Free Republic

North Korea was apparently behind a recent hacking attack that netted a secret U.S.-South Korean plan to defend the peninsula should war break out, South Korea's military intelligence agency reported. he suspected hacking occurred late last month when a South Korean military officer failed to remove a USB device when he switched a military computer from a restricted-access intranet to the Internet. The USB device contained a summary of OPLAN 5027, a highly sensitive war plan prepared by the U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command in case of an all-out war with the North. The plan calls for the dispatch of...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, December 29, 2009 Major International Hacker Pleads Guilty for Massive Attack on U.S. Retail and Banking Networks WASHINGTON- Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to hack into computer networks supporting major American retail and financial organizations, and to steal data relating to tens of millions of credit and debit cards, announced Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Paul J. Fishman, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Milagros Ortiz and Director of...

Chalk up one for the defenders. Here’s how a trio of security researchers used a three-step attack to defeat a 250,000-pronged botnet.For two years as a researcher with security company FireEye, Atif Mushtaq worked to keep Mega-D bot malware from infecting clients' networks. In the process, he learned how its controllers operated it. Last June, he began publishing his findings online. In November, he suddenly switched from de fense to offense. And Mega-D--a powerful, resilient botnet that had forced 250,000 PCs to do its bidding--went down. Mushtaq and two FireEye colleagues went after Mega-D's command infrastructure. A botnet's first wave...

/begin my excerpts China: Classified Documents on Submarine Leaked... Intel Authorities on Alert (regarding) China's newest nuclear-powered submarine development Classified information at China's Weapon's Industry Research Institute leaked by hacking (Beijing=Yonhap News) Kwon Young-suk = Classified information on Chinese navy's submarine was leaked to foreign intelligence, and the Chinese intelligence authorities are on heightened alert. China's Globe Daily reported on Dec. 14 that classified materials were stolen at China Weapon’s Industry Research Institute which does PLAN's submarine projects. The authorities said, "Foreign intelligence stole via Internet hacking all of top secret information and files on materials used for building China's...

One of the surest signs of whether a government official may have something to hide in Climategate, the ACORN scandal or any other controversy is that their first reaction to the scandal is to target the source exposing the scandal. California Senator Barbara Boxer said at a committee hearing, "You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate.'"

China attacks "biased" U.S. cyber-spying report Mon Nov 23, 3:01 am ET BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Monday accused a U.S. congressional advisory panel of bias for a report in which it said the Chinese government appeared increasingly to be piercing U.S. computer networks to gather useful data for its military. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its 2009 report to Congress released last week that there was growing evidence of Chinese state involvement in such activity. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the report was a twisted attack on China. "This report disregards the...

The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine. In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails." "Have you alerted police" "Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken." Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach...

The FBI on Wednesday announced that it had charged 53 defendants, the largest number ever charged in a cybercrime case, following a multinational investigation into a phishing scheme that operated in the United States and Egypt. Thirty-three of the 53 defendants named in the indictment have been arrested, the FBI said, and several others are being sought. The investigation, dubbed "Operation Phish Phry," began in 2007. Authorities in Egypt have charged 47 defendants linked to the phishing operation. Phishing is a form of social engineering that attempts to convince Internet users, via e-mail or other means, to provide online credentials...

A computer hacker who was once a federal informer and was a driving force behind one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history pleaded guilty Friday in a deal with prosecutors that will send him to prison for up to 25 years. Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, admitted to pulling off some of the most prominent hacking jobs of the decade -- invading the computer systems of such retailers as TJX, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble and Sports Authority. Federal authorities say tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers were stolen....

WASHINGTON -- Russian hackers hijacked American identities and U.S. software tools and used them in an attack on Georgian government Web sites during the war between Russia and Georgia last year, according to new research to be released Monday by a nonprofit U.S. group. In addition to refashioning common Microsoft Corp. software into a cyber-weapon, hackers collaborated on popular U.S.-based social-networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook Inc., to coordinate attacks on Georgian sites, the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit found. While the cyberattacks on Georgia were examined shortly after the events last year, these U.S. connections weren't previously known. "U.S. corporations...

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

I suspect that China might be stealing our confidential data that is stored (or backed up) on external USB hard disks, such as those 1 TB commodities sold as Costco for $100. Early this year, I bought two 1 TB external USB drives to backup my computer. These drives cost a little over $100 with a five-year warranty. I figured, for redundancy, I’d copy my main C-drive data files to both drives, just in case one dies. Sure enough, six months later, I get the Windows XP error message “USB Device Not Recognized: one of the USB devices attached to...

The former director of information technology for a non-profit organ and tissue donation center was sentenced today to two years in prison for hacking into her former employer’s computer network, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Tim Johnson. Danielle Duann, 51, of Houston, pleaded guilty on April 30, 2009, to a one-count criminal indictment charging her with unauthorized computer access. Duann was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in the Southern District of Texas. In addition to the two-year prison term, Judge Hittner sentenced...

A fresh wave of cyber attacks that slowed U.S. and South Korean websites this week hit more targets on Thursday, a Web security firm said, while the South's spy agency has said the hacking may be linked to North Korea. The impact of the attacks, aimed so far at dozens of sites including the White House and the South's presidential office, was seen as negligible, experts said, but served as a reminder that Pyongyang has been planning for cyber warfare.

DALLAS—A man from Arlington, Texas, who worked as a contract security guard at the Carrell Clinic on North Central Expressway in Dallas, has been arrested on felony charges outlined in a criminal complaint, announced Acting U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Late Friday evening, agents with the FBI arrested Jesse William McGraw, a/k/a "GhostExodus," "PhantomExodizzmo," "Howard Daniel Bertin," "Howard William McGraw," and "Howard Rogers," age 25. McGraw appeared yesterday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Wm. F. Sanderson, Jr., for his initial appearance. He was detained until his probable cause and detention hearing set for Wednesday,...

"SKULDUGGERY," says Andrew Henwood, "is a very good word to describe what this extremely advanced, cleverly written malware gets up to. We've never seen anything like it." What he has discovered is a devious piece of criminal coding that has been quietly at work in a clutch of cash machines at banks in Russia and Ukraine. It allows a gang member to walk up to an ATM, insert a "trigger" card, and use the machine's receipt printer to produce a list of all the debit card numbers used that day, including their start and expiry dates - and their PINs....

Note: The following text is a quote: Two Missouri Brothers Among Those Indicted in $4 Million Nationwide Spamming Conspiracy Millions of E-Mail Addresses Illegally Harvested from Computers at 2,000 Schools KANSAS CITY, MO—Two Missouri men and their company are among those indicted by a federal grand jury in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized more than 2,000 colleges and universities in a scheme that sold more than $4 million worth of products to students, announced Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis., his brother, Osmaan Ahmad...

Officials with the Defense Department and Lockheed Martin disputed a report by The Wall Street Journal that computer spies had hacked into government and contractor computer systems and stolen data about the design of the F-35 joint strike fighter program. The newspaper reported Tuesday that several government officials confirmed that intruders had downloaded F-35 data. The hackers could not access the most sensitive design data about the aircraft’s flight controls and electronics, which are stored on computers not connected to the Internet, The Journal reported. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Bruce Tanner, Lockheed’s chief financial officer, said...

Chinese and Russian hackers are attempting to seed viruses in the US power grid that could one day plunge major cities into chaos, a report warned Wednesday. The report in the Wall Street Journal quotes intelligence officials saying that cyber-spies last year repeatedly gained access to the system powering everything from financial institutions to sewage systems.

In what appears to be a growing trend, displaced employees are turning to cybercrime using their corporate data access to steal, exploit and damage information networks, and may have cost businesses as much as $1 trillion globally according to a new study from McAfee and Purdue University's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security Although insiders have always posed a threat to information security, the report warns that the global recession is putting vital information at greater risk than ever before. The report, Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information (free, requires free registration) was released last week at...