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Syrian Electronic Army Says Hacked into Skype’s Social Media Accounts

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Photo Credit: Reuters/David Loh

Photo Credit: Reuters/David Loh

The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit on Wednesday for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype.

The group also posted the contact information of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp’s retiring chief executive, on its Twitter account along with the message, “You can thank Microsoft for monitoring your accounts/emails using this details. #SEA”

That message was an apparent reference to revelations last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, was part of the NSA’s program to monitor communications through some of the biggest U.S. Internet companies.

A message posted on Skype’s official Twitter feed on Wednesday, apparently by the hacking group, read: “Don’t use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. More details soon. #SEA”

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Fifth Grader Who is Just 12-Years-Old Admits to Charges of Major Computer Hacking Targeting Government Websites

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Photo Credit: Alamy A 12-year-old Canadian boy has pleaded guilty to three charges of hacking government websites under the affiliation of ‘hacktavist’ initiative Anonymous.

A court heard on Thursday how the fifth grader – from the Montreal suburb of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – wreaked computer havoc during the Quebec student uprising in 2012, with some sites out of service for two days.

He has pleaded guilty to three charges related to hacking websites that included those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, the Chilean government and some non-public sites.

The attacks took some of the sites offline for up to two days, at what police estimated as a cost of $60,000 in damages…

Even though most of the attacks took place during the Quebec student protests in 2012 – sparked by an outrage at proposed tuition hikes that eventually escalated into a riot – the boy’s lawyers maintained he was not politically motivated.

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Anonymous to March on DC on Guy Fawkes Day

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Photo Credit: APDemonstrators involved with Anonymous, a loose collective of online “hacktivists,” will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5 to march for a vast, nearly innumerable number of causes and issues.

Flyers began appearing around downtown D.C. over the weekend advertising the “Million Mask March,” which will take place on Guy Fawkes Day.

Anonymous members, when they appear in public, are known for donning masks of Guy Fawkes, who unsuccessfully tried to blow up the England’s House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605, and restore Catholicism to England.

The group supports leakers of government secrets, such as Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden. It was also closely allied with the now-moribund Occupy movement.

Anonymous hackers often target large governments and companies who oppose their interests with malicious cyber attacks.

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U.S. Military’s Battlefield Network Vulnerable to Hackers

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Photo Credit: Musadeq Sadeq

Photo Credit: Musadeq Sadeq

The Pentagon’s main battlefield intelligence network in Afghanistan is vulnerable to hackers — both the enemy or a leaker — and the U.S. command in Kabul will cut off from the military’s classified data files unless the Army fixes the defects in 60 days, according to an official memo obtained by The Washington Times.

The memo says the Army’s Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) flunked a readiness test and does not confirm the source of outside Internet addresses entering the classified database.

The Sept. 5 warning notice from the U.S. command in Kabul is another blow to the intelligence network, commonly called “D-Sigs.” It already had suffered a wave of bad news, such as soldiers panning its performance as unreliable and the Pentagon’s top tester judging it as not operationally effective.

The warning comes as the U.S. military is on heightened alert against unlawful entry into classified computer networks, not only by the enemy but also by “friendlies” such as Army Pvt. Bradley Manning and former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Both illegally downloaded reams of classified data that got widespread dissemination in the news media and, officials say, greatly damaged America’s security.

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Chinese Military Capable of Jamming U.S. Communications System

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

China’s military is using stolen U.S. military secrets obtained from a convicted spy to defeat a high-technology communications system used in joint warfighting, combined arms warfare, and missile defenses, according to U.S. officials.

The disclosure that China has the capability of jamming the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, or JTIDS, was revealed in a Chinese military technical article published in July.

JTIDS is part of a group of military communications systems called Link 16 that gives U.S. military forces jam-resistant communications, a key strategic advantage used in joint warfighting, a specialty of the American military.

JTIDS allows for a nearly unlimited number of military commanders and operators to share information, such as precision location or position data, critical in tracking, monitoring, and targeting. It is also resistant to electronic warfare attacks by rapidly jumping to different frequencies.

The Chinese article reveals that the People’s Liberation Army is studying this feature and working to defeat it.

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Multiple NASA Websites Hacked

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Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: NASA

Nearly a dozen NASA websites run from the heart of Silicon Valley were hacked on Tuesday and remain offline days later, following a politically motivated digital broadside against the space agency.

“My understanding is the entire NASA Ames Center had a hack attack that took the website down,” spokesman JD Harrington told FoxNews.com. However, another NASA spokesman later denied that the entire center was taken down, instead saying that the attack was of a much smaller scope.

The Ames Center in Mountain View, Calif., where scientists once worked on the Viking and Pioneer spacecraft, currently houses high-tech facilities for NASA and others; Google leases 42.2 acres at Ames for a planned 1.2 million square foot of office and R&D space, for example.

A group calling itself BMPoC took credit for the hack, saying it had taken down the sites to protest U.S. cyberintelligence activities.

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NYT, Twitter and HuffPo Attacked by Syrian Electronic Army

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By Danny Yadron, Shira Ovide and William Launder.

A pro-Syrian government group appeared to attack more than 10 websites, including Twitter, the New York TimesNYT -2.93% and HuffingtonPost.com, said security researchers citing digital evidence.

The attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, come as the U.S. is considering action against Syria. In the past, the group has taken action against media organizations and websites it believes are sympathetic to Syrian rebels.

The websites, including the Huffington Post’s U.K. website, appeared to be compromised Tuesday by the group, said a security researcher who had seen digital evidence. HuffingtonPost confirmed the attack and said there was a “minimal disruption of service.”

The hackers, meantime, repeatedly claimed they had taken over Twitter’s Internet address, though they appeared to be unsuccessful.

The social media site never appeared to lose service. (The hackers used their own Twitter account to claim they had hacked the social-media website.)

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Photo Credit: Adam Jeffery

Photo Credit: Adam Jeffery

New York Times website likely taken down by malicious attack

By Eamon Javers and Cadie Thompson.

The New York Times said its website has been taken down, in what was likely an external malicious attack Tuesday.

Eileen Murphy, VP of corporate communications, initially reported the outage via Twitter.

While the Times was down, Twitter also experienced some hiccups on its website. A Twitter account for the group of hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed that it had attacked the social media website and changed the ownership listing of Twitter’s domain name registration.The same account later posted to Twitter that it had also taken over the registrations for the Times website and for the Huffington Post UK domain.

Twitter told CNBC that it was investigating the issue.

Twitter later issued a status update saying that its Domain Name System (DNS) provider had “experienced an issue in which it appears DNS records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter’s domains used for image serving, twimg.com.” As a result, “Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted.”

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Were Hackers Behind NASDAQ Chaos? Experts Say Technical Difficulties that Shut Market Resemble ‘Denial of Service Attack’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Officials say the Nasdaq stock exchange outage on Thursday was likely due to a technical difficulty, though some experts say the incident resembles recent cyber attacks against U.S. banks and other financial institutions.

‘My first thought is that it is a denial-of-service attack, but I’m not sure,’ Gartner banking security analyst Avivah Litan told USA Today. ‘It’s a very attractive target. It’s very visible, and that’s what these Iranian state attacks are all about, making a political statement by disrupting a visible website.’

A wave of denial-of-service attacks started last September, knocking several banks offline including Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and PNC Bank.

The attacks were attributed to Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an Iranian hacking collective.

The second wave of denial-of-service attacks came in January, shutting down the websites of credit unions and mid-level banks. A third wave, in March, targeted credit card companies and financial brokerages.

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Man who Hacked Zuckerberg’s Facebook Account to Get Cash Reward … but not from Facebook

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A man who hacked into Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page to expose a software bug is getting donations from hackers around the world after the company declined to pay him under a program that normally rewards people who report flaws.

Khalil Shreateh discovered and reported the flaw but was initially dismissed by the company’s security team. He then posted a message on the billionaire’s wall to prove the bug’s existence.

Now, Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust, is trying to mobilize fellow hackers to raise a $10,000 reward for Shreateh after Facebook refused to compensate him.

Maiffret, a high school dropout and self-taught hacker, said Tuesday he has raised about $9,000 so far, including the $2,000 he initially contributed.

He and other hackers say Facebook unfairly denied Shreateh, a Palestinian, a payment under its “Bug Bounty” program. It doles out at least $500 to individuals who bring software bugs to the company’s attention.

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Computer Expert Hacks into Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Page to Expose the Site’s Vulnerability after his Security Warnings Were Dismissed (+video)

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Photo Credit: Facebook

Photo Credit: Facebook

A hacker from Palestine found a Facebook glitch that allowed anyone to post on a stranger’s wall, but when the company ignored his warnings he took them all the way to the top by posting about the issue on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall.

Khalil Shreateh first contacted the Facebook security team after proving the glitch was real by writing on the wall of a friend of the Facebook founder.

But instead of thanking him and fixing the issue, Facebook said it wasn’t a bug. And because of the methods Shreateh used to finally convince them of the threat, Facebook later denied him the reward usually given to programmers who report holes in the site’s security.

‘My name is Khalil Shreateh. I finished school with B.A degree in Information Systems . I would like to report a bug in your main site (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it…The bug allow Facebook users to share links to other facebook users , I tested it on Sarah.Goodin wall and I got success post.’

Shreateh, whose first language is Arabic, lives in Palestine and is in no way connected with Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard alum Goodin. He hoped his ability to post to her page, nonetheless, would help prove his case to Facebook security.

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