cyberattack
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Obama pardons Stuxnet leak source James Cartwright
Chelsea Manning isn't the only source of online leaks to get a new lease on life. President Obama has pardoned General James Cartwright, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when it investigated leaks that revealed details of Stuxnet, the US-backed malware that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program. He had denied slipping out classified details to two New York Times reporters (including book author David Sanger) in a 2012 interview with the Bureau, only to be caught out later on. He had been facing up to 5 years in prison and was due to be sentenced the same day as the pardon.
FBI looks into Chinese hack targeting federal insurance
The US' Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation hasn't had an easy time of things in recent years: it's been the subject of numerous hacks in recent years, starting in 2010. And now, the FBI wants answers. Reuters sources understand that the law enforcement agency is investigating how the intruders got in, and that the FDIC believes the Chinese military sponsored the attacks. While the full details of the initial hack aren't available, it took a while to recover. The FDIC took until "at least" 2012 to make sure that its systems were clean, according to an internal probe.
Black Lives Matter site faced over 100 attacks in half a year
When you launch protests in the modern era, you don't just have to worry about aggressive responses on the streets... you have to worry about your online presence, too. Deflect Labs has determined that Black Lives Matter's official website was subject to over 100 botnet-based denial of service attacks between April 29th and October 15th, a large part of it coming from members of a Ghost Squad hacking collective that had vocally denounced BLM's campaign. And it didn't require many people, either. Just two culprits (who may be the same person) launched nearly a fifth of the attacks, one of which tried to flood the site with traffic using nearly 1 million bots.
Teenage TalkTalk hacker sentenced
The teenage hacker that played a key role in the 2015 TalkTalk data breach has been sentenced to a 12-month youth rehabilitation order today, after pleading guilty to seven charges under the Computer Misuse Act last month. Alongside a nominal fine, the 17-year-old has also surrendered his iPhone and a computer hard drive to police. As The Guardian reports, the rehabilitation order is intended to "draw him from the lonely confines of a bedroom and that lonely world of computing to a family where his knowledge and skills could be put to good use and to project that out to the wider world."
Obama opens investigation into cyber attacks on US election
President Barack Obama has ordered an investigation into cyber attacks and foreign influence during the 2016 US presidential election, Reuters reports. He's asking intelligence agencies to provide a report on the issue before he leaves office on January 20th, and the review will be shared with lawmakers and other stakeholders, homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco reportedly said. Monaco added that cyber attacks may have crossed a "new threshold" this year.
German Intel chief: Russia is trying to 'destabilize' the country
America's recent elections weren't the only event that Russia has been accused of meddling in. On Thursday, President Dr Hans-Georg Maaßen of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany's internal intelligence service, issued a brutally frank press release laying out the BfV's accusations against Russia.
TalkTalk hacker pleads guilty to role in 2015 data breach
One of the hackers involved in last year's major TalkTalk breach, which saw over 150,000 customer details stolen including over 15,000 bank details, admitted his role in the attack in Norwich Youth Court today. The seemingly remorseful 17-year-old plead guilty to seven charges under the Computer Misuse Act, though not all were related to the TalkTalk hack.
One laptop can take down major internet servers
You don't need a massive botnet to launch overwhelming denial of service attacks -- in some cases, a personal PC and so-so broadband are all that's required. Researchers at TDC Security Operations Center have revealed a new attack technique, BlackNurse, that can take down large servers using just one computer (in this case, a laptop) and at least 15Mbps of bandwidth. Instead of bombarding a server with traffic, you send specially formed Internet Control Message Protocol packets that overwhelm the processors on server firewalls from Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and others. The firewalls end up dropping so much data that they effectively knock servers out of commission, even if they have tons of network capacity.
US is ready to hack Russia if it interferes with the election
American officials are nervous that Russia's alleged attempt to influence the election could extend to the vote itself, and they aren't willing to take any chances. A senior intelligence source tells NBC News that US cyberwarfare agents are in a position to hack Russian critical infrastructure (including command systems, the electrical grid and telecoms) if there's evidence of an attack that disrupts the election in a "significant way." The US isn't expecting such a large breach, but the message is clear: we can hurt you if you meddle with the democratic process.
CIA reportedly plans to launch a cyberattack against Russia
The United States is preparing to launch an unprecedented cyber attack against Russia, according to NBC News. Sources told the publication that the White House asked the CIA to present it with several "clandestine" cyber operation tactics that the administration can choose from. The cyber strike's purpose? To get back at Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin for allegedly interfering with the country's elections. If you'll recall, hackers hiding behind the pseudonym Guccifer 2.0 broke into the Democratic National Convention's computers and leaked 20,000 DNC emails, personal info and donor data. The government believes Russia orchestrated the whole thing in an effort to influence the election's results.
Security writer recovers from massive revenge cyberattack
Journalists are no stranger to making enemies bent on retaliation. However, it's becoming increasingly difficult to survive that retaliation in the internet era... just ask security writer Brian Krebs. An unknown party knocked his website offline last week with a massive distributed denial of service attack (620Gbps of non-stop data) as revenge for exposing two major cyberattack sellers who've since been arrested. He's only back online after taking advantage of Alphabet's Project Shield, which protects journalists against censorship-oriented denial of service campaigns. His previous anti-DDoS provider, Akamai, had little choice but to drop him -- the company tells the Boston Globe that a sustained attack on that level would have cost the company "millions."
Major cyberattack seller knocked offline as it faces arrests
One of the more popular cyberattack peddlers just came crashing down. Israeli law enforcement has arrested Yarden Bidani and Itay Huri as part of an FBI investigation into their alleged control of vDOS, one of the most popular paid attack platforms. According to information unearthed by security guru Brian Krebs from a third-party hack targeting vDOS, the two teens raked in at least $618,000 launching "a majority" of the distributed denial of service campaigns you've seen in recent years. The platform itself is also offline, although that's due to one of vDOS' victims (BackConnect Security) using a bogus internet address claim to stem the flood of traffic hitting its servers.
Reuters: White House to appoint first federal cyber security chief today (updated)
According to Reuters, the White House will appoint Retired Air Force Brigadier General Gregory Touhill as the nation's first federal cyber security chief, a position tasked with dictating cybersecurity policy for the entire federal government. It's an announcement that's been a long time coming. After watching US networks suffer a series of embarrassing attacks last year, President Obama pledged to shore up federal cybersecruity efforts, creating a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and announcing a Cybersecurity National Action Plan. The latter promised to create a Federal Chief Information Security Officer to help protect US systems from future threats. General Touhill, it seems, is our man.
Democrats want FBI to investigate any Trump link to cyberattacks
You may have been laughing when Donald Trump responded to word of possible Russian involvement in DNC hacks by joking that the country should hack Hillary Clinton's email server, but some House Democrats are taking it very seriously. Representatives John Conyers, Elijah Cummings, Eliot Engel and Bennie Thompson have sent a letter asking the FBI to investigate the possibility of a link between Trump officials and the attacks. They claim it's vital to know whether or not Trump and his staff "directly caused or indirectly motivated" the hacks -- they could be helping Russia interfere with the election, if you believe the letter.
Edward Snowden suspects NSA hack was a Russian warning
The National Security Agency (and the US itself) may have just received a shot across the bow. Hackers identifying as the Shadow Brokers claim to have breached the Equation Group, a hacking outfit widely linked to NSA activities, and the data they've posted leads Edward Snowden to suspect that it might have been a state-sponsored Russian operation. If the intruders really did publish the spoils of a NSA cyberweapon staging server as they say, it'd suggest that someone wanted to show that they can prove US involvement in any attacks that came from the server.
Hackers target Vietnam airport screens with political messages
China, the Philippines and Vietnam are embroiled in a bitter dispute over territory claims in the South China Sea (a court has ruled that China's claims are illegal), and that appears to have led to some audacious cyberattacks on July 29th. Vietnam's state media claims that hackers compromised both the website of Vietnam Airlines and the flight info screens at both the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City international airports. Reportedly, passengers saw messages slamming the Philippines and Vietnam over their South China Sea positions -- it won't surprise you to hear that the government is blaming a Chinese hacker group (1937CN) for the incident.
White House outlines how the US will respond to cyberattacks
The US government is understandably worried about cyberattacks as of late, and it's now setting some ground rules for how it responds to those digital intrusions. A newly approved Presidential Policy Directive details just how officials will coordinate responses to hacks and other "cyber incidents." including its basic principles, outlining procedures and creating mechanisms that link the actions that link government divisions. Provided everything goes according to plan, officials would not only learn to share responsibility and resources when fending off attacks, but better understand the risks associated with a given crisis.
'Pokémon Go' expansion marred by a possible cyberattack
Good news! Pokémon Go is available in 26 more countries... if you get a chance to play, that is. Trainers can now grab the mobile game across a wider swath of European nations (such as the Netherlands and Sweden), but temporarily went down amid reports of a possible distributed denial of service attack. The internet collective PoodleCorp claims to have flooded Pokémon Go servers worldwide with enough traffic to effectively render them useless.
Lizard Squad hacked thousands of cameras to attack websites
The hacking collective Lizard Squad isn't relying solely on masses of compromised PCs to cause some grief online. Security researchers at Arbor Networks have discovered that the outfit compromised several thousand closed-circuit cameras and webcams to create a botnet that it promptly used for denial of service attacks against bank, gaming sites, governments and internet providers. Each device might not be as individually powerful as a PC, but they add up -- some attacks flooded sites with as much as 400Gbps of data.
Lexus software update gives new meaning to 'car crash'
Last year, headlines made everyone fearful of hackers taking over cars on the freeway. Turns out the real menace to owners of connected cars are the loopy manufacturers themselves. Toyota had to suck it up this week and admit to Lexus owners, who were going nuts on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday, about why the climate control, radio, GPS, USB, Bluetooth, and other features suddenly stopped working for a range of 2014-2016 Lexus models. Or, their dashboard console would reset itself repeatedly.
