Topic: SECURITY - on January 15, 2017 at 6:35:00 PM CET
Did the Russians Really Hack the DNC?
Russia, we are told, breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), swiped emails and other documents, and released them to the public, to alter the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. How substantial is the evidence backing these assertions? Hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate unusual network activity, the security firm Crowdstrike discovered two separate intrusions on DNC servers. Crowdstrike named the two intruders Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, in an allusion to what it felt were Russian sources. According to Crowdstrike, “Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none,” and “both groups were constantly going back into the environment” to change code and methods and switch command and control channels.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on January 15, 2017 at 12:22:00 PM CET
Obama Opens NSA’s Vast Trove of Warrantless Data to Entire Intelligence Community, Just in Time for Trump
With only days until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that gives the NSA virtually unlimited authority to intercept communications abroad. Previously, NSA analysts would filter out information they deemed irrelevant and mask the names of innocent Americans before passing it along.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on January 15, 2017 at 11:42:00 AM CET
Thanks, Obama: NSA to stream raw intelligence into FBI, DEA and pals
A last-minute rule change signed off by the outgoing Obama administration has made it much easier for the NSA to share raw surveillance data with more than a dozen government agencies. The changes [PDF] are tacked onto executive order 12333, which was enacted by then-President Ronald Reagan to allow intelligence agencies to share information on non-US nationals. The new rules will allow the NSA to share unfiltered signals intelligence with other members of the intelligence community if it is deemed necessary.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on January 15, 2017 at 11:25:00 AM CET
Scientists Extract Fingerprints from Photos Taken From up to Three Meters Away
Researchers from Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII) announced yesterday they have successfully extracted usable fingerprints from photos of exposed fingers taken up to three meters away. The news is troublesome as biometrics authentification is becoming more and more prevalent, with fingerprints being a favorite method of securing applications and physical resources. Speaking to Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun, Isao Echizen, researcher for NII's Digital Content and Media Sciences Research Division said that modern phone cameras are powerful enough to capture sufficient fingerprint details if users expose their fingers to the camera.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on January 10, 2017 at 4:50:00 PM CET
Snowden: “Right and Wrong is a very different standard from Legal and Illegal”
There are times when you have tons of historical research lined up for a column about legal structures making bad assumptions based on facts that are no longer true, and then something just comes along that makes you wipe your desk and say “no. scrap all of this work. This. I need to post this, and I need to post this now.” Right now is such a time. The topic of cost structures of publishing in the 1800s will wait for another day (it’s already waited for over 200 years, after all).
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on January 7, 2017 at 2:14:00 PM CET
WikiLeaks Announces Dangerous Plan to Publicly Expose Verified Twitter Accounts – Listing Families, Location, and More
On Friday, popular hacker and political leak organization WikiLeaks made a startling announcement that they would soon begin gathering together all available information on all verified accounts on Twitter in a list that has many disturbed. Many have responded in outrage to what they consider to be “doxxing,” which is the illegal search and publishing of private information on a public forum, usually with malicious intent. In the tweet, the WikiLeaks Task Force informed the social media site of their possible next venture and then asked the public to assist in the selection of key criteria for their upcoming list.
We are thinking of making an online database with all “verified” twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships. — WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 18, 2016 at 5:17:00 PM CEST
‘Shadow Brokers’ Claim to be Selling NSA Malware, in What Could Be Historic Hack
A mysterious online group calling itself “The Shadow Brokers” is claiming to have penetrated the National Security Agency, stolen some of its malware, and is auctioning off the files to the highest bidder. The authenticity of the files cannot be confirmed but appear to be legitimate, according to security researchers who have studied their content. Their release comes on the heels of a series of disclosures of emails and documents belonging mostly to Democratic officials, but also to Republicans. Security researchers believe those breaches were perpetrated by agents thought to be acting on behalf of Moscow.
foreignpolicy.com Equation Group - Cyber Weapons Auction Shadow Brokers: NSA Exploits of the Week Hackers Say They Hacked NSA-Linked Group, Want 1 Million Bitcoins to Share More Hackers Claim to Auction Data They Stole From NSA-Linked Spies Shadow Brokers Group Auctions Off Supposed NSA Hacking Tool NSA HACKED!!! Multiple Hacking Tools And Exploits Leaked Online
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 16, 2016 at 4:33:00 PM CEST
WikiLeaks Published a Bunch of Malware Together with the Turkey AKP Emails
The WikiLeaks dump of emails stolen from the server of AKP, Turkey's ruling party, contains hundreds of links to downloadable malware, Bulgarian security researcher Vesselin Bontchev has discovered. The researcher, who works at the National Laboratory of Computer Virology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria, has created a script that parsed the WikiLeaks AKP email data dump for links and sent them for scanning via VirusTotal's API. Bontchev initially discovered around 80 links pointing to malware downloads, which he presented in a report he later amended and now lists 323 samples.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 15, 2016 at 5:53:00 PM CEST
New method for detecting hardware Trojans
Modern computer chips are made up of hundreds of millions – often billions – of transistors. Such complexity enables the smartphone in your back pocket to perform all manner of powerful computations, but it also provides lots of places for tiny malicious circuits, known as hardware Trojans, to hide. Magnifying this security risk is the increasingly distributed and globalized nature of the hardware supply chain, which makes it possible for a Trojan to be introduced at any point along the way.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 13, 2016 at 1:34:00 PM CEST
Trump allies, WikiLeaks and Russia are pushing a nonsensical conspiracy theory about the DNC hacks
Trump campaign surrogates are fueling a conspiracy theory that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer was connected to the hacking of the DNC, a theory being pushed by WikiLeaks and the Russian state-controlled press. There’s a big problem, however, with the theory: it doesn’t make any sense when compared to all the available evidence. Trump allies, Assange, and the Russian government are somewhat unlikely cohorts but they all have two things in common – hatred of Hillary Clinton and an interest in diverting suspicion away from the real culprits in the DNC hack, Russian intelligence services seeking to interfere in the U.S. election to Trump’s benefit.
<a href="www.washingtonpost.com "target="_blank">washingtonpost.com
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 13, 2016 at 1:32:00 PM CEST
NSA knackte verschlüsselte Befehle für Anschläge in Bayern
Der US-Geheimdienst hat laut Ermittlerkreisen maßgeblich bei den Ermittlungen zu den Anschlägen in Würzburg und Ansbach geholfen Washington – Der US-Geheimdienst NSA hat den deutschen Sicherheitsbehörden nach einem "Focus"-Bericht maßgeblich bei den Ermittlungen zu den Anschlägen in Würzburg und Ansbach geholfen. Die US-Experten hätten codierte Nachrichten entschlüsselt, mit denen ein unbekannter Drahtzieher der Terrormiliz IS die beiden Attentäter über eine saudi-arabische Telefonkarte gesteuert habe.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
Topic: SECURITY - on August 13, 2016 at 1:11:00 PM CEST
Sobotka will Zugriff auf verschlüsselte Chats
Innenminister: "Wenn Terroristen Messenger nutzen, müssen wir diese Kommunikation abhören können" Mit einem am Donnerstag vorgestellten Sicherheitskonzept will der deutsche Innenminister Thomas de Maizière auf terroristische Bedrohungen reagieren. So sollen etwa Social-Media-Aktivitäten von Flüchtlingen überprüft, die Vorratsdatenspeicherung ausgeweitet und verschlüsselte Kommunikation von Behörden geknackt werden.
... Link (0 comments) ... Comment
