Free Republic

Bill Gertz has the grim news in the Washington Free Beacon: Hackers linked to China's government broke into one of the U.S. government's most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident. One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing's most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks. Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved...

An anonymous hacking group claims to have stolen Mitt Romney's tax returns from financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). PWC denies that there has been any unauthorized access to Mitt Romney or wife Ann's tax information and that any of their systems have been breached. The hacking group sent thumb drives that supposedly contained copies of the returns to the Democratic and Republican county offices in Nashville Tennessee, as well as PWC. The Nashville city paper was among the first to report on the hacking incident. The group announced their demands on Pastebin, a tool that is used by coders to...

An anonymous individual or group claims to have obtained "all available" tax returns associated with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The alleged hackers claim to have accessed them via computers in the Franklin, Tenn., office of professional services firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers. An anonymous posting on a file sharing website claims PwC was hacked; the same site has been used to boast of other high-profile corporate hacks. How'd they pull it off, allegedly? The posting states: "[Romney's tax returns] were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of...

Some 450,000 Yahoo users' email addresses and passwords have been leaked because of a security breach, the company confirmed Thursday, adding that just a small fraction of the stolen passwords were valid. The company said in a statement that an "old file" from the Yahoo Contributor Network was compromised Wednesday. Among the stolen emails and passwords were many from Yahoo's own email service along with those of other companies. The Yahoo Contributor Network is a content-sharing platform. Yahoo said it is fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure, changing the passwords of affected Yahoo users, and notifying other companies...

From WeWork Labs to General Assembly, there are a lot of incubators that give entrepreneurs a place to code during the day. There aren't many that offer sleeping arrangements as well. Three "hacker hostels" have cropped up in Silicon Valley, The New York Times reports. Coders, designers and scientists can spend the night packed like sardines in rows of bunk beds for $40. The hostels are all run by the same management company, Chez JJ, with accommodations in Menlo Park, Mountain View and San Francisco. Chez JJ was founded by 28-year-old neuroscientist Jade Wang and Jocelyn Berl. Wang had used...

Some 60m euro is stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber raid, after fraudsters raid dozens of banks around the world. Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world. According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an "insider level of understanding". "The fraudsters' objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research - Operation...

Today, my son's name and the name of his close friend, were in a message posted to my facebook page saying that they "liked" Barack Obama along with a link to his facebook page. Considering my son is a deployed Marine with limited access to the internet and the time there is in the wee morning hours, I contacted his friend who is also rarely on facebook and asked him if he had recently "liked" the article. He said he hadn't. Do you think it possible this is a political hack? Just wondering.

It's been a cheerily good spring for FOSS fans here in the Linux blogosphere, so we may perhaps be forgiven for our utter shock and disbelief at the affront recently committed against us by a certain brick-and-mortar purveyor of books and magazines. Yes, that's right -- it's Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) Linux Girl is referring to; specifically, its decision to yank the very excellent Linux Format magazine from its U.S. shelves -- apparently because of a cover story on the topic of "hacking.""We've just learned that issue 154 of Linux Format, the one with 'Learn to Hack' on the...

An investigation by Dr Web suggests that about 600,000 Macs have the malware - potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a "botnet". It says that more than half that number are in the US. Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer's security software. Remote control "By introducing the code criminals are potentially able to control the machine," the firm's chief executive Boris Sharov told the BBC. "We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious...

FOR the last two months, senior government officials and private-sector experts have paraded before Congress and described in alarming terms a silent threat: cyberattacks carried out by foreign governments. Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., said cyberattacks would soon replace terrorism as the agency’s No. 1 concern as foreign hackers, particularly from China, penetrate American firms’ computers and steal huge amounts of valuable data and intellectual property.

The computer hacking group Anonymous has promised to shut down the Internet in its entirety this Saturday, March 31st, according to a post on "pastebin" which has since gotten 165,000 views. The piece states that Anonymous will be attempting this in order to protest "SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun." The post, which was then uploaded to Reddit, promises an attack on 13 root DNS servers. Anyone trying to access a website, it promises, will get an error message. The group, however,...

Top members of the computer hacker group "Anonymous" and its offshoots were arrested and charged Tuesday after a wide-ranging investigation used the help of a group leader who was working as a secret government informant. Five of the suspects, considered by investigators among the "most sophisticated hackers in the world," were arrested in the United States and Europe and charged in a Manhattan federal court over their alleged role in high-profile cyberattacks against government agencies and large companies, according to an indictment. A sixth man, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a notorious hacker known as "Sabu," pleaded guilty in August to computer...

In January the group decided to hit the websites of the US Department of Justice and various media companies in response to the takedown of file storage site Megaupload, providing a guide on Pastebin for those who wished to take part in the attacks. Symantec says that an attacker appears to have copied that guide and inserted their own version of the Slowloris software containing a secret Trojan that downloaded a copy of Zeus, a piece of malware often used to take control of an infected computer.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been under fire from world leaders to step down this week. He’s also under fire from hacktivist group Anonymous, who leaked hundreds of his office’s emails on Monday. While Anonymous is infamous for its hacking know-how, it doesn’t take a genius computer programmer to guess one of the passwords commonly used by Assad’s office accounts: 12345. The string of consecutive numbers is the second-weakest password according to a 2011 study.

The “anti-fascist” wing of the “Anonymous” hacker group has broken into a website run by the white supremacist American Third Position (A3P), and released a document dump consisting of private forum messages, emails, organizational notes, and other personal information. The documents show numerous connections between Republican candidate Ron Paul and these racist Neanderthals; they’re heavily involved in campaigning for Paul, and according to the messages, have held regular meetings with Ron Paul himself:

A federal appeals court has rejected a former University of Tennessee college student's appeal against being convicted for hacking former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account during the 2008 campaign. Lawyers for the ex-student, David Kernell, said the felony obstruction of justice statute he was convicted under was so vague as to be unconstitutional. In particular, they argued, Kernell had no obvious notice that a federal investigation was underway before he deleted files from his computer and defragmented his hard disk. However, according to Politico, in an opinion Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of...

A U.S. elections officer who served in voting districts that partnered with a controversial online voting firm recently retired from his government position to work for the firm in question, the foreign-headquartered company SCYTL. WND reported yesterday that SCYTL has faced questions about the security of its electronic voting technologies, which are now set to be deployed in 900 U.S. jurisdictions. The firm already provides balloting for overseas U.S. military and civilian voting in nine states along with elections technologies in several districts. Concerns have also been raised about SCYTL’s ties to the Spanish government and to international venture capital...

Man charged in attack on Simmons siteBy GREG RISLING - Associated Press Tuesday, December 13, 2011 LOS ANGELES - December 13, 2011 (WPVI) -- A Connecticut man affiliated with a hacking group was arrested Tuesday on federal charges for an attack on a website belonging to Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, authorities said. Kevin Poe was indicted in Los Angeles on two counts: conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. Poe made his initial appearance in court in Hartford, Conn., and was released on $10,000 bond. If convicted of both charges, the Manchester man faces up to 15 years in...

Gamma International UK Ltd. touts its ability to send a “fake iTunes update” that can infect computers with surveillance software, according to one of the company’s marketing videos.< snip> ...the type of intrusion used by criminals trying to steal people’s financial details.< snip> ...All of the hacking companies say they sell their tools to law enforcement and governments to help them track down criminals.< snip>

Julian Pike said he had been aware in 2008 that the practice of people hacking into phones to secure stories had been more widespread than the company acknowledged. But he told the Commons Culture Committee he had "not done very much" to dispute the firm's claims that only one rogue reporter was involved. He also told the committee he thought James Murdoch had made mistakes in his recollection of what he knew and when regarding the hacking.