Anonops #6: Anonymous en de MO-revoluties

Message From Anonymous (NATO)

quote:

Hello This Is Anonymous... This Message Is For You North Atlantic Treaty Organization... In Recent News On Your Report...
Information and National Security" from General Rapporteur Lord Jopling of the UK discusses the potential good of social networks for fostering democracy, the WikiLeaks scandal, and how hacktivists need to be burned at the stake.
"Virtual communities operating online provide new opportunities for civil society, but they have also increased the potential for asymmetrical attacks," the report says. "Apart from causing harm, destruction or conducting espionage, most recent cyber attacks have also been used as a means to reach, a rather different goal, 'Hactivism' is a relatively recent form of social protest or expression of ideology by using hacking techniques."
The report then singles out Anonymous as an example of this new trend by relating the group's support of Julian Assange's WikiLeaks.But that "info-war" is only the beginning, according to NATO. "Observers note that Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files." The report then explains how Anonymous hacked government contractor HBGary's servers and the CEO's Twitter account. after the group revealed the government's plans to take down WikiLeaks.

You Claim To Represent The Following.

1.Peace And Security That's Our Mission.

2.We Want To Be Sure That We Can Walk Around Freely In A Safe And Secure Environment. Security In All Areas Of Everyday Life Is Key To Our Well-Being, But It Cannot Be Taken For Granted.

3.NATO Promotes Democratic Values And Encourages Consultation And Cooperation On Defence And Security Issues To Build Trust And, In The Long Run, Prevent Conflict.

The Manner Of Which You Try To Push The Pursuit Of Anonymous. Seems To Be More Of An Issue Of Opportunity To Censor Anonymous. Rather Than An Honest And General Concern. All Of Anonymous' Previous Attacks And Protest Have Not Ignited Any Action Against Us From NATO. Though With The Most Recent Attack Of The United States Chamber Of Commerce Website. You Wish To Become Involved. If Your Goal Was To Start War With Anonymous. Then Why Would You Allow Visa, Pay Pal , Master Card And Countless Other Actions To Go Without Prosecution. Then A Simple Website Is Made Unavailable You Sound Your Drums Of War. Be Warned We Do Not Wish This. Nor Do We Want This. But Make No Mistake... We Will Defend Ourselves. We Are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We Do Not Forgive. We Do Not Forget. Expect Us.

quote:

http://www.thinq.co.uk/20(...)persecute-anonymous/

NATO leaders have been warned that WikiLeaks-loving 'hacktivist' collective Anonymous could pose a threat to member states' security, following recent attacks on the US Chamber of Commerce and defence contractor HBGary - and promise to 'persecute' its members.

In a toughly-worded draft report to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, General Rapporteur Lord Jopling claims that the loose-knit, leaderless group is "becoming more and more sophisticated", and "could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files".

The group demonstrated its capabilities in February, says the report, when it hacked into US-based defence contractor HBGary. Documents stolen in the attack lifted the lid on the US military's plans to use social network surveillance software, code-named 'Metal Gear' by the online hive-mind, which could control an army of fake profiles, collecting data from disparate sites and piecing together an individual's identity by analysing linguistic traits and other details.

Describing the rise of the group from its beginnings on internet picture message board 4chan, via campaigns against the Church of Scientology and, more recently, in support of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, the report continues: "Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership."

The report goes on to lay out a stark warning to the group's nameless participants:

"It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted."

Reacting to the extraordinary threat in a post on micro-blogging site Twitter, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an MP in NATO member Iceland, said she was "seeking input". Jónsdóttir claimed the report of "falsifies facts" about WikiLeaks - for whom she was formerly an activist - and Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of leaking the US government's so-called 'Cablegate' diplomatic memos.

NATO's threat follows a recent toughening of governmental stances against hacking on both sides of the Atlantic, with major NATO players the US and the UK outlining their strategies for what appears a forthcoming age of cyber-warfare.

A policy document released last month and signed by President Obama issued an oblique threat of military retaliation against hackers, if legal and political measures prove fruitless.

"The United States will ensure that the risks associated with attacking or exploiting our networks vastly outweigh the potential benefits," the document said.

Yesterday, the UK's coalition government unveiled plans to recruit 'hundreds' of cyber-soldiers into a new defence task force aimed at combating online attacks.

"Our forces depend on computer networks, both in the UK and in operations around the world. But our adversaries present an advance and rapidly developing threat to these networks," the MoD said in the statement.

The UK government's statement didn't name who those adversaries were. In the light of Lord Jopling's report, perhaps it is now a little clearer just who they may have in mind.

Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/20(...)ymous/#ixzz1OICoT5hd

quote:

International Monetary Fund Braces For Possible Hack Attack From Anonymous

The International Monetary Fund is ready to be hacked.

According to the Wall Street Journal, an IMF spokesperson confirms that it is taking measures to safeguard against a possible hack attack from cybervigilante group Anonymous.

"We are aware of the threat, and have taken appropriate action," an IMF spokesman told the WSJ.

Anonymous posted a tweet on Wednesday urging followers to set their sights on the IMF website. "#OperationGreece: Target: http://www.imf.org," the tweet read. The time of the attack is still "TBA."

IMF, currently in negotiations to help stabilize Greece's suffering economy, recently approved a $40 billion dollar loan as a part of a $140 billion bailout package.

Anonymous released a missive on May 25 condemning the Greek Government and the IMF for accepting the loan without letting citizens vote on the agreement, and for subjecting the people of the country to "prolonged poverty and a dramatic decrease in their standards of living."

"The people of Greece have been left with no other option than to take to the streets in a peaceful revolution against the economic tyrants that are the IMF," Anonymous wrote.

quote:

BREAKING NEWS: Ten year old behind latest government website hack

Abuja - Though unconfirmed, widespread rumours in the digital underground claims that the job of hacking into the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) website was entrusted to a ten year old hacker.

“Anyone older or more experienced would have been overkill,” said an anonymous source who claims to be a member of the online group, NaijaCyberHacktivists.

A government official has rejected the insinuation that government websites are rubbish.

According to him, “Our websites are built with government IT equipment in mind. Have you tried viewing a flash website via a 26k modem on a Windows 95 computer?”

Asked what the government is doing to track down the computer hackers, he said: “We are currently clamping down on all suspicious internet cafes.”

In the meantime, intercepted government email correspondence has also revealed that the federal government is considering retaining the services of NaijaCyberHacktivists to break into the email account of late Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha, for clues as to where he hid all the money from the Gulf-War Oil windfall.

quote:

Anony_Ops Anonymous Operations
by BarrettBrownLOL
#OpIran: 10,365 e-mails from the Iranian government. http://bit.ly/kE5kSk Pass: opiranopiran We are #Anonymous. #Iran should've expected us.

quote:

[hackerspaces] Open letter to Anonymous

OPEN LETTER TO THE ANONYMOUS LEGIONS

in reply to

074 CDS 11 E - INFORMATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY
http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=2443

and to

LulzSec versus FBI (we challenge you, NATO!)
http://pastebin.com/MQG0a130

re all

We all know that cyberspace has come to an intense moment of
confrontation; it will become more and more difficult to focus on the
very reasons of the conflict opening, as the fog of war is
rising. This Open letter is an effort to focus on what is happening.

Hackers: behind all our actions there is a pulsating will to make
justice and to protect our freedoms. Fighting injustice has long moved
the hearts and souls of many people in history.

Meanwhile, the state of asymmetric cyber warfare in 2011 is
paradoxical: national defense departments against kids in their
bedrooms, an exaggeration depicting well the deep necessity of reform
faced by all forms of organized intelligence that existed before the
proliferation of digital networks; namely the most populous one, the
Internet, now 18 years old.

As usual, the reasons why members of an organization like NATO are
moved to fight are related to territorial control and predominance;
likewise, the reasons moving the legions of Anonymous are in their
deepest sense, and behind the lulz, a political stance supported by
natives and, as such, have a huge constituent potential.

The reasons that invigorate today the courage of the Legions of
Anonymous are also very similar to the political reasons that made the
Legion of Underground declare war to Iraq and China in 1999:

the reiterated threats to the freedom of the population;

the state's efforts to censor, monitor and manipulate the natural flow
of information;

the lies that monopolies, corporations and governments use to hide
failures in the eyes of their citizens and clients;

the resistance of nations to move out of obsolete forms of governance
engulfed by media-dictatorships;

the oppression against investigative journalists, hackers and such
liminal figures operating on the edges of semiospheres;

to name just a few.

Since this scenario is not new, please consider the war that might be
profiling ahead by reading further the statement below.

Solid.

LoU STRIKE OUT WITH INTERNATIONAL COALITION OF HACKERS:
A JOINT STATEMENT BY 2600,
THE CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB,
THE CULT OF THE DEAD
COW,
!HISPAHACK,
L0PHT HEAVY INDUSTRIES,
PHRACK AND PULHAS

Date: 7.1.1999

An international coalition of hackers strongly condemns the Legion of
the Underground's (LoU) recent "declaration of war" against the
governments of Iraq and the People's Republic of China. Citing human
rights violations and other repressive measures the LoU declared their
intention to disrupt and disable Internet infrastructures in Iraq and
China. In a decision that was more rash than wise, the LoU will do
little to alter existing conditions and much to endanger the rights of
hackers around the world.

We - the undersigned - strongly oppose any attempt to use the power of
hacking to threaten or destroy the information infrastructure of a
country, for any reason. Declaring "war" against a country is the most
irresponsible thing a hacker group could do. This has nothing to do
with hacktivism or hacker ethics and is nothing a hacker could be
proud of.

Frank Rieger of the CCC said, "Many hacker groups don't have a problem
with Web hacks that raise public awareness about human rights
violations. But we are very sensitive to people damaging networks and
critical systems in repressive regimes or anywhere else. The police
and intelligence communities regard hacking as seditious. It is quite
possible now that hackers - not only in totalitarian states - could be
jailed or executed as 'cyberterrorists' for the slightest infraction
of the law."

"It is shortsighted and potentially counterproductive," added Reid
Fleming of the cDc. "One cannot legitimately hope to improve a
nation's free access to information by working to disable its data
networks."

"Though we may agree with LoU that the atrocities in China and Iraq
have got to stop, we do not agree with the methods they are
advocating," said Space Rogue of the L0pht.

Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 said: "This kind of threat, even if made
idly, can only serve to further alienate hackers from mainstream
society and help to spread the misperceptions we're constantly
battling. And what happens when someone in another country decides
that the United States needs to be punished for its human rights
record? This is one door that will be very hard to close if we allow
it to be opened."

Governments worldwide are seeking to establish cyberspace as a new
battleground for their artificial conflicts. The LoU has inadvertently
legitimized this alarmist propoganda. With its dramatic announcement
the LoU played into the hands of policy makers who want complete
control over the Internet and are looking for reasons to seize it. If
hackers solicit recognition as paramilitary factions then hacking in
general will be seen as an act of war. Ergo, hackers will be viewed as
legitimate targets of warring states.

Strategic combat planning in the United States and among other nations
has reached the point where real-world cases are needed to justify
assigned budgets. The LoU is providing this real-world case now. We
believe that the LoU should carefully investigate the idea of
declaring "war" against China and Iraq. Was it planted with them by
someone with different interests in mind other than advancing human
rights considerations?

The signatories to this statement are asking hackers to reject all
actions that seek to damage the information infrastructure of any
country. DO NOT support any acts of "Cyberwar." Keep the networks of
communication alive. They are the nervous system for human progress.

quote:

One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer'

The FBI and US secret service have used the threat of prison to create an army of informers among online criminals

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."

The best-known example of the phenomenon is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who turned informant on Bradley Manning, who is suspected of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks. Manning had entered into a prolonged instant messaging conversation with Lamo, whom he trusted and asked for advice. Lamo repaid that trust by promptly handing over the 23-year-old intelligence specialist to the military authorities. Manning has now been in custody for more than a year.

For acting as he did, Lamo has earned himself the sobriquet of Judas and the "world's most hated hacker", though he has insisted that he acted out of concern for those he believed could be harmed or even killed by the WikiLeaks publication of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

"Obviously it's been much worse for him but it's certainly been no picnic for me," Lamo has said. "He followed his conscience, and I followed mine."

The latest challenge for the FBI in terms of domestic US breaches are the anarchistic co-operatives of "hacktivists" that have launched several high-profile cyber-attacks in recent months designed to make a statement. In the most recent case a group calling itself Lulz Security launched an audacious raid on the FBI's own linked organisation InfraGard. The raid, which was a blatant two fingers up at the agency, was said to have been a response to news that the Pentagon was poised to declare foreign cyber-attacks an act of war.

Lulz Security shares qualities with the hacktivist group Anonymous that has launched attacks against companies including Visa and MasterCard as a protest against their decision to block donations to WikiLeaks. While Lulz Security is so recent a phenomenon that the FBI has yet to get a handle on it, Anonymous is already under pressure from the agency. There were raids on 40 addresses in the US and five in the UK in January, and a grand jury has been hearing evidence against the group in California at the start of a possible federal prosecution.

Kevin Poulsen, senior editor at Wired magazine, believes the collective is classically vulnerable to infiltration and disruption. "We have already begun to see Anonymous members attack each other and out each other's IP addresses. That's the first step towards being susceptible to the FBI."

Barrett Brown, who has acted as a spokesman for the otherwise secretive Anonymous, says it is fully aware of the FBI's interest. "The FBI are always there. They are always watching, always in the chatrooms. You don't know who is an informant and who isn't, and to that extent you are vulnerable."

quote:

Arrests in Spain mean Sony's troubles are over? !!

Please stop counting how many times Sony have attached this year?

At last, the Spanish police say they've taken down three of the people allegedly behind the massive PlayStation Network security breach in April. It is Probably comforting for Sony, but surely this doesn't mean the company has any reason to rest easy when it comes to security threats.

All what Sony said "We don't comment on pending investigations,", Where the three are said to be associated with Anonymous. Internet chat rooms frequented by people associated with the group are already abuzz today with threats of retaliatory attacks. And a blog posted to AnonOps simply had a picture of the "V" from the movie "V for Vendetta," titled "V for Spain" with the caption "Expect us."

And on Twitter it added, "We are Legion, so expect us."

The "legion" thing is what makes it hard for Sony, the Spanish police, or anyone to rest easy. Anonymous and other hacking collectives like to emphasize how widespread their networks are and, in turn, why finding and arresting one or three people won't stop them from cybersecurity shenanigans.

And it's not just Anonymous that Sony and others have to worry about. The growth of "hacktivism," or groups of hackers with political agendas, has been rapid in the last six months, said Dave Jevans, Chairman of IronKey.

"In this environment right now, hacking has become far more organized. There are new hacking collectives being formed every month or two it seems," Jevans said. "They've politicized hacking so the environment is far more dangerous than it was six months ago."

In the last few months, we've seen RSA, Google, Citibank, Acer, PBS, FBI partner Infragard, and the Turkish government targeted in separate cyberattacks. And Sony has taken some of the worst blows, including the attack that left its PlayStation Network out of commission for almost a month. Though no one has publicly taken credit for that breach, other groups have repeatedly targeted Sony, seemingly at times just because they could. There have been about 20 attacks on Sony just in recent months.

Sony insecurity
Sony turning into hackers' whipping boy is likely to be related to the state of Sony's Web security, which is still widely regarded as subpar.

The hacking group Lulzsec taunted Sony for its poor security on Twitter for days before posting 150,000 records it stole from SonyPictures.com and Sony BMG in Belgium and the Netherlands last week. The group subsequently posted source code it took from the Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network.

On the site Pastebin, where Lulzsec dumped the information stolen from Sony's sites, the group said breaking into Sony's sites was not that complex.

"What's worse is that every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted," the group wrote last week. "Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plain text, which means it's just a matter of taking it. This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it."

Jevans, who besides heading up IronKey is the chairman of the Industry Anti-phishing Working Group, says Sony has a lot of work ahead of it before it can feel comfortable with security threats out there.

"The information we've learned on the data breach as far as how Sony was storing information indicated to me a fundamental lack of security expertise as a company," he said.

Sony will basically have to overhaul its entire security operation, which is no small task.
"Now is the time to aggressively hire really good people and review millions of lines of their code," said Jevans.

"It took years of Microsoft training and hiring security people," to get where they are today, he said. Similarly, Sony will have to "put new policies put in place, get training for all their developers. It'll probably take two years to get to the point where the right security stuff is in place."
Source: cnet.com.

quote:

The 1999 Battle of Seattle was an event where people from all over the world gathered with a common vision, regardless of their station in life. It was a pivotal moment for the global justice movement as a coalition of groups from labor unions to environmental activists came together to address the inherently exploitative WTO version of globalized economy and governance. They worked for different causes but came together to fight the corporate takeover of the economy and government. The media at that time framed the protest in a simple light, failing to capture the complex mosaic of collectives and motives that gathered on the streets. The generally peaceful protest against the WTO was marred by a handful of vandals and a truly violent police reaction. True to its disposition to magnify lower emotions, the corporate media emphasized a couple of violent images that were replayed over and over until they became the corporate media version of the event. While those cameras shot reality from one angle and delivered an image filtered by corporate interests, the new grassroots media activists captured the eyewitness reports of people and documented what was truly taking place.

Something similar has been happening with the recent revolutions in the Arab world. Images captured from the ground were initially censored, but those denied images found ways through social media such as Facebook and person-to-person sharing to combat the monopolized images filtered by traditional media. Anonymous played a pivotal role in this communication.

quote:

Endgame Systems

Endgame Systems has been of interest to this investigation due to the firm's close association with corrupt HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, their stated intent to avoid public attention towards its work with the federal government, its longtime collaboration with Palantir employee Matthew Steckman (whom Palantir fired in the wake of the Team Themis affair, quite improbably claiming that Steckman had acted on his own), and its creation of a report on Wikileaks and Anonymous which was provided to Team Themis for use in its campaign against both entities.

quote:

http://anonops.blogspot.com/

Saturday the infamous, international Internet hactivist collective known as Anonymous launched a successful DDoS attack against the Spanish National Police website. The attack is a direct response to the Friday arrests of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous.

Operation Policia (#OpPolicia) is the name for the successful DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that paralyzed the Official National Police website (Página Oficial del Cuerpo Nacional de Policíawww.policia.es) for hours on Saturday, making it inaccessible to visitors. The DDoS attack is a protest tactic often deployed by Anonymous.

Friday Spanish authorities announced they had arrested three men suspected of participating in cyber-attacks against the Sony PlayStation Network as well as other corporate and government websites - cyber-attacks associated with the mysterious and powerful international Internet hactivist collective known as Anonymous.

Immediately after the arrests, Anonymous issued a press release. The following is an excerpt of that release:

Greetings Spanish Government:

We know you have heard of us; We are Anonymous. It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest three of our fellow anons, ... which you claim to be the leaders of Anonymous and for their participation in DDoS attacks against various websites...

First and foremost, DDoSing is an act of peaceful protest on the Internet. The activity is no different than sitting peacefully in front of a shop denying entry. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest...

Regardless of how many times you are told, you refuse to understand. There are no leaders of Anonymous. Anonymous is not based on personal distinction...

Arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy...

You have not detained three participants of Anonymous. We have no members and we are not a group of any kind. You have, however, detained three civilians expressing themselves...

You are providing us with the fuel, but now you must expect the fire.

Awaiting your action,

Anonymous,

We are Legion.
We do not forgive your attacks on freedom.
We do not forget your ignorance.
Expect Revolution.
Expect us.

quote:

Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off in cyberspace

In February the Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason very succinctly laid out the radically different nature of recent popular uprisings across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe compared to earlier political movements, and the economic and sociological reasons behind it. This incisive blogpost rang true for many of those involved in those social movements, articulating, as it did, a new sentiment and new political priorities amongst those populations. The short article sketched out a more cohesive image which the media in general was missing, partly through structural failings, but largely because events were unfolding at speed and trying to drag the chaotic events into an understandable analysis was difficult.

Running alongside the (still unfolding) Arab Spring, informing and shaping and being shaped in turn by those events, was a developing online conflict with major similarities; young, optimistic graduates who saw societies in more generalised terms of “power”, highly networked, informal and decentralised decision making processes and a deep cynicism and mistrust of traditional power elites and political ideologies. In the last month especially we’ve seen a series of events and developments that are changing the game of cyber-war (and cyber-class-war).

quote:

http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/(...)nval-op-netwerk-imf/

Het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF) is doelwit geweest van een grote cyberaanval. De hackers zouden banden hebben met een buitenlandse regering en zijn uitgeweest op het installeren van software die “digitale toegang” zou verschaffen tot het IMF-netwerk.

Het was een geplande aanval met een programmacode die geschreven en gebruikt werd voor deze specifieke aanval. Dat zegt Tom Kellerman van de International Cyber Security Protection Alliance. Met de geïnstalleerde software zouden de hackers toegang kunnen krijgen tot een schat aan niet-openbare economische data over wisselkoersen, internationale handel en de hulpmiddelen die landen die in financiële nood zitten, aangereikt worden.

De aanval, waarbij een aantal e-mails en andere documenten werden buitgemaakt maar volgens eerste berichten geen toegang werd gekregen tot gevoelige informatie, wordt momenteel nog onderzocht. Volgens experts op het gebied is het bij een goed uitgevoerde cyberaanval erg lastig de bron te achterhalen.

De IMF-leiding is afgelopen woensdag van de aanval op de hoogte gesteld. De aanval zelf vond nog voor de arrestatie van voormalig topman Dominique Strauss-Kahn plaats.

quote:

IMF HACKED: "VERY MAJOR BREACH"
The IMF is the latest to be hacked, says the NYTimes.

People are calling it "the maid's revenge."

(Revenge for what, you ask? THIS.)

The NYTimes says, "The [IMF] told its staff and its board of directors about the attack on Wednesday," but they didn't go into detail about the hack.

However senior people familiar with the attack tell the NYTimes that it was a "very major breach."

The fund is fully functional, but according to the Times:

The concern about the attack was so significant that the World Bank, an international agency focused on economic development, whose headquarters is across the street from the I.M.F. in downtown Washington, cut the computer link that allows the two institutions to share information.

Read more about the attack at the Times >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Courtney Comstock on Twitter.

Read more: http://www.businessinside(...)rstock#ixzz1P3GVHQst

quote:

Spanish police website knocked offline after hacking suspects arrested

Police website hit after suspected leaders of hackers' group held, accused of involvement in attacks on governments' sites

Spain's main police website was knocked offline over the weekend in an apparent revenge attack following the arrest of three suspected leaders of the hacking group Anonymous.

Officers said the three detainees had been involved in attacks on the websites of Sony PlayStation, several banks, an electricity company and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand. A server allegedly used in the attacks was also seized during a raid on homes in Gijon, Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria.

Anonymous had also launched attacks on the Catalan regional police, a Spanish trade union and the country's electoral administration, police said.

They said a 31-year-old from Gijon, northern Spain, had been a major player in the group. "This person provided infrastructure for the group with a server in his own home, from which major international attacks launched by Anonymous were coordinated," they said.

But a video posted on YouTube by purported members of Anonymous denied that the three people were leaders of the group.

"The police have lied. They cannot detain our leadership because we have no leadership," they said. "The server they took did not belong to Anonymous but was a small Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server that we annexed."

Masks bearing the logo of Anonymous have become popular among the protesters who have gathered in recent weeks in Spanish squares to demand social and political reform.

The Anonymous video stated that the group backed the non-violent protest movement, which finished dismantling its tented city in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square in the early hours of this morning, ending several weeks of occupation.

Anonymous: "La Policía ha creado una cortina de humo"

quote:

Website Amerikaanse Senaat gehackt

De website van de Senaat, onderdeel van het Amerikaanse Congres, is het afgelopen weekeinde gehackt. Dat heeft de beveiligingsdienst van het Congres gisteren bevestigd.

Het computersysteem van de Senaat wordt op dit moment onderzocht. Volgens de dienst is de veiligheid van het netwerk van de Senaat, van de senatoren en hun medewerkers niet in het geding geweest. Informatie van individuele gebruikers zou niet naar buiten zijn gekomen, aldus een woordvoerder.

Lulz Security
De bekendmaking volgde op de claim van een groep hackers die door het leven gaat als Lulz Security. Het collectief zou eerder verantwoordelijk zijn geweest voor het kapen van de websites van Sony en de publieke-omroeporganisatie Public Broadcasting System. Als bewijs van de actie publiceerden ze een aantal documenten van de Senaat op internet. Die leken geen gevoelige informatie te bevatten.

Een computerbeveiligingsexpert zei, na het bekijken van de documenten, dat Lulz Security wel afdoende had aangetoond te zijn doorgedrongen tot het systeem van de Senaat en dat de hackers de server met documenten in elk geval hadden weten te vinden.

'We zijn niet erg dol op de regering van de VS', aldus de persverklaring van Lulz Security. 'Dit is een publicatie, gewoon voor de kick, van wat interne gegevens van Senate.gov. Is dit een oorlogsdaad, heren?' De vraag verwijst naar de nieuwe internetstrategie waarop de Amerikaanse overheid zint. Computeraanvallen vanuit andere landen zouden binnenkort opgevat kunnen worden als oorlogsdaad.

quote:

Celebrity protest: the guy from the movie V For Vendetta turns up in St Moritz for a spell. He tries to remain anonymous by wearing glasses, but I totally recognise him.

quote:

LulzSec hackers claim breach of CIA website

Group announces its latest attack via Twitter with message 'Tango down – cia.gov – for lulz'

The CIA has become the latest target of self-styled "pirate ninja" hackers LulzSec.

The Central Intelligence Agency website was unavailable for a few minutes on Wednesday evening as the group announced the attack via Twitter: "Tango down – cia.gov – for the lulz".

"We are looking into these reports," a CIA spokeswoman said.

The hackers, who describe themselves as "the world's leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense", have gained international notoriety this month with a series of security breaches.

Over the weekend LulzSec broke into a public website of the US Senate and released data stolen from the legislative body's computer servers.

Last week they hacked the website of an unnamed NHS organisation – one of England's primary care trusts. The Department of Health said no patient's medical records were accessed during the incident, which it described it as "a local issue" and "quite a low-level" lapse in IT security.

Earlier this month LulzSec broke into the website of Sony Pictures Entertainment and exposed information from 37,000 users, including names, passwords, birthdates and email addresses. It also hacked into a webserver belonging to Nintendo in the US.

The name of the group is derived from "LOL" (laugh out loud) and "security".

In Malaysia, at least 51 state-linked websites have been hit by cyber-attacks in recent days, the country's telecommunications regulator has confirmed.

The sites are believed to have been targeted by the Anonymous group of hackers, who had threatened to disrupt Malaysian sites in protest at a crackdown on entertainment piracy.

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Op donderdag 16 juni 2011 10:23 schreef PiRANiA het volgende:
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Hackers zetten 62.000 wachtwoorden online

AMSTERDAM – De hackersgroep genaamd LulzSec heeft 62.000 wachtwoorden van e-mailadressen van Australische overheidsinstellingen, scholen en universiteiten online gezet.


Dat heeft zij via Twitter laten weten.

Volgens LulzSec gaat het om een willekeurige greep uit een grote verzameling gegevens die zij de afgelopen tijd heeft buitgemaakt. “Vraag dus niet van welke websites de gegevens precies afkomstig zijn en hoe oud ze zijn, want dat weten we niet.”

Onder de slachtoffers zouden in ieder geval acht Australische universiteiten en twee scholen zijn. Volgens LulzSec hebben inmiddels 2000 mensen de gepubliceerde gegevens gedownload.

CIA
Donderdag beweerde LulzSec nog de website van de CIA te hebben gehacked. Hierdoor was deze enige tijd onbereikbaar. Eerder hackte de groep ook al websites van onder meer Sony en Nintendo.

Het doel van de acties is volgens LulzSec aan te tonen hoe slecht de beveiliging van de websites van veel grote bedrijven in elkaar zit.

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Cyberwar heats up with Pentagon's virtual firing range

National Cyber Range intended as replica of internet allowing US scientists to test defences against hackers

The US defence agency that invented the forerunner to the internet is working on a "virtual firing range" intended as a replica of the real internet so scientists can mimic international cyberwars to test their defences.

Called the National Cyber Range, the system will be ready by next year and will also help the Pentagon to train its own hackers and refine their skills to guard US information systems, both military and domestic.

The move marks another rise in the temperature of the online battlefield. The US and Israel are believed to have collaborated on a sophisticated piece of malware called Stuxnet which targeted computers controlling Iran's nuclear centrifuge scheme. Government-authorised hackers in China, meanwhile, are suspect to have been behind a number of attacks on organisations including the International Monetary Fund, French government and Google.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which developed Arpanet, the forerunner of the internet, in the 1960s, is working on a number of fronts to boost the US's defences against computer-generated attacks. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for more than $250m (£154m) to fund Darpa's cyber initiatives in the coming year, double his fiscal 2011 request.

The National Cyber Range is expected to be working by mid 2012, four years after the Pentagon approached contractors to build it at an estimated $130m.

One of these companies is Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's No 1 supplier by sales - and itself the target of what it called "a significant and tenacious" cyber attack in May.

Lockheed, the US government's top information technology provider, was awarded a $30.8m contract in January 2010 to continue to develop a prototype. Johns Hopkins University's applied physics laboratory won a similar deal at that time.

Darpa will this summer select one of them to operate a prototype test range during a year-long test.

It will also help train cyberwarriors such as those in the American military's Cyber Command, ordered up by the secretary of defence, Robert Gates, in June 2009 after he concluded the threat of digital warfare had outgrown the country's existing defences.

The "firing range" actually will be a collection of "testbeds" that can carry out independent drills or be woven into one or more larger pieces, depending on the challenge. The range is to test such things as new network protocols, as well as satellite and radio frequency communications. A key goal is to run classified and unclassified experiments in quick succession "in days rather than the weeks it currently takes," said Eric Mazzacone, a Darpa spokesman.

That would require a system capable of being completely reset after an experiment, in which it can be reconfigured and all data purged from related memory, hard drives and storage devices. That ability to reboot and start over is central to the plan, keeping the facility available "at all times for both experimentation and training," without fear of corruption or compromise, Mazzacone said.

Darpa is also working on other plans to advance the US's cyber defences. A program known as Crash – for Clean-slate design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts – seeks to design computer systems that evolve over time, making them harder for an attacker to target.

The Cyber Insider Threat program, or Cinder, would help monitor military networks for threats from within by improving detection of threatening behaviour from people authorised to use them. The problem has loomed large since Army Private First Class Bradley Manning allegedly passed confidential state department documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website.

Another is a Cyber Genome, aimed at automating the discovery, identification and characterisation of malicious code. That could help figure out who was behind a cyber strike.

The US defence department, meanwhile, is preparing an expanded pilot program to boost the sharing of cybersecurity information with the companies that provide it with arms, supplies and other services costing some $400bn a year. The new effort, like a predecessor that began in 2007, is voluntary and is aimed at protecting sensitive but unclassified information on or passing through computers owned by companies that make up what the Pentagon calls the "defense industrial base", or DIB.

About 35 companies took part in the initial program, including Lockheed Martin, which said last month its computer networks had become "a frequent target of adversaries around the world."

The expanded "DIB Opt-In" program will be open to many more companies. It is "vital to the nation's military readiness and the government's overall efforts to enhance cybersecurity," air force Lieutenant-Colonel April Cunningham, a defence department spokeswoman, said in a statement to Reuters.

Ultimately, the new program may be a step towards putting major Pentagon contractors behind military-grade network perimeter defences, like those that protect the Pentagon's own classified networks.

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Hit the deck: LulzSec and Anonymous start trading blows

Hacker group LulzSec has begun publicly attacking hacker group Anonymous, an action that could lead to a civil war of sorts between the two hacker groups that have similar origins.

LulzSec has begun publicly mocking 4chan.org, the image-sharing message board where Anonymous was reportedly born, on its main Twitter account, which it has used to generate publicity for its attacks. When VentureBeat tried to access 4chan.org, the site was either inaccessible or very slow. That could incite frustration from Anonymous, which has proven time and again that it is a force to be reckoned with.

“Just saw a thread on (4chan.org message board /b/) where they’re trying to hunt us: you /b/tards realize that we are everything you’ve ever tried to be?” Lulzsec said on its Twitter account.

The sparring began when LulzSec initiated a “DDoS Party,” which was a set of large-scale distributed denial of service attacks on several gaming servers and websites that brought a lot of games offline. EVE Online, League of Legends and Minecraft all faced outages or significant latency problems. That was enough to get the attention of “/v/,” an internal image sharing board on 4chan.org that focuses on video games.

“That kind of already happened when Lulzsec DDoSed Mincraft and EVE Online,” one user said on Reddit. “(Video game image board /v/) went out in droves and DDoSed to death anything related to Lulzsec. It was like watching a glorious internet civil war take place. ‘We ride our chocobos to war and enter the fray’ was the rallying cry on /v/ today.”

LulzSec has been quick to state that it is not part of Anonymous. But the group basically said it came from the same core group of hackers that would go on to become what the public currently acknowledges as Anonymous. LulzSec’s attacks also bear an increasing resemblance to Anonymous. For instance, Anonymous regularly takes up political causes, and a recent attack on Senate.gov is one of several politically-motivated attacks the LulzSec team has executed. Anonymous members also use the term “lulz” to describe the amusement they get out of hacking websites and other networks.

“We are the concentrated success of 2005 /b/, being ‘hunted’ by the 2011 furry horde. Challenge accepted, losers,” LulzSec said on its Twitter account.

Lulzsec previously broke into Sony’s Sony Pictures site and invited readers to “plunder those 3.5 million music coupons while they can.” It also said it was targeting Sony in retaliation for how it handled the downtime of its PlayStation Network after it was forced to bring down the service and beef up security after an attack by an as-yet unidentified hacker group. It seems like LulzSec’s modus operandi involves breaking into insecure networks for the sake of exposing security flaws or in retaliation for political causes.

Members of the LulzSec group were able to break into the PBS site several days ago and post a fake story that said rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. It was the third high-profile hacking attack on a private network in a little more than a month. The group was also able to break into the private network of Bethesda Softworks, the game developer behind several popular games like Brink and Fallout 3. LulzSec also opened up a phone line that lets individuals call in to request targets that LulzSec should consider attacking with either an intrusion or a DDoS attack.