Blog posts with "computer security"

At the recent conference Combating Cybercrime in Betting and Gaming 2010, a number of interesting topics were covered. Of particular interest to the author of this blog was the coverage of terrorist utilization of the internet for fundraising and money laundering. In an example of cyberterrorism, online gambling sites were used by three men, who were also accused of inciting terror, to launder millions of dollars that had been stolen through online check fraud and identity theft schemes. Appa...

After Obama's State of the Union Address, Brazilian hackers defaced around 50 U.S. government sites, placing expletive containing messages against Obama on each site. These sites primarily serve the House of Representatives, and were undergoing routine maintenance which briefly exposed the sites to attack. That was all the time these vandals needed to heckle these politicians.   One might wonder what the intentions of such an attack might be. Certainly there was a denunciation of Obama, but ...

The situation Google faces in China, with patriotic hackers (possibly even state sponsored) causing trouble for Google subscribers, some of whom are Chinese dissidents, presents a unique example of a synergistic interaction between cyber-criminals and government regulators. The United States has had similar groups emerge, such as vigilante anti-terror hackers, some of which still operate (for an interesting read, click here). Are we seeing some of the first acts of a new class of hackers? Cou...

After the prior Czar quit claiming that her decision was based upon the Administration's indecision, the Obama Administration has named Howard A. Schmidt, a former Bush cyber security advisor, as the cyber security chief last Tuesday, December 22, 2009. Schmidt, an accomplished cyber security expert, having worked for the Air Force, eBay, and Microsoft, has a lot of experience to offer. This nomination is part of President Obama's campaign promise to make cyber security a priority. Though the...

  Yesterday, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressional advisory panel, released a joint analysis with Northrop Grumman reporting that the Chinese government is building up their hacking and cyber warfare abilities. The report is based on case studies of prior cyber attacks, People's Liberation Army releases, scholarly contributions from experts, and journals from the Chinese National Defense University and the Academy of Military Sciences.     According t...

The FCC has posted its anticipated proposal for Net Neutrality rules, and seeks comment on the proposal. According to the FCC press release:   "Under the draft proposed rules, subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service:   would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet; would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or ...

  The word on the street is that the FCC is about to release notice of proposed rules to enforce net neutrality. Keep your eyes peeled!     http://www.fcc.gov/  

Thomas James Frederick Smith, 21, and David Anthony Edwards, 20, have been indicted for conspiring to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and commit computer fraud. The indictment alleges that the two infected susceptible computers with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot that would allow the two to direct the infected computer to repeatedly access an IP address of their choosing as part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The two infected numerous computers assembl...

Albert Gonzalez has pled guilty to stealing the credit cards he was charged with (see my prior post here). At sentencing, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

  Three were indicted on Monday in what authorities believe to be the largest identity theft case prosecuted in history. Five corporate entities were victims in the case: 7-Eleven Inc., Hannaford Brothers Co., and Heartland Payment Systems along with two unidentified victims.   The indictment, available below, names Albert Gonzalez, a Miami man (who also went by the names "soupnazi," "segvec," and "j4guar17"), and two unnamed Russian hackers (cleverly named "Hacker 1" and "Hacker 2"). The i...