The Internet hacker collective Anonymous claims to have breached the security of NATO’s computer network and made off with roughly a gigabyte of “restricted material,” according to a message posted from a Twitter account belonging to the group.
By B.K. DeLongWe have heard variations on the argument that within the context of information security, the “advanced persistent threat” (APT) is not really all that advanced or new, that it is being made too big a deal of (or FUD) and that it is no more than marketing hype though more of an effort needs to be put into protecting against it. The problem is that many industry practitioners (with the help of uninformed or marketing-driven vendors) are being misled to believe that the APT involves nearly any adversary that pulls off a large-scale attack or breach of security.
A 24 year-old entrepreneur and star programmer has been indicted by the federal authorities in Boston following and accused of hacking into the network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and making off with millions of pages of copyrighted documents.
There has been a spate of spear-phishing attacks against a number of high-profile targets in the last few months, including RSA and others, and that trend is continuing unabated. Researchers have come across a fresh attack using the familiar malicious PDF attachment that appears to be targeting users in the defense industry.
Agents of the FBI raided three homes in New York on Tuesday and seized computers believed to be involved in recent attacks by the Anonymous hacking group.
A group of researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Waterloo have developed a proxy system called Telex that provides a method for users to circumvent state-level censorship of the Web. It uses an architecture that includes a proxy at the ISP level and uses connections to benign sites to disguise traffic going to censored sites. Threatpost editor Dennis Fisher spoke with J. Alex Halderman, one of the creators of the system, about its potential, its limits and what remains to be done before it can be deployed broadly.
Ever attuned to the headlines, the hacker collective Anonymous have inserted themselves into the ongoing scandal over hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World Tabloid, hacking the Web site of The Sun, another Murdoch publication, and redirecting traffic to that paper’s home page to a phony story announcing the media mogul’s death.
Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra warned of “an IT cartel” of vendors in a discussion with President Barack Obama and his scientific advisors on Friday, according to a report from Network World.
ED: More Allegations Link Murdoch’s Media Empire to “Ethical Hackers” DEK: New reports add weight to accusations that Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World may have used professional hackers and malicious programs to obtain information that was then used in news reports. The ‘drip drip drip’ of reports that link Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to incidents of malicious computer programs continues this week, with news of an investigation into News of the World’s the use of so-called “ethical hackers” to obtain information from computers owned by targeted individuals.The investigation, dubbed “Operation Tuleta” is being carried out by detectives in Scotland Yard’s Specialist Crime Directorate and is separate from the ongoing investigation into phone hacking by News of the World reporters and operatives, according to a report in The Telegraph. It follows earlier reports by two bloggers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that information gathering by News of the World wasn’t limited to tampering with voice mailboxes. According to the report Monday in the Telegraph, the investigation is looking into allegations that private detectives and a firm of “ethical hackers” was hired by News International to investigate targets using “offensive hacking services” including the use of Trojan horse programs to gather information from e-mails from the computers of individuals being investigated by the Murdoch papers. Among the alleged targets were Kevin FUlton, believed to have been a British agent working within the IRA. The information was harvested and then allegedly written up and faxed to News International’s Dublin, Ireland bureau, the Telegraph reports. “Ethical hacking” – sometimes described as “white hat hacking” — is a term sometimes used to describe a wide range of typically authorized security testing, including network penetration testing, application testing, social engineering and so on. Such activity is conducted with the knowledge and consent of the target, whether its an individual, corporation or other organization. If true, the reports are similar to information turned up in a March, 2011 investigation by the BBC (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html) and to independent claims by Brown and by two sex advice bloggers who allege that Murdoch’s News of the World outted them after first using malicious programs to compromise their computers and determine their identities. A spokesman for News International told Threatpost last week that former Prime Minister Brown’s allegations were “nonsense” and said the company wasn’t aware of any complaint by Brown or the other accusers. Among the data allegedly stolen from Fulton’s computer were emails and other files that name Irish polician and Sinn Fein member Martin McGuinness as a British spy. Fulton lodged a complaint with the Metropolitan Police in April alleging that some e-mails from 2006 had been intercepted by individuals working for News International.The scandal, which dates back almost six years, has sent shock waves throughout British Society and led to ten arrests and jail terms for one News of the World reporter. In recent days it has led to the arrest of former News International Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks and the resignation of the Metropolitan Police’s Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner, who are alleged to have been too cozy with Murdoch’s News of the World and who failed to adequately investigate mounting claims of illegal behavior linked to News of the World reporting. The ‘drip drip drip’ of reports that link Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to incidents of malicious computer programs continues this week, with news of an investigation into News of the World’s the use of so-called “ethical hackers” to obtain information from computers owned by targeted individuals.
A targeted attack on a defense contractor in March of this year resulted in the theft of 24,000 files by an unknown attacker, according to Defense Department officials. The attack, which officials say was the work of a foreign government, would represent one of the more serious known attacks on the department and its contractors.
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