7/14 defcon: murdoch's watergate, military meltdown & more

hacking scandal could be murdoch's watergate*

video: rupert murdoch's son could be prosecuted by US*
video: murdoch papers could have hacked US phones as well*
update: news corp uk newspaper ceo brooks resigns*
washington post website jobs section hacked*
anonymous hacks monsanto computers; posts employee info*
hackers claim they exposed booz allen hamilton data*
'military meltdown monday' - 90k military usernames, hashes released*
how digital detectives deciphered stuxnet, the most menacing malware in history*
stuxnet timeline shows correlation among events*
wi-fi–hacking neighbor from hell sentenced to 18yrs*
smart meters deconstructed*
zuckerberg & google elite hit google+ privacy button*
google turning us into forgetful morons*
cbs faked 4th of july fireworks display*

7/7 defcon: the atlantis event & awesome announcements

atlantis launch will be iconic event, the last of its kind*

full range of opinions & emotions surrounds last shuttle flight*
video: space shuttle atlantis' big-screen launch events & tributes*
nasa's dramatic rescue plan in case of shuttle emergency*
plans to strip mine the moon may soon be more than just sci-fi*
security grifters partner-up on sinister cyber-surveillance project*
army's $2.7b cloud computing system does not work*
hackers are everywhere. panic!*
hackers claim apple security breach*
hacker allegedly breaches florida voting database*
@foxnewspolitics twitter feed hacked; assassination hoax tweeted*
facebook's "awesome" announcement is... skype video chat*
one in three 'overwhelmed by technology'*
video: geocaching treasure hunt leads to uk bomb scare*

murdoch tabloid under fire after hacking into murder victims phones

even families of 7/7 victims 'were targets of phone hacking'*

from guardian: Police officers investigating phone hacking by the News of the World are turning their attention to examine every high-profile case involving the murder, abduction or attack on any child since 2001 in response to the revelation that journalists from the tabloid newspaper hacked into the voicemail messages of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. The move is a direct response to the Guardian's exclusive story on Monday that a private investigator working for the News International tabloid, Glenn Mulcaire, caused Milly's parents to wrongly believe she was still alive – and interfered with police inquiries into her disappearance – by hacking into the teenager's mobile phone and deleting messages. News of the impending police action capped a dramatic day of unfolding developments in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

update: no more news of the world -
murdoch journalists stunned by paper's closure

hacker hijacks xbox, sends swat to home

from kprc: It looked like the scene out of a video game; and indeed an Xbox was behind a SWAT team invading a suburban Florida home. The SWAT invasion turned out to be a hoax, but police aren’t laughing. The family at the butt of the joke, on the other hand, can't tell their tale without a bit of a smile. "I come out of my room and they've got their guns pointed at me and stuff," said Hunter Gelinas. "I open my door and I had the whole SWAT team down in the front door. I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm going to die.'"

It turned out that a hacker had gotten access to Hunter's Xbox and put in a call to police. His mother, Daleann Gelinas, said that the hacker used "a handicapped line, saying that Hunter had been stabbed and the parents and other people being held hostage at the house." Neighbors watched in awe as police poured down their street. "They all had their guns up like they were ready in case anyone was going to fire on them," said neighbor Sam Murphy. "When I heard it was a hoax, it kind of made more sense because I figured with this neighborhood, nothing ever really happens here."

Officers took electronics and the hacked Xbox in a search for the Canadian hacker who has yet to be identified. Experts said that the hoax reveals frightening flaws in online security. "There is nothing there to stop them. Once they gain accessibility to the machine, they can do whatever they want as long as they have the capability and knowledge to do it," said computer expert Neil Wexell. Wexell said that the easiest way to prevent hackers from gaining access is to keep gaming systems offline when not in use.

hacker gary mckinnon update

Blogger Grant Lawrence reminds us in recent Alternet post, "Mckinnon has said consistently in numerous interviews that the US has advanced Space Fleets that are capable of star travel. He has never backed down from his assertions. Maybe Mckinnon has not said all he knows." A reader should ask what lies behind intense efforts to extradite McKinnon? Lawrence asks in a similar vein, "But what is making the US government so adamant about bringing Mckinnon to justice in the US?" Lawrence is led to a conclusion, the facts of the case would lead many of us, "maybe it is because Gary Mckinnon spilled the beans on what he saw and he shouldn’t have... Secret technologies are evidently supposed to be secret no matter how it would benefit humanity."


A 2006 Wired article, "'UFO Hacker' Tells What He Found," shows McKinnon freely providing details of his hacking adventure, "A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files. My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. As this was happening, I had remote control of their desktop, and by adjusting it to 4-bit color and low screen resolution, I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn't look manmade or anything like what we have created. Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture -- it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected."

Is there more than McKinnon has revealed? It's the only sufficient explanation for the sustained pressure on the hacker, over the years, a constant reminder to remain quiet. You may view a previous blog entry on McKinnon's plight here. A recent update at Free Gary McKinnon shows news release of continued effort by US to extradite him. The present writer wonders, what else does McKinnon know and possibly holding back for his own safety?

hackers take down mastercard for a second time

from raw story: The website of credit card provider MasterCard was taken offline Tuesday morning, apparently due to hacker activists trying to make a statement about the financial blockade of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

MasterCard, along with Visa, PayPal, Bank of America and Western Union, have all decided to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, and the site placed their resulting losses at nearly $15 million. They took the drastic action after the site began releasing U.S. diplomatic cables allegedly turned over to them by a lone U.S. Army private.

When MasterCard first announced it was cutting off WikiLeaks back in December, hackers with the protest group Anonymous took their site offline and stopped MasterCard transactions for at least several hours. Visa, PayPal and Bank of America were also targeted by similar attacks and saw their website services interrupted, but did not lose the ability to process transactions.

MasterCard's site outage Tuesday morning comes just one week after WikiLeaks released a promotional video in the style of MasterCard's "Priceless" advertising campaign. It urges viewers to learn more about the site's ongoing battle with the financial world, and to support their work.

Tuesday's hack was announced from a Twitter account that did not appear to be directly related to Anonymous or the now infamous "LulzSec" group, and almost immediately repeated by the official WikiLeaks account. MasterCard's site had returned at time of this story's publication.

brazen hacker group lulzsec says it's disbanding

final cache includes at&t internal data & 750k user accounts

from ap: A publicity-seeking hacker group that has left a trail of sabotaged websites over the last two months, including attacks on law enforcement and releases of private data, said unexpectedly on Saturday it is dissolving itself. Lulz Security made its announcement through its Twitter account. It gave no reason for the disbandment, but it could be a sign of nerves in the face of law enforcement investigations. Rival hackers have also joined in the hunt, releasing information they say could point to the identities of the six-member group. One of the group's members was interviewed by The Associated Press on Friday, and gave no indication that its work was ending. LulzSec claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organizations, the CIA, the U.S. Senate and a pornography website.

related updates: lulzsec releases arizona police documents*
lulzsec says goodbye, dumps at&t data trove*
fbi raids iowa woman's home in lulzsec hacker investigation*

6/23 defcon: strategies, taxes & trident tribunal

executive orders give pentagon new cyberwar guidelines*
officials 'expected to announce the entire strategy soon'*
ex-dhs chief warns of cyberwar with hackers*
cyber attacks grow more severe, frequent, say it practitioners*
bitcoin prices plummet on hacked exchange*
malware bitcoin theft a false flag on revolutionary currency?*
states look to internet taxes to close budget gaps*
righthaven loss: judge rules reposting entire article is fair use*
fbi seizes web servers, knocking sites offline*
$74m scareware ring raided in 'operation trident tribunal'*
winklevoss twins end appeal of facebook settlement*
google breaks billion-visitor barrier*
video: at new nyc hotel, a robot handles the luggage*

are lulzsec hacks work of military intelligence?

Kurt Nimmo poses crucial question in recent article, "Are LulzSec Hacker Attacks the Work of Military Intelligence?". There are concerted "cyber terrorism" propaganda campaigns on mainstream media here and here. Russian and China are names dropped as a matter of course during discussions. Nimmo cuts to the chase, however, with simple observation, "Is it merely a coincidence so-called 'hackitvists' – who release the passwords of common folk in addition to attacking the CIA and the FBI’s InfraGard – are engaged in this behavior just as the Senate debates weighty cyber security legislation?" Revolutionary hacker groups are, most likely, newer more sophisticated forms of sixties-style COINTELPRO operations, engaged in false flag attacks. It is the Hegelian dialectic: problem, reaction and solution! The most recent act's curtain lowers on tragedy playing out before us: shutting down the internet as we know it!

related updates:
mission accomplished: thanks to lulzsec, draconian cybersecurity gains support*
lulzsec member nakomis allegedly military counter-intel?*
uk cops swoop in on possible lulzsec suspect*

defcon 6/16: solar threats, hack attacks & jet packs

solar threat: minutes to respond;
governments plan blackouts; elites prep contingency plans*
US/uk to cut power in preparation of massive solar storm*
magnetic levels ebb as scientists note missing sunspot activity*
mysterious 'structure' discovered on mars?*
audio satire: nasa finds evidence of humans on moon*
video: closely held 'area 51' secrets revealed in new book*
US faces legal challenge to internet-domain seizures*
obama anti-whistleblower case collapses*
ex-spy agency official strikes plea bargain*
US underwrites internet detour around censors*
pentagon ramps-up cyberwar plans*
notorious hacker group breaks into senate server*
imf breached by sophisticated hack attack*
'anonymous' attacks, shutters spanish police website*
hacker group claims credit for invading cia website*
video: lulzsec hackers inspire rap song*
video: personal jet packs to go on sale by end of 2011, says inventor*
audio satire: government says ignore throbbing love orb*

lulzsec laughing at your security since 2011

Computer hackers Lulz Security, a loosely knit group, announced Monday their successful hack of Senate computers. Lulz is internet slang for 'laughing out loud'. A Reuters article presents the government response. "Despite the breach, the Sergeant at Arms Office, which provides security for the Senate, said that the breach had not compromised any individual senator's information." You've got to admire the group's audacity from the following brash comments also from Reuters. "'We don't like the U.S. government very much,' Lulz Security said at the top of their release. 'This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov - is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?' The comment refers to reports that the military had decided that it could respond to cyber attacks from foreign countries with traditional military force." John Bumgarner from a think tank, Cyber Consequences Unit, believes it's an especially embarrassing incident for the Senate since it reveals hackers had administrator level access to the system. LulzSec seems to be sending message we are capable of doing more! The present writer would only ask, how can you compromise the already compromised? The late comedian George Carlin would've had a field day with this material!

one in four US hackers 'is an fbi informer'

from guardian: The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established. Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community.

In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars.

So ubiquitous has the FBI informant network become that Eric Corley, who publishes the hacker quarterly, 2600, has estimated that 25% of hackers in the US may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears. "Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation," Corley told the Guardian.

"It makes for very tense relationships," said John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website depository for secret documents along the lines of WikiLeaks. "There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted."

related defcon updates:
hackers attack fbi partner website; atlanta infraguard exposed*
pbs website hacked with fake news*
video: did hackers deface fox news building in nyc?*
after cyberattack targeted lockheed martin -
second defense contractor l-3 'actively targeted' with rsa securid hacks*
gmail hack targeted white house*
cyber attacks can count as act of war*
writer urges internet junkies to 'switch off' and think*
video: sony loses $3.2b after playstation network hacked*
hackers attack another sony network, post data*
'world of warcraft' blamed for divorce as men 'prefer them to their wives'*
un report declares internet access a human right*
oregon senator wyden freezes second internet censorship bill*
facebook quietly switches on facial recognition tech by default*
apple patent will cripple devices when in proximity of 'a concert or a classified facility'*
how could so many crooks have managed to scam the national security agency?*

cyberattack targets lockheed martin

from usa today: Hackers launched a "significant and tenacious" cyberattack on Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information, but its secrets remained safe, the company said Saturday. Lockheed Martin, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon confirmed that the contractor's information systems had come under attack. Lt. Col. April Cunningham, speaking for the Defense Department, said the impact on the Pentagon "is minimal and we don't expect any adverse effect." Still, the concerted attempt to breach the contractor's systems underscored the risk to the nation's critical defense data. Chris Ortman, Homeland Security spokesman, said his agency and the Pentagon were working with the company to determine the breadth of the attack and "provide recommendations to mitigate further risk." Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it detected the May 21 attack "almost immediately" and took countermeasures. As a result, "our systems remain secure; no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised." The company's security team is still working to restore employee access to the targeted network. Neither Lockheed Martin nor the federal agencies revealed specifics of the attack.