RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule 41 are to blame; they vastly expand how and whom the FBI can legally hack. But just like the NSA’s hacking operations, FBI hacking isn’t new. In…
Category: Cyber-Skills
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
The Surveillance State: Twitter and Data Mining
Twitter has barred Dataminr, a service that analyzes tweets from across the globe to inform users about news events, from providing its information to US intelligence agencies, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network has not confirmed that it cut the agencies off from the service, which claims to have informed clients about the…
Cyber-Crime: Hackers Steal $81 Million in Sneak Attack on World Banking
Bet you did not hear about this during your morning coffee.Your money is not safe in banks anymore folks..between crooked Governments and wily Hackers you are better off using a coffee can.-SF NEW YORK — Tens of millions of dollars siphoned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A shadowy set of casinos…
The Surveillance State: Spy Chief Might Reveal Number of “Accidentally Surveilled”” Americans
“U.S. Persons Caught INCIDENTALLY in Internet Surveillance…” HA!! Where have we heard that before? -SF Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Monday his office is considering options to obtain and publicly disclose an estimate of the number of U.S. persons caught incidentally in Internet surveillance intended for foreign targets. “We are looking at…
The Surveillance State: The CIA is Investing in Firms that “Mine” Your Twitter and Instagram Data
SOFT ROBOTS THAT can grasp delicate objects, computer algorithms designed to spot an “insider threat,” and artificial intelligence that will sift through large data sets — these are just a few of the technologies being pursued by companies with investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm, according to a document obtained by The Intercept….
Cyber-News: How To Hack An Election
Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time. It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors. His wife was…
Modern Crime: Fed’s Try To Unlock Phones Because of Drugs NOT Terrorism
UNTIL THE FBI backed down from its battle with Apple over accessing the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, it seemed the agency had chosen a near-perfect case on which to make its stand against encryption. By refusing to write software to help law enforcement crack Farook’s phone, Apple was made to…
Cyber-News: FBI Is Pushing Back Against Judge’s Order to reveal TOR Browser Exploit
Last month, the FBI was ordered to reveal the full malware code used to hack visitors of a dark web child pornography site. The judge behind that decision, Robert J. Bryan,said it was a “fair question” to ask how exactly the FBI caught the defendant. But the agency is pushing back. On Monday, lawyers for…
Cyber-Crime: Why Hospitals Are The Perfect Targets For Ransomware
RANSOMWARE HAS BEEN an Internet scourge for more than a decade, but only recently has it made mainstream media headlines. That’s primarily due to a new trend in ransomware attacks: the targeting of hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The malware works by locking your computer to prevent you from accessing data until you pay a…