The hacked are itching to hack back. So say a dozen security specialists and former law-enforcement officials, who described an intensifying and largely unspoken sense of unease inside many companies after the recent breach of Sony Pictures networks.
U.S. officials have shown little appetite to intervene as banks, retailers, casinos, power companies and manufacturers have been targeted by foreign-based hackers. Private-sector companies doing business in the USA have few clear options for striking back on their own. That has led a growing number of companies to push the limits of existing law to consider ways to break into hackers’ networks.
Read moreThe crime-fighting agency tells US businesses to stay alert because of some particularly nasty malware in the wild. The FBI has warned that hackers have used malware to launch destructive attacks against businesses in the United States, following a devastating attack on the networks of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In a five-page confidential "flash" warning sent to businesses, the FBI provided technical details about the malware, but did not mention the corporate victim by name. According to the advisory, the malware is particularly violent – overwriting data on hard drives to make them little more than bricks while also closing down networks.
Read moreThe State Department's unclassified email network has been temporarily shut down to update security protocols in the wake of a suspected hacking attack that occurred in early October. A senior State Department official confirmed that the Department recently detected activity of concern in portions of its unclassified email system.
As a result of that incident the State Department scheduled an outage this weekend of some Internet systems to implement security improvements to its main unclassified network. The official said the shutdown has impacted some of the State Department's unclassified email traffic as well as access to some public web sites.
Read moreWhen operation first came to light, it looked like a targeted strike against a few high value targets in the Dark Web drug trade. Now the full scope of that international law enforcement crackdown has been revealed, and it’s a scorched-earth purge of the Internet underground.
The European police agency Europol along with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security announced that the operation has now arrested people in as many countries and seized hundreds of Dark Web domains associated with well over a dozen black market websites. Just how law enforcement agents were able to locate the Dark Web sites despite their use of the Tor anonymity software remains a looming mystery.
Read moreA cyberattack on federal security clearance contractor USIS, was unnoticed for months before it was revealed by the company and government agencies earlier this year.
Officials and others familiar with an FBI investigation and related official inquiries told that the breach, similar to previous hacker intrusions from China and cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost government contracts. In addition to trying to identify the perpetrators and evaluate the scale of the stolen material, the government inquiries have prompted concerns about why computer detection alarms inside the company failed to quickly notice the hackers.
Read moreThe FBI has reportedly raided the home of an "extremely principled and brave" whistleblower working for a contracting firm of the USA, thought to have been inspired by security contractor Edward Snowden to continue his work.
The existence of a "second Snowden" was first suspected by authorities when information about the US government's master terrorist screening database surfaced online in August, months after Snowden had already fled the country. The government's frantic search for the new leaker intensified this month after scenes from Poitras' documentary on Snowden, Citizenfour, showed Greenwald appearing to confirm the existence of new whistleblower.
Read moreA new strain of Android ransomware is threatening the mobile industry, the new variant spreads itself via SMSs and holds the victim’s device phone hostage until a ransom is paid.
Implementing a classic extortion scheme locks the victim’s device display and then requests money from victims. The malware displays fake notifications from law enforcement agencies that accuse victims of viewing and storing child pornography. The security firm has already observed thousands of messages from hundreds of infected phones, mainly located in the USA. The attack scenario is very interesting, to spread itself, it first sends an SMS message to all contacts in the mobile’s address book with a text.
Read moreFBI Director has been on a media tour lately, making an anti-encryption pitch to the public. Apple's new encryption standards are an unnecessary hurdle to law enforcement — and the FBI needs an easy way to bypass them.
Now Comey is bringing the argument straight to Congress, asking them to update a law to allow backdoors in smartphones. CALEA required telephone providers to make it possible for law enforcement to wiretap phones. Newer forms of communication aren't explicitly mentioned in the law, and Apple's new encryption standards don't leave room for any government access. Even if government officials ask for data, Apple says, the company can't comply.
Read moreFBI Director warned in stark terms Thursday against the push by technology companies to encrypt smartphone data and operating systems, arguing that murder cases could be stalled, suspects could walk free and justice could be thwarted by a locked phone or an encrypted hard drive.
Privacy advocates and technology experts called the concerns exaggerated and little more than recycled arguments the government has raised against encryption since the early 1990s. Likening encrypted data to a safe that cannot be cracked or a closet door that won't open, the move by tech companies to protect user communications in the name of privacy is certain to impede a wide range of criminal investigations.
Read moreOne of the most popular application’s promise of anonymity while sharing secrets via its app rings less true today than it did last week about the app’s questionable tracking and use of user data. Among the revelations the messenger tracks the location of users who have opted out of geolocation services and has shared user data with the FBI.
A number of unsavory things about how the company collects, tracks and shares user was datadiscovered. One of the most popular apps has created an in-house mapping tool that enables its employees to filter and search GPS data to location posters. The technology, for example, enables the company to monitor all the geolocated messages sent from the Pentagon.
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