Hackers Will Replace Terrorists as Top Threat, Says FBI

Could Anonymous be the next al-Qaeda?
FBI Director Robert Mueller warned a group of cybersecurity experts on Thursday that online attacks will replace terrorism as the most serious threat facing the U.S., according to The Associated Press.
Mueller pressed private businesses and Internet security firms to secure American digital infrastructure from rogue hackers and attacks sponsored by foreign governments.
“We are losing data, we are losing money, we are losing ideas and we are losing innovation,” Mueller said at the RSA Digital Security Conference in San Francisco. “Together we must find a way to stop the bleeding.”
Counterterrorism is still the FBI’s top priority, but the agency is working to better equip itself against online attacks. Trained cyber defense divisions are now in every FBI field office. They’re watching for all kinds of digital crimes — such as mortgage fraud, terrorist recruitment drives and Internet attacks.

Mueller isn’t the only government official making such warnings. The FCC chairman recently highlighted the threat of cyberattacks. The U.S. Senate is also debating the proper approach to combating cybercrime.
Two competing bills both call for beefing up the security of government networks and increasing the amount of cybersecurity information-sharing done between government and private businesses.
The bills differ, however, on whether or not the Department of Homeland Security should be allowed to set cybersecurity standards which private companies must meet. A bill sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), gives that power to the DHS, while the other bill, backed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and five other Republican senators, does not.

10:07 by Robert dawne · 0

Official: Anonymous May Be Able to Disable Power Grids by Next Year

Anonymous, the loosely affiliated group of “hacktivists,” have had a wide array of targets: The Boston and Oakland Police Departments, the FBI, Scotland Yard and the Greek government, just to name a few. Targets are selected because of a perceived injustice: police brutality, Internet censorship or the rich oppressing the poor.
Once perceived as a minor nuisance, Anonymous is getting some serious attention: According to the Wall Street Journal, the Director of the National Security Agency, or NSA, has cautioned that Anonymous could have the capability to knock out power in the U.S. through cyberattacks within the next one to two years.
NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander issued his warning in private government meetings, and Anonymous hasn’t yet been added to any public “threat list.” However Alexander, and other government officials, have expressed growing concern about America’s vulnerability to cyberattack. President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget, for example, considers cyberattacks to be among the “emerging threats for which the United States must be prepared,” alongside nuclear war and terrorism.

Anonymous’ attacks have typically come in the form of a “Distributed Denial of Service,” or DDoS, where a target website’s server is overloaded with fake traffic and rendered useless, but a power grid knockout is a much more complex operation. There is some doubt over whether or not Anonymous could (or would) pull off such an attack. However, Internet security experts acknowledge that cyberwarfare is a growing problem and are ramping up defenses to prevent digital catastrophe.
“The industry is engaged and stepping up widely to respond to emerging cyber threats,” an electric-industry official told The Wall Street Journal. “There is a recognition that there are groups out there like Anonymous, and we are concerned, as are other sectors.”
Other countries, such as China and Russia, are believed by some to be developing cyberwarfare plans against the U.S. alongside regular warfare if conflict ever breaks out. Plus, America’s current enemies could be interested in attacking the digital infrastructure of the U.S. as well. If Anonymous or other similar groups were “hired” by these countries or organizations, the hackers could more quickly become a threat to the U.S.
An Anonymous-affiliated blog called the NSA director’s concerns “ridiculous.”
“Why should Anonymous shut off power grid?,” said the post. “Makes no sense! They just want you to feel afraid.”

12:25 by Robert dawne · 1

Anonymous Takes Down CIA Web Site

Anonymous has ended a rather busy week with a hack of the CIA website, which is currently offline.
"CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous," the @YourAnonNews feed tweeted around 3:30pm Eastern.
The CIA.gov website has been unresponsive for about an hour. Anonymous did not release details about the attack, but the group usually uses distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to take down its targets.
Last month, in the wake of the Megaupload shutdown, Anonymous also took down the websites for the Department of Justice, the Copyright Office, and the FBI.
Just last week, meanwhile, it also leaked a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which agents discussed ongoing hacker cases. Anonymous reportedly accessed the call because a foreign police official who received the conference call invite forwarded it to a personal account, where it was intercepted by Anonymous.
This week, the hacker collective focused its attention on overseas issues. It leaked emails from the office of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which included prep material for a recent Barbara Walters interview. It also released emails from the legal team who represented Frank Wuterich, the U.S. staff sergeant who led an assault on the Iraqi city of Haditha that left 24 unarmed civilians dead.
Also this week, a hacker loosely affiliated with Anonymous posted code from security firm Symantec on The Pirate Bay. The hacker had reportedly demanded a $50,000 ransom in exchange for keeping the code offline, but negotiations broke down.

15:35 by Robert dawne · 0

Anonymous Threatens Facebook Shutdown Jan. 28[VIDEO]

  Anonymous claims on Twitter that the video is fake, and they do not plan to take down Facebook.
Anonymous is planning to target Facebook in an attack Jan. 28 — at least that’s what a video uploaded to YouTube Monday is claiming in the name of the hacker network.
And you thought a day without Wikipedia was bad.
“An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the United States,” the video begins. “While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from Congress, this doesn’t guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld.”
Following the U.S. government shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload Friday, Anonymous attacked the U.S. Department of Justice’s website, among others.
Monday’s YouTube video calls on the American people to participate in the hack by downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), the tool that was successfully used to target the Department of Justice. LOIC crashes websites by sending thousands of information packets to their servers.
The video gives instructions for downloading and running the program, as well as a time — 12 a.m. on Jan. 28 — to launch the attack. No time zone, however, is distinguished.
“Would you like to become part of the greatest Internet protests and first official cyber war?,” the video asks. “Operation Global Blackout is ongoing and everyone can be a part of it.”


Facebook, of course, is one of the world’s largest websites, operating through thousands of servers located across the world. In the video, Anonymous acknowledges the difficulties of attacking such a large site.
“While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down,” says the Anonymous voice. “Anonymous needs the help of the people.”
YouTube commenters have raised an important question, Why would Anonymous want to crash Facebook, after the site came out against SOPA and PIPA?
The video essentially equates the privately-owned company with the U.S. government, with no explanation for the linkage. CNET postulates that Zuckerberg took too long to voice his opposition, landing his social network a spot on the potential targets list.
We’ve heard this threat before from the global network of hactivists, who promised to shut down the site Nov. 5, 2011, over user privacy concerns. Ultimately, no attack was executed and the loosely-connected hacker network called the threat the work of peripheral members.

09:13 by Robert dawne · 0

Anonymous shut down justice.gov & doj because Megaupload was taken down

Video rights to: CNN, This video is re-posted for informational purposes.
Government's case against file-sharing site overreaching, attorney says
By Michael Pearson, CNN
(CNN) -- U.S. authorities overreacted in shutting down the online file-sharing site Megaupload and seeking criminal charges against its executives, the company's American lawyer said Friday.

Anonymous‘s distributed denial of service attacks on the U.S. Department of Justice website and others Thursday were a new type of blitz, according to security firm Sophos.
Previously, DDoS attacks happened when someone installed a low orbit ion cannon program that lets computers blast a website with unwanted traffic, causing the target site to crash. In this week’s attack, though, Sophos said simply clicking a link would do the damage. So unsuspecting Internet users could have participated in the DDoS attack without any indication.
“We’ve seen many links posted on Twitter, and no doubt elsewhere on the Internet, pointing to a page on the pastehtml.com website,” Sophos said in a blog post. “If you visit the webpage, and do not have JavaScript disabled, you will instantly, without user interaction, begin to flood a website of Anonymous’s choice with unwanted traffic, helping to perpetuate a DDoS attack.”



As Sophos reminds us, DDoS attacks are illegal. “If you participate in such an attack you could find yourself receiving a lengthy jail sentences,” the blog post says.
Check out the video above to learn more about the attack and how it worked.

17:13 by Robert dawne · 0