personal information being stolen from home computers via spyware and keystroke-logging viruses, DFAS officials said. A...

At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said. Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said. “They will exploit anything and everything,” the senior official said, referring to the Chinese hackers’...

Internet Hit by Significant Hack Attack By Ted Bridis February 6, 2007 5:22PM Although hackers launched an unusually powerful attack on the Internet that lasted as long as 12 hours on Tuesday, the hacker attack seems to have gone unnoticed by most Internet users. Experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, although vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea. Related Topics Hackers Attack Internet ICANN Latest News Internet Hit by Significant Hack Attack Sony Ericsson Unwraps Slim New Phones Gates Won't Intercede in Piracy Case Helio Discloses Subscriber Numbers Gates Attacks Mac...

One bad apple...What if I told you that it would take only one person—one highly motivated, but only moderately skilled bad apple, with either authorized or unauthorized access to the right company's internal computer network—to steal a statewide election? You might think I was crazy, or alarmist, or just talking about something that's only a remote, highly theoretical possibility. You also probably would think I was being really over-the-top if I told you that, without sweeping and very costly changes to the American electoral process, this scenario is almost certain to play out at some point in the future in...

The federal governments Commerce Department admitted Friday that heavy attacks on its computers by hackers working through Chinease servers have forced the bureau responsible for granting export licenses to lock down Internet access for more than a month. Hundreds of computers must be replaced to cleanse the agency of malicious code including rootkits and spyware.

NEW WEBSITE INCITES ELECTRONIC JIHAD Internet Jihad Update from Global Terrorism Analysis: The latest criticism of Islam being a violent religion, which was sparked by incendiary comments made by Pope Benedict XVI, has caused internet jihadis to launch a new website called Electronic Jihad, located at http://www.al-jinan.org. The purpose of the website is to help organize an electronic jihad against websites that insult Islam and Islamic sacred figures. The site has been well publicized on more established jihadi websites. Jihadi forums are posting quotes from the Quran in order to encourage and convince jihadis and regular Muslims of their duty...

TRENTON, N.J. - A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines. In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines. The marketing director for the machine's maker — Diebold Inc.'s Diebold Election Systems of Allen, Texas —...

The California Highway Patrol is investigating a possible breach of the governor's computer system after The Times published an audio recording of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bantering with staff in a private meeting last spring. Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for comments made on the six-minute recording, which The Times posted Thursday on its website. Andrea Hoch, the governor's legal affairs secretary, issued a statement Monday saying that the recording had been stored on a private, password-protected section of the governor's computer network. On Aug. 29 and Aug. 30, "an unknown person or persons" downloaded an audio file from that private section, her...

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,...