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A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi's cellphone network and re-establish their own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a month ago. That March cutoff had rebels waving flags to communicate on the battlefield. The new cellphone network, opened on April 2, has become the opposition's main tool for communicating from...

Due to the growing list of brands disclosing that they have been compromised as a result of this breach, I’m going to go ahead and tag this as a massive breach. And I only expect it to get bigger as more announcements come out from Epsilon customers. Last night we reported on a breach at marketing services provider, Epsilon, the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider. Initially we wrote that the breach had affected Kroger, the nation's largest traditional grocery retailer. There is a list of companies at the link (but I don't know if that is going to be...

The Future of Dirty Politics? By Ed Hassell Ever since it passed, the national health care law commonly known as ObamaCare has been entangled in legal battles and heated national debate. As polls have consistently shown, a majority of the public remains opposed to the law and many are worried because they never found out what was even in it. While the law has spurred countless news stories, a recent one you may have missed involved the attorney David Rivkin, who successfully led the multi-state challenge to ObamaCare filed in Florida. A prominent conservative voice, Rivkin has been a staunch...

Chinese Hackers Access Korea's Global Hawk Purchase Plans Chinese hackers gained access to the government's top-secret plan to buy the U.S.-made Global Hawk reconnaissance drone in June 2010, it emerged Sunday. "We've had a report from a government official that China launched a hacking attack on the Defense Ministry's computer system and accessed confidential information about the ministry's plan" to buy the drone, a spokesman for Democratic Party lawmaker Shin Hak-yong of the National Assembly's Defense Committee said. "The government hasn't raised this issue with China yet and is apparently still mulling how to handle it." Seoul asked Washington to...

Someone JUST hacked my craigslist account. I don't have a clue as to how they did it, but they posted four ads in the Westchester, NY area using my craigslist e-mail. Beats my four aces as to how they did it. I've deleted the cell phone ads, changed my password AND changed the receiving e-mail on the account. Does anyone have ANY idea as to how they hacked my craigslist account? Or, has craigslist suffered a major identity theft from its database?

On N. Korean heir's birthday, a rude cyber-greeting By Chico Harlan Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, January 8, 2011; 7:05 AM BEIJING - Apparently breached by hackers, North Korea's official Twitter account on Saturday described leader Kim Jong Il and heir apparent Kim Jong Eun as sworn enemies and called for an uprising to remove them from power. By the time the micro-blogging mischief was over, the North Korean tweets had ranted to its 10,000-plus Twitter followers about profligate nuclear weapons spending and lavish Kim Jong Il drinking parties - hosted "while 3 million people are starving and freezing to...

The WikiLeakers and the Bathrobe Brigades now launching hack attacks from their parents' basements are not free speech heroes, they are leftwing collectivists lashing out at all they hate:  America, Capitalism, and of course, Sarah Palin. Socialism Advances Behind a Screen of BS The Palin attack is what revealed their true colors. What does she have to do with the free flow of information? How does stealing her and Todd's credit cards advance the cause of an open society? Many of these hackers are society’s losers. They are unsuccessful, so they hate society. They lack the skills and self-discipline...

Introduction: How often do you go to the store on a monthly basis? Maybe you go down to the local Starbucks every morning before work. This is prime hunting ground for an attacker to steal all of your credit card information without ever touching you, using equipment they got on ebay for under $20. These are the threats that credit card companies and the thieves don’t want you to know about. RFID hacking has been in the news quite a bit lately. There’s a lot of concern as to what it involves, how easy it is, and what exactly RFID...

Recently a high school in Pennsylvania shocked the nation when it became the subject of a lawsuit alleging that webcams in school-issued laptop computers were being remotely activated by school staff, used to snap photos of students in their homes. As a computer security professional I dug into the story with the help of my colleagues, and together we found that the networked webcam capability built into these computers by the school district was absolutely real. Our findings were greeted with surprise and dismay; they have caused a nationwide outcry. The truth is, this shouldn't have been a surprise. America...

The first question some may ask is “Why?”  Those of us who are LED addicts say “Why the hell not?”  This guy literally took 500 bright white LEDs and created his own giant 50W flashlight.  While it may have been just ever so slightly overkill, it’s still an impressive build.  Can you imagine soldering all of those 500 LEDs?! Don’t Miss: DIY Super-Powered Flashlight Beam****************************************************************************Youtube Video of the Construction and Demostration at the website.... *********************************************************************************** As you can tell in the video above, it has an absurd amount of controls for various brightness settings.  Heck, it could even be a...

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...