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College student found guilty of hacking into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account A college student has been found guilty of hacking into former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail and posting some of the contents online. College student David Kernell has been found guilty of hacking into Sarah Palin's e-mail A jury decided 22-year-old David Kernell was guilty of obstruction of justice and unauthorised access of a computer, though he was cleared of a wire fraud charge.In a statement issued on her Facebook page, Palin thanked the jury and prosecutors and explained the case's importance: "Besides the obvious invasion...

KNOXVILLE — A federal jury this afternoon convicted Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell of felony destruction of records to hamper a federal investigation and misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. The jury acquitted Kernell, 22, of wire fraud. It remains deadlocked on felony identity theft. It’s unclear if U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips will order the jurors, in their fourth day of deliberations, to continue.

KNOXVILLE - Jurors in the trial of accused Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell were this morning urged to reach a complete verdict in the case. The jurors began their fourth day of deliberations by hearing a special added instruction from U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips. Called an Allen charge in legal parlance, it is commonly called "a dynamite charge." Phillips told the jurors that as they resume deliberating they should each reconsider their positions, but there was no need to rush to a verdict. The jurors reported shortly before 9 a.m. and then retired to resume deliberations...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The attorney for a former University of Tennessee student charged with hacking Sarah Palin's e-mail says the defendant will not testify in his federal trial in Knoxville.

Two researchers yesterday won $10,000 each at the Pwn2Own hacking contest by bypassing important security measures of Windows 7. Both Peter Vreugdenhil of the Netherlands and a German researcher who would only identify himself by the first name Nils found ways to disable DEP (data execution prevention) and ASLR (address space layout randomization), which are two of Windows 7's most vaunted anti-exploit features. Each contestant faced down the fully-patched 64-bit version of Windows 7 and came out a winner. Vreugdenhil used a two-exploit combination to circumvent first ASLR and then DEP to successfully hack IE8. A half-hour later, Nils bypassed...

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked into 29 Web sites affiliated with U.S. espionage networks, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Sunday. "The hacked websites acted against Iran's national security under the cover of human rights activities," Fars reported. It did not disclose details of the attacks. The 29 Web sites were identified in a statement (in Farsi) released on a Web site operated by the Revolutionary Guards. The Internet has been used by Iranian opposition groups who contested the results of last year's elections there to organize demonstrations and share information about protests and arrests. The Revolutionary Guards...

CHANGSHA, China — With a few quick keystrokes, a computer hacker who goes by the code name Majia calls up a screen displaying his latest victims. “Here’s a list of the people who’ve been infected with my Trojan horse,” he says, working from a dingy apartment on the outskirts of this city in central China. “They don’t even know what’s happened.” As he explains it, an online “trapdoor” he created just over a week ago has already lured 2,000 people from China and overseas — people who clicked on something they should not have, inadvertently spreading a virus that allows...

Experts: US gov't needs to prepare for cyberwar Cyberwar is difficult to define, but the U.S. needs a strategy, a group of experts says By Grant Gross, IDG News Service January 27, 2010 04:31 PM ET Sponsored by: The U.S. government needs to figure out how it will respond to acts of cyberwar, as foreign governments increasingly look to gain advantages in cyberspace, a group of cybersecurity experts said Wednesday. One problem, however, is that there wasn't consensus among the panelists on what exactly constitutes an act of war in cyberspace. The U.S. military has used cyberattacks to disrupt enemy...

U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google STORY HIGHLIGHTS Google says hackers from China got into its Gmail systemBruce Schneier says hackers exploited feature put into system at behest of U.S. governmentWhen governments get access to private communications, they invite abuse, he saysGovernment surveillance and control of Internet is flourishing, he says : Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." Read more of his writing at www.schneier.com. -- Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such...

US Government recommends weighing laptop before and after each visit. Senior executives in US IT companies have been advised by the US Government to follow extremely strict policies for visits to China which extend far beyond standard software protection. The policies encourage them to leave their standard IT equipment at home and to buy separate gear only for use in China. Mark Bregman, chief technology officer at security firm Symantec said he left his MacBook Pro behind in the US and took his MacBook Air whenever he flew to China. Bregman said he only ever used the Air in China...

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...