FBI Investigating US-China Commission Data Breach

The FBI is investigating claims made by an Indian computer hacking group that India’s intelligence services intercepted the communications of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The documents posted on the Internet about a month ago and allege to be from the Indian government’s Directorate General of Military Intelligence and include about 10 emails from the Congressionally mandated Commission from September and October 2011. The commission reports to Congress annually on national security, trade and economic issue with China.

The Commission released their annual report to Congress in November 2011 this year. One federal law enforcement official indicated that the Indian government may have been snooping for early details on the assessments of the Commission if the documents are genuine.

While the emails do appear to be genuine the document has not been authenticated. Emails and phone calls made to the Indian embassy in Washington were not returned on Wednesday.

The alleged Indian military intelligence memo was posted here: https://imgur.com/a/8XoGf#4 and flagged by cyber-security researchers over the weekend.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the investigation.

The documents include an e-mail received by Michael Danis, the Commission’s executive director concerned General Electric’s business and joint ventures in China.

“As discussed yesterday, defense and aviation officials have identified that China’s two critical technology gaps in the aerospace industry are avionics and engine technology. This would appear to indicate that GE is helping them on both counts,” the email reads.

“Look at the Taiwan hearing, yesterday both the Chair and Ranking were adamant about the F-16c/d sale. I think we finally need/should support the sale,” an October 4, 2011 email allegedly sent from Commission member Daniel Blumenthal to Denis notes about the possible sale of F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan.

“We are aware of these reports and have contacted the relevant authorities. We are unable to make further comments at this time.” Jonathan Weston a spokesman for the Commission wrote in an email.

The documents posted on the Internet were allegedly obtained by a group called the Lords of Dharamraja which has also made claims that they compromised the source code on Symantec’s popular Norton antivirus software.

The document that is allegedly from the Indian intelligence service claims that the emails were obtained by using backdoors from mobile device manufacturers Apple, Research in Motion and Nokia. In the United States the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act mandates that the FBI and police must have “backdoor” access to phone and internet communications with a lawful court order. The Bureau has been pushing for expanded surveillance powers with new technology such as Skype and Twitter in what they have termed their “Going Dark” program.

The inquiry into the data breach at the Commission follows the disclosure last month that China had infiltrated the US Chamber of Commerce computer system targeting the work by the Chamber’s Asia policy analysts.

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INDIAN hacker arrested in case of Stealing $50000.

A hacker from India has been arrested after stealing thousands from a private company via its hacked bank account. The incident which happened Bihar had apparently allowed the hacker to withdraw over $50,000 USD or RS 29 lakh.

Crime branch officials led by police inspector G S Gedam started investigating the case and tracked down the accused to Bihar. They immediately notified the Bihar police who arrested him when he went to the bank to withdraw the siphoned money. He was brought to the city on transfer warrant.

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Anonymous releases Israeli SCADA login details

A member of the Anonymous hacktivist collective has published a list of Internet-facing Israeli SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems and alleged login details.

The user, who uses the Twitter handle FuryOfAnon, posted the information on Pastebin with the message: "Who wanna have some fun with israeli scada systems?"

The Pastebin post contains a list of IP-based URLs that allegedly correspond to web administration interfaces of systems that are used to monitor automated equipment in industrial facilities.

Most of the URLs in the original post are no longer accessible. However, the hacker has since released a second list which contains newly found Israeli SCADA systems.

"Find their systems. Login using default logins ('100' being the password)" FuryOfAnon said. In December 2011, Google security engineer Billy Rios, disclosed that the default web login credentials for the Siemens SIMATIC SCADA software are Administrator:100.

The same default login credentials might have been used by a hacker named pr0f to access a South Houston water utility's SCADA back in November 2011. The hacker claimed at the time that the system was protected by a three character password.

FuryOfAnon's original Pastebin post also contains a list of email addresses and passwords belonging to people from the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Health and the Israel military. It's not clear if those also serve as login details for the listed SCADA systems.

FuryOfAnon appears to have the support of long time Anonymous member and former LulzSec leader Sabu, who endorsed his actions via Twitter. Anonymous is currently engaged in an effort to hack Israeli websites as part of a campaign called Operation Free Palestine.

Last week a Saudi hacker published the personal information and active credit card numbers of thousands of Israeli citizen, prompting Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to compare hacking to terrorism. "No agency or hacker will be immune from a response," Ayalon said.

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Security Trumps Secrecy In Cyber Fight, Prosecutor Says

Speaking at a cyber security conference in New York on Thursday, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said companies should trust in the discretion of prosecutors and the FBI and come forward with information about a security breach, rather than keep it an internal secret.

"When industry delays or minimizes, it is harder to assess vulnerabilities and harder to formulate solutions," Bharara said. "When industry delays unduly in disclosing to us, or minimizes, it is that much harder to get the bad guy."

Cyber security experts say that corporations rarely acknowledge breaches, and often keep them secret from law enforcement out of fear that news of a compromise will damage their reputation, hurt stock prices and possibly lead to further attacks.

Bharara addressed that fear, calling it unacceptable in the face of increasingly virulent cyber attacks.

Trying to maintain secrecy was "the equivalent of sticking one's head in the sand," Bharara said. "Get over it."

In January 2010, Google Inc acknowledged that it had been the victim of a cyber attack, reporting that it was one of at least a score of major corporations that had been targeted by hackers in China.

Security experts have since said that they notified dozens of other companies that they were also victimized by the same hackers, but only a handful have acknowledged that they were involved in what has become known as the Aurora attacks.

Once cases come to court, however, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have on some occasions gone to great lengths to help preserve company secrets.

When a now-jailed former programmer at Goldman Sachs was tried in Manhattan federal court on charges he stole computer code for the investment bank's high-frequency trading platform, prosecutors asked the judge to seal certain proceedings to preserve the secrecy of Goldman's system from competitors.

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IDF Building Elite Hacker Teams Amid Cyber Threat

Move comes amid concern over growing threat to Israel’s civilian, military networks from Iran, terrorist cyber attacks.


The IDF is assembling elite teams of computer hackers to lead the nation’s cyber-warfare efforts.

The move comes amid concern over the growing threat to Israel’s civilian and military networks from Iran, senior officers said.

Last month, the army recruited close to 300 young computer experts, many of them without college or even high-school degrees.

“These are some of the top experts in their field,” a senior officer said.

The new soldiers will serve in Military Intelligence as well as in the C4I Directorate, the two military branches responsible for cyber-warfare in the IDF.

C4I stands for command, control, communications, computers, and (military) intelligence.

The decision to recruit the soldiers is part of a new IDF multi-year plan aimed at boosting the military’s cyber-warfare capabilities.


Last month, The Jerusalem Post reported on an ambitious Iranian plan to invest $1 billion to develop technology and hire computer experts with the goal of boosting the Islamic Republic’s offensive and defensive cyber-warfare capabilities.

Israel is also concerned about terrorist cyber attacks, demonstrated by the release of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers by a Saudi hacker this past week.

“We are not where we would like to be when it comes to the cyber world and we are working to improve our capabilities,” the senior officer said.

The government recently established a cyber task force that will be responsible for improving Israeli defenses and coordinating the development of new software and capabilities between local defense and hi-tech companies.

The IDF recently organized the units that deal with cyber-warfare, establishing offensive capabilities and operations within Military Intelligence’s Unit 8200 and defensive operations within a new division within the C4I Directorate.

The new division is run by a colonel who took up his post over the summer. The officer is the former commander of Matzov, the unit that is responsible for protecting the IDF networks and a Hebrew acronym for “Center for Encryption and Information Security.”

Matzov writes the codes that encrypt IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Mossad networks, as well as mainframes in national corporations, such as the Israel Electrical Corp., the Mekorot national water company and the Bezeq telephone company.

One of the IDF’s primary concerns is the possibility that an enemy will topple military networks during a war. In recent years, the military has invested heavily in digitizing its ground forces, for example with the Tzayad digital army program that allows units to share information on the location of friendly and hostile units.

“For us, cyber defense means retaining the ability to continue operating and to be able to rely on the security and availability of our networks,” a senior officer from the C4I Directorate explained recently.

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Palestinians hacks into Israel Fire Services website.

Gaza Hackers Team takes over website's homepage, publishes message stating ' We hack into your websites, and will continue to do so until you suffer.

Cyber-warfare continues: A group of hackers claiming to be from the Gaza Strip succeeded on Thursday night in hacking into the Israeli Fire and Rescue Services' official website.



The site's homepage was changed to black with a sneering message from the hackers to the Israeli government, saying that it was in an embarrassing situation with no way out.

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China to further safeguard cyber security.

Cyber security is becoming an increasingly severe and complex issue in China, demanding better regulation of the Internet industry, Gao Xinmin, deputy director of the Internet Society of China, said at the China Internet Industry Annual Conference on Jan. 11.

“There are increasing attacks on China’s Internet infrastructure as well as the information systems in key industries such as finance, transportation, energy, customs, taxation, and high technology. Financial sector websites have suffered frequent phishing attacks, becoming easy targets for online fraud and privacy theft,” Gao said.

According to a report released earlier by the China Internet Network Information Center, 217 million Chinese netizens, or nearly 45 percent of the country’s total Internet population, experienced virus or Trojan horse attacks in the first half of 2011. Meanwhile, 121 million had the experience of having their accounts hacked or passwords stolen, and 8 percent of Chinese Internet users encountered online scams.

The user account information of several popular Chinese websites was leaked online recently, exposing serious neglect of careful password management.

The Internet Society of China said that it will promote the protection of user account information by enhancing password protection and login authentication and strengthening management of Internet companies.

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Ankit Fadia Hacked Again and Again !

Indian Hacker Ankit Fadia is becoming favorite target of Young Hackers in 1st week of New Year 2012. Last week Members of Teamgreyhat managed to breach the website of Mr.Fadia and Today another Hacker "Himanshu Sharma" with code name “нα¢кєя” hack same server on which Ankit's website Hosted.





In this attack these hackers have successfully hacked into the Ankit Fadia's offcial site and exposed lots of credentials including sensitive data, student details, Database credentials (DB Name, User Name & Password) and many more, Not just Ankit's Website, Along with this 2508 others sites hosted on same server that also got hacked and Their database also dumped by these young hackers.

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Indian Hackers Claim to Have U.S. Government Passwords

The Indian hacker group that released Symantec anti-virus source code earlier this month now says it has more proof that Indian intelligence agencies are spying on the U.S. government.

Infosec Island's Anthony M. Freed posted an article saying one of the Indian hackers, who calls himself "YamaTough," gave him 68 sets of usernames and passwords for U.S. government network accounts.

YamaTough told Freed the account data is just a sample of the information the hacker group, the "Lords of Dharmaraja," copied from Indian government servers.

"In the best interest of the federal, state and local municipalities and their constituents, Infosec Island will not publish the compromised account data," Freed wrote. "We have provided the information to the proper authorities and are fully cooperating with law enforcement."

International intrigue

Last week, the Lords of Dharmaraja publicly posted purported internal Indian military intelligence memos that said Apple, Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) had given India "backdoors" — secret keys to unlock encrypted communications sent and received by users of their handsets.

As a possible demonstration of the viability of those backdoors, the memos also included transcripts of emails between members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressional commission that analyzes and reports on bilateral American-Chinese relations. The memos said information revealed in the emails had resulted in Indian naval-intelligence operatives being sent to China.

Reuters said it got hold of a larger set of USCC emails, which it showed to two Indian security experts with ties to India's government and two unnamed Americans "close to" the USCC. All four dismissed the memos as hoaxes possibly concocted by China or India's arch-rival Pakistan.

Other Washington insiders told Reuters the memos seemed genuine.

America, heck yeah

Asked about the Lord of Dharmaraja's motives, YamaTough responded with a strikingly pro-American agenda.

"My team is pro US, we fight for rights in our country we are not intentionally harm US companies," Freed quoted him as writing. "Our mission - exposure of the corruption."

"We do not approve sharing personal data and source codes with foreign governments," YamaTough added. "We want free and nice India and not police state."

YamaTough also said the Lords of Dharmaraja may soon release more data from companies other than Symantec found on Indian government servers.

India and China have had tense relations for more than half a century, fought a month-long border war in 1962 and are currently jockeying for position as Asia's pre-eminent regional power.

Since the end of the Cold War, during which India had close ties to the Soviet Union, U.S.-Indian relations have warmed almost as rapidly as the U.S.-Chinese relationship has chilled.

But attempts to formalize a U.S.-India alliance have been opposed by nationalists and leftists in India's governing coalition, as well as by the U.S.'s longtime ally Pakistan.

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Hacker Attacks on U.S. Reveal China's Weakness

It must have been a merry Christmas and a happy New Year for professional cyberwarriors, as extensive new Pentagon plans focusing on Internet security were revealed in mid-December, just after a week's worth of stories appeared in the business press about massive information theft by Chinese hackers.

On the surface, the combination of media reports and defense posturing seem to indicate a new Chinese digital offensive against American interests. Dramatic as that may sound, these events are merely part of the status quo in the brittle relationship between the Chinese economy and innovative American companies, and not the first shots of a digital Pearl Harbor.

Every day, the intelligence agencies of less technologically innovative countries steal trade secrets from tech companies based in more advanced nations. France, Israel, India and Japan have often been accused of industrial espionage in the past two decades.

China stands in a league of its own, though. The tight relationship between its military and its state-owned companies, combined with a system that stifles innovation, creates the motive and the capability for theft on a much greater scale than that perpetrated by other countries.

Rather than an attack against the U.S. homeland, the most recent Chinese hacker attacks were just another attempt to use digital theft as a replacement for business creativity.

"There are other countries that have 'catch-up' economies that are doing the same thing [as China]," said Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit founded by the U.S. government that now independently consults with the government and businesses. "You don't have a lot of countries in catch-up economies that are implementing wonderful new technologies that no one has seen before. But China has been engaged in espionage over a wide range of industries and companies."

"The sheer quantity is orders of magnitude above any of the other countries," Borg added. "They're really going after the state-of-the-art technology, because they don't have the R and D [research and development] themselves."

The articles that appeared in December in the Wall Street Journal , Bloomberg News, the Washington Post and other influential publications portrayed discrete, focused attacks on selected American targets. But Borg said that impression is misleading.

Instead, he told SecurityNewsDaily, the Chinese military-industrial complex constantly probes many American corporations as a crutch to prop up the country's indigenous technology companies.

More of a constant white noise of hacking than single military operations, these kinds of attacks have occurred every day for years on end. In fact, Borg said, Chinese hackers steal so broadly and indiscriminately they often end up harvesting information too advanced for primitive Chinese companies to even use.

"There's a limit to what China can do with the information they've stolen," Borg said. However, he added, "as time goes on, they will have a better ability to exploit the information they have stolen. There's a growth in consequences."

In the long run, Borg warns that those economic consequences pose a much greater threat to the security of America and Europe than the military conflict hyped by news reports and the Department of Defense.

These actions may fall far short of "cyberwar," but the theft of billions of dollars in technical information still qualifies as a problem.

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Cyber Crime Cases Rose 29% Last Year

The Mumbai Police have had a tough time curbing cyberspace offences, with the number of cases registered in 2011 seeing a 28.9 per cent hike from the previous year. According to police records, while 76 cyber crime cases were registered in 2010, the figure shot up to 98 last year.

Officers of the Cyber Crime Cell revealed that most cases deal with obscene e-mails, text messages, MMSes and derogatory comments about women on social networking websites. Statistics also show that most crimes reported to the police originated and took place on social networking sites.

Of the 98 cases reported in the city in 2011, 19 pertain to obscene e-mails, text messages and MMSes. There were 18 cases pertaining to social networking crimes in 2011, with the trail in most cases leading to persons known to victims, said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy.

“Statistically speaking, most offenders in social networking-related crime were known to the victims. Almost all cases we have come across have shown that origins of obscene e-mails and messages are from someone the victim knows,” he said.

Roy said the list of offenders included jilted lovers and those who envied the victim for various reasons. “In some cases we cracked, we arrested jilted lovers, colleagues, and those whom the victims interacted with often. While the former lovers used the Internet to get back at the victim, jealous colleagues also took to social networking sites to spread rumours about them,” he said.

The offenders were booked under the Information Technology Act and produced in court, said Roy. He, however, said it was an uphill task to prevent such crimes. “We can nab people who indulge in such crimes. However, it is difficult to prevent them from taking place. We are taking a strict stand against such crimes and our action will act as a deterrent.”

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The Saudi hacker to Mossad "Don’t waste your time by searching for me"!

In a response to the Israeli hackers, the Saudi hacker xOmar exposed 200 Israeli credit cards and he described the Israeli hackers by idiots and he said that they published invalid credit cards.

And he asked Mossad through his website not to search for him, because they won't catch him. xOmar threatened the Israeli people by exposing 200 credit cards daily, and all of these credit cards are valid.

speaking about the latest efforts to locate his place, he said ''I've heard from some idiots saying that I am from Mexico, and another said that I am in Riyadh, and last one said that I am from Dubai" and he said to mossad in a message ''don't waste your time''

The Secretary-General of the Committee on Information and awareness of banking in Saudi banks ''Tal'at hafiz'' have told the "Arabiya.Net" yesterday that Saudi banks have now reviewed all of the data on the accounts declared by the Israeli hacker, and some of them published in the websites

He said that the Saudi banks have reviewed the accounts and found that these accounts do not belong to Saudi banks, but we must be careful when dealing with shops and commercial sites.

Complete message by 0xOmar:

Hi
Russian intelligence closed my mail.ru email, so I have created this one. 0xOmar@gaza.net
I saw some stupids said, they've found me, one in Mexico, one in Riyadh, one in Dubai, look, let me explain my method, as I know no one can find me, I easily explain it:
I create an exploit page using a browser based exploit, I email URL and put hidden iframe to my exploit page, I infect a lot of PCs around world with my bot, my bot is coded
in C++ all by myself, it have a functionality in addition to all features of other bots, it has an encrypted SOCKS5 protocol, I can see live bots in my administrator server, I
use them to connect to other and from there to another and ... I do it sometimes 2 times, sometimes 4 times, it depends on my hurry. ISPs doesn't store details of connections
on those ports, so don't waste your time, it's for Mossad.
I use a really complicated hand-made method for hiding myself, so if you reach to Dubai, Mexico, Riyadh, Minsk, Helsinki, New York, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Tokyo, Moscow, etc.
excellent! You found one my my poor victims.
Ok? Enough said? So stop telling my bots location to media and infecting media with false details.
My other message is to Gazza hackers who have hacked stupid Dany Ayalon's website and put a foot on his face and sent me a message.
From here, I invite all hackers of world from Islamic world to come together, it's not matter what you think, I invite all Muslim hackers to unite against Israel, the big
enemy of all Muslims.
I invite all Arab-Muslim Hackers to unite against Israel and join this war. I also invite great Turkish hackers which hack a lot of websites daily and notify them to zone-h.
Do you remember Gaza flotilla raid? Do not stay silent as you didn't stay before, let's do something in return. Let's fight for ourselves, for what we believe.
I invite all Muslim hackers to fight in two methods:
a) Hack Israeli military, intelligence and their contractors to extract sensitive and hidden information and publish them in internet. It could be even Israeli people data
like what I did to credit cards
b) Hack Israeli important sites and publish your message on them
I shout to Israeli authorities and people, you are not safe from me and Muslim hackers. We'll fight all of our live against Israel, we'll harm you in any way we can.
From now, I shout to all Israeli people, daily I'll publish 200 credit cards of Israeli people. All people who's interested in fresh working credit cards, join our movement,
subscribe to our page to receive daily 200 credit cards. Using this method, Israeli banks shred all sites in a day and people will be able to purchase all they want.
So my last message to world, let's destroy Israel and have a free Palestine without enemies.
Poor stupid asshole Israeli hackers, they killed theirself, they did their best and published 200 not working expired wrong name without CVV cards, that's nothing
I'll publish daily 200 with all details 100% working cards.
Don't force me to publish more per day.

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Stratfor Back Online After Hack with message for Anonymous Hackers

Security analysis firm Stratfor has relaunched its website after Anonymous hackers brought down its servers and stole thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to its clients.

Hacking collective Anonymous admitted the cyber attack on Christmas Eve and went on to claim that it used the stolen details to make $500,000 in charitable donations to The American Red Cross and Save the Children, as well as other charities.Anonymous eventually released the stolen data to the world, including 75,000 credit card numbers and 860,000 usernames and passwords. Approximately 50,000 of those belong to .mil or .gov email accounts used by the US government.

"This was our failure," Chief Executive George Friedman said in a message to Stratfor's subscribers. "I take responsibility. I deeply regret that this occurred and created hardship for our customers and friends." Friedman also revealed that the company was targeted more than once by hackers and had known for some time about a data breach.He said he was first alerted to the website hack in early December weeks before the loose-knit hacking movement Anonymous took to Twitter to boast of bringing down the website and stealing a stash of credit card numbers, emails and other data from the company.

In a communication to the company's subscribers, Stratfor CEO George Friedman described the implications of the attack for those outside the company. "While the Internet has become indispensable, it also enables anonymity and undermines accountability," Friedman said. "We are now in a world in which anonymous judges, jurors and executioners can silence whom they want. This is a new censorship that doesn't come openly from governments but from people hiding behind masks."





By George Friedman
In early December I received a call from Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice president of intelligence. He told me he had received information indicating our website had been hacked and our customer credit card and other information had been stolen. The following morning I met with an FBI special agent, who made clear that there was an ongoing investigation and asked for our cooperation. We, of course, agreed to cooperate. The matter remains under active investigation.

From the beginning I faced a dilemma. I felt bound to protect our customers, who quickly had to be informed about the compromise of their privacy. I also felt bound to protect the investigation. That immediate problem was solved when the FBI told us it had informed the various credit card companies and had provided those companies with a list of compromised cards while omitting that it had come from us. Our customers were therefore protected, as the credit card companies knew the credit cards and other information had been stolen and could act to protect the customers. We were not compelled to undermine the investigation.

The FBI made it clear that it expected the theft to be exposed by the hackers. We were under no illusion that this was going to be kept secret. We knew our reputation would be damaged by the revelation, all the more so because we had not encrypted the credit card files. This was a failure on our part. As the founder and CEO of Stratfor, I take responsibility for this failure, which has created hardship for customers and friends, and I deeply regret that it took place. The failure originated in the rapid growth of the company. As it grew, the management team and administrative processes didn’t grow with it. Again, I regret that this occurred and want to assure everyone that Stratfor is taking aggressive steps to deal with the problem and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

From the beginning, it was not clear who the attackers were. The term “Anonymous” is the same as the term “unknown.” The popular vision of Anonymous is that its members are young and committed to an ideology. I have no idea if this is true. As in most affairs like this, those who know don’t talk; those who talk don’t know. I have my theories, which are just that and aren’t worth sharing.

I was prepared for the revelation of the theft and the inevitable criticism and negative publicity. We worked to improve our security infrastructure within the confines of time and the desire to protect the investigation by not letting the attackers know that we knew of their intrusion. With the credit card information stolen, I assumed that the worst was done. I was wrong.

Early in the afternoon of Dec. 24, I was informed that our website had been hacked again. The hackers published a triumphant note on our homepage saying that credit card information had been stolen, that a large amount of email had been taken, and that four of our servers had been effectively destroyed along with data and backups. We had expected they would announce the credit card theft. We were dismayed that emails had been taken. But our shock was at the destruction of our servers. This attack was clearly designed to silence us by destroying our records and the website, unlike most attacks by such groups.

Attacks against credit cards are common, our own failures notwithstanding. So are the thefts of emails. But the deliberate attack on our digital existence was a different order of magnitude. As the global media marveled at our failure to encrypt credit card information, my attention was focused on trying to understand why anyone would want to try to silence us.

In the days that followed, a narrative evolved among people claiming to speak for Anonymous and related groups. It started with looking at our subscriber list and extracting corporate subscribers who were now designated as clients. The difference between clients and subscribers is important here. A client is someone you do customized work for. A subscriber is simply someone who purchases a publication, unchanged from what others read. A subscriber of The New York Times is not its client. Nevertheless, some of the media started referring to these subscribers as clients, reflecting the narrative of those claiming to speak with knowledge of our business.

From there, the storyline grew to argue that these “clients,” corporate and government, provided Stratfor with classified intelligence that we reviewed. We were no longer an organization that analyzed the world for the interested public, but rather a group of incompetents and, conversely, the hub of a global conspiracy. The media focused on the first while the hacking community focused on the second.

This was why they stole our email, according to some of them. As one person said, the credit cards were extra, something they took when they realized they could. It was our email they were after. Obviously, we were not happy to see our emails taken. God knows what a hundred employees writing endless emails might say that is embarrassing, stupid or subject to misinterpretation. What will not appear is classified intelligence from corporations or governments. They may find, depending on what they took, that we have sources around the world, as you might expect. It is interesting that the hacker community is split, with someone claiming to speak for the official Anonymous condemning the hack as an attack on the media, which they don’t sanction, and another faction defending it as an attack on the rich and powerful.

The interpretation of the hackers as to who we are — if indeed that was their interpretation — was so wildly off base as to stretch credulity. Of course, we know who we are. As they search our emails for signs of a vast conspiracy, they will be disappointed. Of course we have relationships with people in the U.S. and other governments and obviously we know people in corporations, and that will be discovered in the emails. But that’s our job. We are what we said we were: an organization that generates its revenues through geopolitical analysis. At the core of our business, we objectively acquire, organize, analyze and distribute information.

I don’t know if the hackers who did this feel remorse as they discover that we aren’t who they said we were. First, I don’t know who they actually are, and second, I don’t know what their motives were. I know only what people claiming to be them say. So I don’t know if there is remorse or if their real purpose was to humiliate and silence us, in which case I don’t know why they wanted that.

And this points to the real problem, the one that goes beyond Stratfor’s own problem. The Internet has become an indispensible part of our lives. We shop, communicate, publish and read on it. It has become the village commons of the planet. But in the village commons of old, neighbors who knew and recognized each other met and lived together. Others knew what they did in the commons, and they were accountable.

In the global commons, anonymity is an option. This is one of the great virtues of the Internet. It is also a terrible weakness. It is possible to commit crimes on the Internet anonymously. The technology that enables the Internet also undermines accountability. Given the profusion of technical knowledge, the integrity of the commons is in the hands of people whose identities we don’t know, whose motives we don’t understand, and whose ability to cause harm is substantial. The consequence of this will not be a glorious anarchy in the spirit of Guy Fawkes, but rather a massive repression. I think this is a pity. That’s why I wonder who the hackers actually are and what cause they serve. I am curious as to whether they realize the whirlwind they are sowing, and whether they, in fact, are trying to generate the repression they say they oppose.

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Online Conference to Examine Latest Trends in Smart Grid Cyber Security

January 11, 2012 (CHICAGO) -- In the year since Stuxnet first struck, cyber security has become a critical concern for utilities. Securing the emerging smart grid must be an end-to-end, architectural undertaking built into all facets of IT, OT, ICS, communications and infrastructure from the outset. Introducing intelligence and two-way communication into the utility network means opening the door to serious vulnerability, and utilities must proceed with extreme caution.

To help utilities around the world meet these challenges, The Smart Grid Observer will conduct a full-day, 100% online "virtual summit" on Thursday, February 2, 2012 focused on the latest technologies, deployment strategies, regulatory requirements, and lessons learned to date in securing the emerging smart grid cyber network.

"Our objective is to bring together key industry thought leaders to help utilities think about cyber security within the context of an end-to-end smart grid ecosystem," says Daniel Coran, editor of The Smart Grid Observer. "The online format makes it convenient and cost-effective to attend from anywhere in the world."

The event will consist of a series of 30-minute presentations and interactive Q&A sessions, beginning at 9:00 am EST and continuing until 5:00 pm. Attendees can tune in at their convenience throughout the day, and catch whatever they missed later in recorded format.

Topics to be covered include:

- Security protection mechanisms for the grid
- Security issues associated with the cloud-enabled grid
- Network security for IP-based, open standards smart grid communications
- Plugging the biggest hole in smart grid security: insider threat to critical assets
- Software verification and security analysis
- The future of securing industrial endpoints
- Evaluating threat levels, vulnerabilities, and attack sources
- Key regulatory and NERC CIP developments
- Market drivers, trends, and state of the global smart grid cyber security industry

Speakers include:

- Neil Greenfield, Senior Security Architect, AEP
- Bob Lockhart, Senior Analyst, Pike Research
- Richard Linger, Senior Cyber Security Research Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Dave Buster, Customer Solutions Architect, Elster
- Joel Langill, President, SCADAHacker.com
- Selim Nart, Vice President, Professional Services, CoreTrace
- Walter Sikora, Vice President, Security Solutions, Industrial Defender
- Sandy Bacik, Principal Consultant, EnerNex
- Jasvir Gill, Founder and CEO, AlertEnterprise
- Roman Arutyunov, Vice President, Tropos Networks
- Ernie Hayden, Managing Principal, Verizon Business
- Ken Modeste, Principal Engineer, Underwriters Laboratories
- Andrew Ginter, Director of Industrial Security, Waterfall Security Solutions

"This is going to be a unique opportunity to deep-dive into some of the key challenges facing smart grid cyber security," Coran adds. "The Q&A discussions with these experts should prove especially helpful."

The registration fee of $195 USD covers the full day of educational sessions and includes .PDF downloads, access to Q&A discussion sessions, and audio + PowerPoint recordings of all presentations for up to three months after the event.

For further information and to register for the Virtual Summit, visit www.smartgridobserver.com/index-csvs.htm

About The Smart Grid Observer

The Smart Grid Observer is a free, weekly e-newsletter that covers the latest news, research findings, and technology developments surrounding the global smart grid industry. Coverage extends to utilities, equipment vendors, government agencies, standards bodies, industry associations, universities, and research groups. Visit www.smartgridobserver.com for a free subscription.

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Iran's Strict Cyber Regulations Lay Groundwork for 'halal' Network

New cyber regulations announced by Iran last week, including requiring Internet cafes to install surveillance cameras, could be just a precursor to the Islamic Republic’s “halal” network, many observers are saying.

That network, an “Islamically permissible” intranet that the nation’s telecommunications ministry publicized in early 2011, would disconnect Iran from the rest of the world and run a parallel internal service that would automatically censor material and block popular global sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.
“I don’t think it’s a question of if, but a question of when,” said Austin Heap, executive director of the Censorship Research Center, who also works on developing technologies for increasing Internet freedom.

At the time of the announcement, Iranian authorities said the new infrastructure would be revealed soon, but did not give a specific time frame.

“They are taking the lessons of the 2009 uprisings and figuring out how to prevent that,” Heap said. “A halal network would be only what the regime would want you to see.”

Iran’s network could mirror what Burma, another nation with draconian cyber crackdowns, has done to isolate its people from the Web, limiting users to a national intranet at a high price that deters most potential users.

Internet users in Iran have reported more blocked sites and spottier connections since the nation's harshest cyber regulations to date were unveiled last week.

Cyber police issued a list of 20 new restrictions that cyber cafes, or Cafe Nets, as they are called in Iran, must implement by Jan. 18. They include requiring a user to provide full name, father’s name, Iranian identification number, zip code and telephone number, in addition to presenting photo identification.

The laws require cafes to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras that must be checked at the end of every business day. Cafes also must keep records of all websites and browsing history, along with surveillance tapes, for six months.

The new restrictions forbid cafes to allow the use of any circumvention technology, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or proxy servers, the devices Iranians typically use to access blocked sites.

This latest attack on Internet users comes amid increasing tensions between Iran and the West and deteriorating economic conditions as the Islamic Republic preemptively prepares for possible civilian unrest during its parliamentary elections March 2.

Since the 2009 post-election uprisings in Iran, protesters facing violent retaliation by government forces turned to the Internet and the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as blogging sites, as effective, popular and safer ways to voice disenchantment against the regime.

Protesters gained global recognition, as well as the attention of their hard-line government, by using the Internet as the cornerstone of their political and social activism, obtaining information, organizing, recruiting and disseminating ideas to other Iranians and abroad.

As the government began its online suppression, blocking pivotal sites and slowing Internet connections days before the election, Heap, a 27-year-old programmer living in Northern California, began instructing Iranians on how to run third-party proxy servers to access government-blocked sites. After studying the Iranian government’s technology, he developed specific software for the Iranians that encrypts data and hides Web activity.

“It’s a giant PR campaign. They want the only story out there to be the one they’re trying to push,” said Heap, who believes that the regime has improved its Internet surveillance significantly since 2009.

“This is a way of brand control for a dictatorship. They want control over the story.”

Since 2009, the Islamic Republic has arrested many journalists, photojournalists and bloggers who openly criticized the regime.

Last year, suspicions that Iran’s rapid advancement in cyber surveillance capabilities could be imported from the West prompted Congress’ investigative division, the Government Accountability Office, to launch a probe into American suppliers selling high-level communications spy technology to the nation.

While the study was unable to name specific businesses, the report was used to enforce broadened sanctions against Iran, making it illegal for U.S. entities to export sensitive technologies.

But the obstacles to unplugging Iran’s savvy and Internet-dependent society are more than technical. Two-thirds of the country’s 78 million people are under the age of 35, and about 40 percent of the population have Internet in their homes, according to Internet World Stats, making it one of the highest per capita cyber-connected populations in the world.

“Their goal is to close off the political ambience and limit the interaction of political and social activists,” said Ramin, a 32-year-old political blogger from Tehran who declined to reveal his real name for security purposes.

Although Ramin does not frequent Internet cafes, he spends about six hours a day online, including about two hours on Facebook.

“Shutting down the Internet is not the biggest deal. What I am afraid of is losing communication with the outside and losing our means of getting information,” he said.

Suppressing the free flow of ideas and censoring popular sentiment are nothing new for the Islamic Republic, which has engaged in a “soft war” against Western ideas, influence and infiltration since the 2009 uprisings.

In those two years, roughly $76 million of the total $11.5 billion allocated to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has been spent on cyber warfare, a battle “against old enemies using new strategies,” the government once said about combating cyber dissidents in a hard-line newspaper. A task force of 250,000 cyber police currently monitors the Internet, specific sites, blogs and individuals suspected of using circumvention tools.

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Google's "Search Plus Your World" and Security Headaches It Can Cause

Completing a process that was first hinted at back in October, Google is now officially incorporating Google+ information into its search results. While the change is certainly a good one for users interested in sharing everything about their life, for those tasked with keeping systems secure it may simply prove to be another avenue for hackers and identity thieves.

Google's changes to the basic Google search page began appearing on Tuesday, although it will take a few days for everyone to see the changes. The feature is called Search Plus Your World and simply incorporates things people have shared with you in Google+ into the results of your Google web searches. According to this Search Engine Land article, search results will now include web listing, boosted listing because of your personal behavior, boosted listings because of social shares, public Google+ posts, and private Google+ posts shared with you. The modified search results will only appear for those logged in to their Google account.

The Google+ posts are the newest additions, and if they work correctly, they should be able to give people a much more customized selection of things to choose from when they search the Web. However, the public access to large amounts of old social networking information could lead to some security issues and concerns.


Security and Search

Google+ was designed with the separation of public and private personae in mind, allowing you to only share information with a designated set of people. This separation will continue in the new search feature, as you will only be able to see Google+ information that was already available to you. However, the issue with social networking is that people don't always realize just how many people can see their posts. The security problems with the new Google search are similar to those that arose with the Facebook Timeline feature, as detailed in this Infoboom article. Now, older, forgotten posts could come back as results on your connection's searches, and someone could easily publicly re-share your private comments, which could now appear on anyone's search results.

Apart from general privacy concerns, people in charge of sensitive systems and data may face additional problems. The further integration of social and search will make it that much easier for targeted hacking attempts, called "spear phishing," that are designed to gather specific information about highly-placed individuals in order to access a system. While the new Google search feature won't make any new information public, it will make finding that information almost stupidly easy.

As this Huffington Post article points out, Google is directly threatened by Facebook and Twitter, as the search giant doesn't have access to the massive amount of information being shared on these networks. If this new feature winds up driving traffic to Google+, the possibility exists that other social networking sites will allow Google to see and aggregate their information, further increasing the amount of information that becomes public.

The problem isn't that the data isn't out there and available, but that turning an accurate search engine loose on social networking streams can make it devastatingly simple to find a tremendous amount of important information. Social networking is supposed to be a kind of virtual water-cooler or backyard fence where you can share stories ranging from the ridiculous to the profound. However, if every conversation is recorded and made searchable, it could have a serious impact on what people will feel comfortable sharing and may even result in companies further locking down their employees' use of social networking, even when they are not at work.

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Security analysis firm Stratfor back online after massive data breach

LONDON — Global intelligence analysis firm Stratfor has relaunched its website after hackers brought down its servers and stole thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to its customers.

Chief Executive George Friedman acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the company had not encrypted customer information and said this decision had embarrassed the company.
Loose-knit hacking collective Anonymous, which claimed responsibility for the attack over the Christmas holidays, had said it was able to get the details in part because Stratfor didn’t bother encrypting them.

“It was a truly unforgivable failure and I feel awful about it,” Friedman told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Sometimes in rapid growth, you make a mistake. That’s not an excuse, that’s not a justification ... It’s an explanation.”

Stratfor had previously declined to say if the information was left unencrypted. Members of Anonymous have said it was targeting companies “that play fast and loose with their customers’ private and sensitive information.”

The company said Wednesday that it was moving its entire e-commerce process to a third-party system, which will eliminate the need to store credit information. It said it has contracted with CSID, a top-ranked provider of identity protection, to provide its services to all customers at Stratfor’s expense, and that it has hired Internet security firm Sec Theory to rebuild its website, email system and internal infrastructure.

Verizon Business also was hired to conduct a forensic review of the attacks, Stratfor added.

Friedman also revealed that the company was targeted more than once by hackers and had known for some time about a data breach.

He said he was first alerted to a website hack in early December — weeks before Anonymous took to Twitter to boast of bringing down the website and stealing a stash of credit card numbers, emails and other data from the company.

The hackers said then that their goal was to use the stolen credit information to donate to charities at Christmas, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions were made from their credit accounts.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor is a subscription-based publisher providing political, economic and military analysis to help customers reduce risk. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

On Tuesday, Friedman said he had met with an FBI agent in early December after being informed by the company’s vice president of intelligence that customers’ credit card numbers had been stolen.

He said he had felt torn over the need to protect and personally inform customers at the time, but that the FBI was setting the rules and wanted to conduct its investigation without tipping the hackers off.
“It was very important to them that the criminals not know the extent to which we had knowledge of the damage,” Friedman explained, saying the FBI had assured him that it had informed credit card companies about compromised cards.

“We were caught between a very difficult situation where the FBI had control of the investigation and expected certain care in that investigation — and the need to protect our customers,” said Friedman. “What little we could do, we did.”

Still, he said he was under “no illusion” that the breach would be exposed.

“We knew our reputation would be damaged by the revelation, all the more so because we had not encrypted the credit card files,” Friedman said in a note to subscribers announcing the website’s relaunch.

But he told the AP that subscribers have stood by the company and subscriptions have held up in light of the attack.

“Our customers are primarily focused on the criminals,” he said. “Some customers have been critical, but the primary theme isn’t that ‘you didn’t know how to lock the door,’ but ‘locked or not, what are these people doing coming in?’”

While dismayed over stolen emails in the previous breach, Friedman said he was “stunned” to learn that the company’s servers were “effectively destroyed” in another hack on Dec. 24.

“I was absolutely unprepared for their attempt to destroy us,” Friedman said, describing how hackers took full control of the servers, overrode the systems and made recovery “just about impossible.”

“Our systems were shredded,” he explained. “The destruction of our servers and our backups... was clearly intended to take us offline and silence us.”

Stratfor said it was continuing to cooperate with an FBI investigation into the attack.

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WASHINGTON National Security lawyers receive awards for at a public ceremony for mostly secret work

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday honored some of its employees behind the complex legal efforts to keep America safe, but the public ceremony raised more questions about what they did than answered them.

Call it the Black-Ops Oscars, where more than 35 people were presented awards in just less than an hour.

“We’re sorry we can’t say more about it,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, as she recognized attorneys Benjamin Huebner and Joshua Raines for work they did on a “highly classified project affecting national security.”

“Given the nature of the work, I won’t be able to more fully and completely describe some of these accomplishments,” said Monaco who heads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, a section created in 2006 to combat terrorism and other national security threats.

The division employs 340 people with an $88 million budget. Because of the nature of the cases, attorneys often have to work with members of the intelligence community to come up with ways to present evidence at a trial without jeopardizing national security. And in many cases, attorneys have to find ways to prosecute a case without any sensitive intelligence information at all.

“The bad guys keep you very busy,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole said.

An attorney with the division’s office of intelligence, Shelly Goldstone, was awarded for his role in “several highly sensitive, fast-paced espionage investigations involving issues of utmost importance to U.S. national security.”

After presenting Goldstone with his award, Monaco said she told Attorney General Eric Holder — also on stage with her during the ceremony — “that was one of those super-secret awards that we couldn’t say much about.”

Others were recognized for their roles in cases in which people were accused of providing support to terrorists, plotting to kill and injure people overseas, and attempting to sell top secret information about the nation’s space program to the Israelis. But little was offered about what exactly the award recipients did.

Trial attorney Alamdar Hamdani was awarded for his work in the case of a Somali man accused of being a senior member of the terrorist organization, al-Shabab. The man, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was captured overseas and interrogated by intelligence officials aboard a U.S. warship for two months, offering what Obama administration officials described as important intelligence. After the interrogation was complete, the FBI stepped in and began the questioning from scratch in a way that could be used in federal court.

That case showed that the Obama administration is sticking by its plan to use civilian courts to prosecute terrorists, a strategy that was successful for years under then President George W. Bush but which has drawn fire from Republicans since President Barack Obama took office.

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Hacking group's target is Sunil Mittal, wants 'pro-US' govt

The hacking group behind the release of documents alleging India was using mobile phone companies to spy on a United States Congress-appointed body now says its aim is to 'lessen the influence of Sunil Mittal , Chairman and CEO, Bharti Enterprises', and to undermine the current 'regime' in favour of a more 'pro-American' alternative.

'YamaTough,' the activist behind the 'Lords of Dharmaraja' hackers group, told Infosec Island, an information security Web site, 'Our goal is Bharti Mittal go off political arena and stop manipulating our government.'

'...my team is pro US, we fight for rights in our country we are not intentionally harm US companies (sometimes we do hack into since our botnet is worldwide) but we do not steal credit cards and make money of it and we do not do banks etc. Our mission -- exposure of the corruption,' 'Yamatough' reportedly Infosec Island in this report.

According to Infosec Island, 'YamaTough' has given it evidence that allegedly reveals that the Indian government is reportedly carrying out spying not only on the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the US Congress body, but 'potentially thousands of US government networks, ranging from those of federal agencies to systems used by state and municipal entities.'

The Infosec Island Web site says it has received what was described as merely a 'sample' of what the 'Lords of Dharmaraja' hackers group claim to have in its possession.

The data includes 68 sets of 'usernames and passwords for compromised US government network accounts, which were said to have been acquired by hacking multiple servers belonging to India's Ministry of External affairs (mea.gov.in) and the National Informatics Centre (nic.in),' amongst others, according to the Infosec Island Web site.

It said 'YamaTough' also indicated the group was allegedly in possession of data from numerous companies other than Symantec, and they have yet to decide whether or not they will make the information public, though they have stated to Infosec Island that they may be inclined to do so.

Meanwhile, mobile phone companies cited in the report and the Indian Army have denied any part in the alleged spying operation

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China detains four for hacking fraud

Beijing: China has detained four people and punished eight others for fabricating a massive leak of online personal data by hackers over the past month, the country’s Internet watchdog said.

China’s leading anti-virus software provider, Beijing-based Qihoo 360, claimed in late December that the
personal information of more than 6 million users of the China Software Developer Network (CSDN), the country’s largest programmers’ website, had been leaked by hackers, raising concerns about web security and triggering widespread panic.

The company said the leak included user IDs, passwords and e-mail addresses in clear text.

The hacking case later escalated after the personal details of subscribers to more websites, including popular online shopping, gaming, social networking and even financial institution sites, were said to have been leaked.

However, a police investigation into the cases has found that most of those websites had not been attacked by hackers at all over the past month, or that they had been attacked without their subscribers’ information being leaked, a spokesman with the National Internet Information Office said yesterday.

“It can be seen from the recent cases of personal data leaks that they fabricated such information for different purposes, such as for showing off, defrauding others of money, promoting their web security products or disturbing and disparaging the real-name registration move,” the spokesman with the National Internet Information Office said.

Police has cracked 12 such cases, nine of which involved insiders working for the companies stealing and illegally selling online personal data, and the other three involved in fabricated information leak, he said.

Four people have been detained and eight others received formal admonishments in punishment according to the country’s public security regulations, he said.

In the CSDN case, a 19-year-old jobless man surnamed Xu was found to have faked a large-scale leak of personal data just to “show-off,” and he had received “admonishment” from the police, Chinese official news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.

As for the leak of some users’ passwords on a few well-known social networking websites, such as Sina Weibo and www.kaixin001.com, police found that hackers decoded the passwords through guesswork and the personal data banks of the websites had not actually been attacked, he said.

Police have identified the hackers and are hunting them, he said.

China has the world’s largest online population, with the number of Internet users reaching 485 million by the end of June last year, according to the China Internet Networks Information Centre (CNNIC).

In the first half of 2011, 217 million Chinese Internet users, or 44.7 per cent of the country’s total online population, were attacked by malware, including viruses or Trojan horses, and 121 million had the experience of having their accounts or passwords stolen, CNNIC data shows.

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Twitter 'failing' on child abuse, Ceop watchdog warns

Twitter's child protection policies are lagging behind other social-networking websites, a watchdog has warned.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) has urged Twitter to address its fears that some paedophiles use the site to discuss abuse and link to pornographic images.

Twitter said safety was a high priority and it acted immediately on complaints of inappropriate behaviour.

Twitter users can report accounts in breach of its child protection policy.

But former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who works as a child protection expert, claims some users have still been active on the site days or even weeks after they have been reported to the firm.

"There is always going to be a problem with social networking sites, because where there is an opportunity offenders will seek that out," says Mr Williams-Thomas.

"Clearly what Twitter needs to do is to take responsibility for its users. And when they identify there is somebody promoting child abuse material, swapping it or even discussing it the site must come down straight away."

In a statement, Twitter insisted it dealt with complaints as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

"When we receive a report and identify it as valid, we take action immediately," said Del Harvey, Twitter's Director of Trust and Safety.

'A bit behind'

"Accounts being reported may be the subject of law enforcement investigations.

"In those instances, while the profiles are certainly disturbing, removing them immediately can actually harm the cases that law enforcement may be attempting to build."

The company says it plans within the next few months to have a team working 24 hours a day in order to investigate complaints.

Facebook and Bebo have both worked with Ceop to introduce so-called panic buttons, allowing users to report their concerns by simply clicking a single link.

However, Twitter users need to search the site for an email address to report accounts that are causing concern.

"They are a little bit behind some other sites that have been around a little bit longer," says Peter Davies, the Chief Executive of Ceop.

"These people who have an unhealthy interest in child abuse images occupy a lot of different space on the internet - while they are allowed to be in that space.

"I think that's got to be wrong."

There are also fears that some paedophiles have attempted to contact young teenagers through their Twitter accounts.

Ceop says that issue of on-line grooming in an industry-wide problem.

Twitter relies on users to report accounts that breach its policies on child protection.

But Mark Williams-Thomas believes that is a problem when privacy settings allow account-holders to hide their conversations from everyone but their followers.

"Clearly you can communicate whatever you want within a protected profile," he says.

However, Twitter says it works with police and organisations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US to ensure users acting illegally are prosecuted.

Anyone with concerns about a Twitter user can report the account by sending details to 'cp@twitter.com'.

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Twitter unhappy about Google's social search changes

Twitter has complained about changes made by Google to integrate its social network Google+ into search results.

The new feature, called Search plus Your World, will automatically push results from Google+ up the search rankings.

Tweeting on the news, Twitter's lawyer Alex Macgillivray described it as a "bad day for the internet".

Google is determined to push its social network in the face of continued rivalry with Facebook.

The current changes were about even greater personalisation, it said. It already includes personal search history in its search algorithms.

The three changes are:

Personal Results - which enable users to find information such as Google+ photos and posts, both their own and those shared specifically with them, that only they will be able to see on their results pages
Profiles in Search - both in autocomplete and results, users will be able to find people they are close to or might be interested in following
People and Pages - helps users find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable people to follow them with just a few clicks.

"Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more," said Amit Singhal in the firm's official blog.

"But clearly, that isn't enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they've shared with you, as well as the people you don't know but might want to... all from one search box," he added.

Twitter's general counsel Alex Macgillivray tweeted in response to the changes: "Bad day for the internet. Having been there, I can imagine the dissension @Google to search being warped this way."

Mr Macgillivray had previously been employed at Google.

Twitter expanded his point in an official statement.

"For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet.

"Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we've seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results.

"We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users."

Google hit back at the criticisms.

''We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions," it said in a statement.

This refers to a technical barrier which makes it difficult for Google to rank Twitter information, a spokeswoman explained.

There is also little sharing between Google and its other big rival Facebook.

Stepping into the growing row between the three firms, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told MarketingLand magazine that his company was not favouring its own social network over Facebook and Twitter. He said that all would be treated equally if the two rivals granted the search giant the right permissions to access their content.

Search expert John Battelle said in his blog post that social search would mean little until Facebook and Google settled their differences and offered consumers what they really wanted - Facebook data integrated with Google's search.

"The unwillingness of Facebook and Google to share a public commons when it comes to the intersection of search and social is corrosive to the connective tissue of our shared culture," he said.

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Homeland Security have eye on Journalists

The Department of Homeland Security has declared its intention to gather personal data on journalists or others who might use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed". Well, it'll be interesting to see the reaction of Obama's adoring White House press corps when they discover their activities are being tracked by the Department of Homeland Security.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses.

A PDF file at DHS says that under certain circumstances, it is allowed to collect personally identifiable information (PII) on:

U.S. and foreign individuals in extremis situations involving potential life or death circumstances
Senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates
U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates
U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates
Names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed
Current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security
Terrorists, drug cartel leaders, or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest.

RT.com adds that the data collected "is being shared with both private sector businesses and international third parties," but does not specify who those parties are.

The development out of the DHS comes at the same time that U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady denied pleas from supporters of WikiLeaks who had tried to prevent account information pertaining to their Twitter accounts from being provided to federal prosecutors. Jacob Applebaum and others advocates of Julian Assange’s whistleblower site were fighting to keep the government from subpoenaing information on their personal accounts that were collected from Twitter.Last month the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk Massachusetts District Attorney subpoenaed Twitter over details pertaining to recent tweets involving the Occupy Boston protests.

Should you care? For journalists covering numerous types of news, be aware. But not to worry ,just because the government is monitoring online activites of writers, bloggers and journalists, the federal government says it is doing all it can to keep that information private.

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US become victim of Indian spy unit, Apple & RIM deny their role !

A recently leaked memo reveals that American and Canadian based company’s Apple, Research in Motion and Nokia may have helped the government of India spy on U.S. agencies in order to receive larger shares of the overall Indian cell phone market.

Last week, an Indian hacker crew successfully broke into a secured Indian military government network. The group, the Lords of Dharmaraja (who posted up outdated Norton security source code last week) posted documents that infer Apple, Nokia, and Research In Motion gave the Indian government backdoor access to their devices in exchange for mobile phone market rights.



The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) has asked for an investigation after hackers posted. "We are aware of these reports and have contacted relevant authorities to investigate the matter," said USCC spokesman Jonathan Weston on Monday. "We are unable to make further comments at this time," he added.

The document's authenticity could not be independently verified. But the U.S.-China commission is not denying the authenticity of the emails.Officials in India could not be reached for comment on the document's content or authenticity. One India-based website quoted an unnamed army representative as denying that India used mobile companies to spy on the commission and calling the documents forged.The purported memo says that India cut a technological agreement - the details are not clear - with mobile phone manufacturers "in exchange for the Indian market presence." It cites three: Research in Motion (RIM.TO), maker of the BlackBerry; Nokia (NOK1V.HE); and Apple (APPL.O).

The documents also appear to show that Indian intelligence agencies were particularly eager to spy on the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Established by the US Congress in 2000, the Commission is tasked with researching and reporting on the national security implications of bilateral trade between the US and China. Allegedly, the cellular telephone makers provided Indian intelligence agencies with backdoor access to personal phones used by Commission members. These back doors allegedly allowed the Indian Military Intelligence Directorate and India’s Central Bureau of Investigation to spy on Commission members beginning in April of 2011.

In the meantime representatives from all three tech company’s have denied their involvement in any type of backdoor access program for their mobile devices. Apple and RIM have denied providing the Indian government with backdoor access to customers' data, after the release of a memo that appears to suggest that they and Nokia did a deal in exchange for access to the Indian smartphone market.

Other intelligence agencies may be involved in warrantless surveillance of mobile telephone and Internet communications as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in late October alleging that the PATRIOT Act has “secret interpretations” that allow government agencies to conduct dragnets of e-traffic. Under these interpretations, it seems that large numbers of Americans both individuals and businesses can be targeted for surveillance if the FBI has determined they are “relevant to a government investigation.” as said by FastCompany.

India has a longstanding border dispute with China, and the two countries went to war in 1962. The emails cited in the memo as evidence of the successful interception included mails from USCC executive director Michael Danis, and member Larry Wortzel. Many of the previous hacks have been blamed on China. In this case, it is unclear whether India might have been eavesdropping on the U.S.-China commission for itself or sought to pass any information collected to authorities in China.

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Twitter confirmed that they will not handover the data of wikileaks supporters to US

Earlier twitter was ordered to handover the info of wikileaks supporters to US authorities by US district judge to investigate against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Now twitter has confirmed that they will not handover the account details of wikileaks supporters to US investigator.

"The court is telling all users of online tools hosted in the US that the US government will have secret access to their data,”

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Fuduntu 2012.1 Release

Andrew Wyatt has announced the release of Fuduntu 2012.1, a new quarterly update of the distribution that was forked from Fedora last year: "The Fuduntu quarterly installation ISO image (2012.1) is now available for immediate download. This release marks a shift in release numbering. Going forward, Fuduntu releases will be numbered as follows: Year.Release. As we are a rolling release distribution with quarterly snapshots, you should expect four roll-up releases this year. We do not define a specific release date, we release when we believe it is ready which may happen at any time after the beginning of each quarter.


Package updates in this release:
Linux Kernel 3.1.6
Chromium 16
Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.55.

Many new packages are available in the repository including Xfce 4.8, LibreOffice 3.4.3, and Firefox and Thunderbird 9."

Download it here :

Fuduntu-2012.1-i686-LiveDVD.iso

Fuduntu-2012.1-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso

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Python for Android launched

A new project aims to make it easy to distribute Python applications for Android. The newly launched Python for Android project is a tool which takes a Python application and, after ensuring the Android SDK/NDK is installed, creates a Python distribution containing the runtime and the set of modules needed to run the application, packaged as an Android APK file.

It was created by the developers of the Kivy cross-platform open source rapid application development library to support their framework. To that end, the packaged applications currently only have one "bootstrap" which decompresses the files, creates an OpenGL ES 2.0 surface for drawing and sets up to handle audio and touch events. Although built for the Kivy project, the developers welcome anyone prepared to create a new lighter bootstrap mechanism. Python has been executable on Android through the Android Scripting project, but that doesn't create simple-to-install, self-contained binary files.

More details about the package are available, along with the source code, on the project's github repository. Currently the code has only been tested running on Ubuntu 11.10 and only supports including a small range of Python modules (peg, pil,png, sdl, sqlite3, pygame, kivy, android, libxml2, libxslt, lxml, ffmpeg, openssl). The Python for Android code is licensed under the LGPLv2.

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Apple chief Tim Cook in $378m pay package

Apple chief executive Tim Cook was awarded a pay package worth $378m (£244m) in 2011, most of which came in shares payable in the coming years.

Apple's board granted Mr Cook 1 million restricted stock units, worth $376m, to signal its confidence in him when he took over from Steve Jobs in August.

His salary and performance bonus, about $900,000 each, made up the rest, a company filing showed.

Mr Jobs, who died in October, owned 5.5 million Apple shares.

He famously received a salary of only $1 a year.

Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar, an executive compensation data firm, said Mr Cook's stock award was the largest single award given by a company for a decade.

Mr Cook will receive half of the shares in 2016 and half in 2021.

Analysts expect the Apple chief to have been the highest paid chief executive in the US in 2011.

The best paid boss in 2010 was Viacom head Philippe Dauman, with an $84.5m haul based on a new contract that granted him shares and stock options.

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Google admits profiting from illegal Olympic ticket Ads

Google is profiting from ads for illegal products generated by its flagship automated advertising system, the BBC has found.

The ads include unofficial London 2012 Olympics ticket resellers, as well as cannabis and fake ID card sellers.

These ads were promptly removed by Google after the BBC brought them to the company's attention.

Google has also taken down links to illegal Olympic ticket resellers following requests from the police.

But the search giant told 5 live Investigates that the company keeps any money it might make from companies advertising illegal services before such adverts are removed.

Selling tickets on the open market without permission from the Olympic authorities is a criminal offence in the UK under the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006.


Not official sellers

Liz, who declined to give her full name, contacted the 5 live Investigates team.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate”

Google

"Me and my sisters decided to club together to buy our mum and dad some Olympic tickets," said Liz, who is from Solihull.

"So we typed into Google 'Olympic tickets' and at the very, very top of the page was a link to a company called LiveOlympicTickets.

"It was a sponsored ad at the top of the page, so we presumed it was a trusted official site, and we spent £750 on two tickets for my mum and dad to see the 1500m, which is what my dad really wanted."

The advert Liz clicked on was one placed by Google's own AdWords advertising service - one of the company's main sources of income.

However, after placing her order, Liz received an email from the company informing her that they could not complete the sale until she faxed over a copy of her signature.

"That's when alarm bells began ringing," said Liz.

LiveOlympicTickets is not an officially recognised 2012 Olympic ticket reseller.

A family member of Liz's wrote to Google, and received this reply:

"While Google AdWords provides a platform for companies to advertise their services, we are not responsible for, nor are we able to monitor the actions of each company."
Promoting ticket touts

The Metropolitan Police, which is dedicated to stopping crime associated with the 2012 games through Operation Podium, said it is aware of LiveOlympicTickets and that the company is breaking the law.


However, as the company is registered overseas, it may be difficult to prosecute as it is outside the UK's jurisdiction.

The maximum penalty fine for reselling Olympic tickets without authorisation from the Olympic authorities was raised last year from £5,000 to £20,000.

Despite this, Google has placed adverts for unofficial ticket resellers which are breaking the law by selling London 2012 tickets to customers in the UK.

In this case, LiveOlympicTickets was Google's top sponsored link for 2012 tickets - and remained so for more than a week even after the Metropolitan Police had asked the search engine to remove the advertisement.

The company link was finally removed after 5 live Investigates contacted Google.

But research by the programme team found other sponsored Google adverts - for online cannabis sellers, fake ID cards, and fake UK passports.


Automatic advertising

But why do these adverts appear in the first place?

Google's advertising system is partly automated and this helps make the initial selection of the advertisements which appear at the top of its search results.

Google's AdWords does filter key words that can help sift out adverts which might be offering unlawful services.

If a filter flags an advert, then Google will run a manual assessment - a human takes a look - and if it breaks Google's policy, the advert will be taken down.

In a statement, Google said: "We have a set of policies covering which ads can and cannot show on Google. These policies and guidelines are enforced by both automated systems and human beings.

"When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate.

"Our aim is to create a simple and efficient way for legitimate businesses to promote and sell their goods and services whilst protecting them and consumers from illicit activity."

Buyer beware

However, dubious online retailers are still finding their way to the top of the advert results and can do so by paying a higher cost per click than other advertisers.

Google says the quality of ads also plays a role in the ranking advertisers achieve, as well as the price the advertiser is willing to pay.

"Relying on an automated process is remarkably lax and typing key words into Google can show up illegal sites quite quickly," says online security adviser, Reg Walker.

"We carried out an experiment around six months ago trying to knock a ticket scam site off the top of the Google AdWords results and we went up to £28 per click and we still couldn't shift it from the top."

Mr Walker is also critical of Google's response to removing adverts offering unlawful services.

"There's an automated complaint form, which gets an automated reply, which lets you know you're in a queue, and eventually a human being will get around to scrutinising it and do something about it," he said.

"The site could stay up for days, weeks, or possibly even months."
'Check the site'

After making her purchase, Liz asked LiveOlympicTickets for a refund for the tickets she purchased and was told this was not possible.

She also contacted her bank to try and stop her purchase, and for the time being they have credited her the money she spent while they carry out their own investigation.

She has since purchased more tickets from a legitimate seller, but may still lose £750, depending on the findings of her bank.

Google did promise to investigate the case further, but Liz admitted she did not respond to this offer as she was more concerned with getting her money back.

Google's sponsored links have proved costly in the past and, in August, Google agreed to forfeit $500m (£324m) for publishing online adverts from Canadian pharmacies selling illegal drugs to US customers.

Reg Walker warned consumers to be cautious about buying from companies they have not previously heard of and which show up as sponsored links.

"Check out the site thoroughly. If it has no trading history, no substantive company address, no VAT number on it, don't go near it," he said.

"If it has an address, use Google itself to find that address - if the address is for a mailing service, or a mail box then, again, don't go near the business."

"Just because it appears to have the weight of Google behind the advertisement, it doesn't mean it's legitimate - it can be quite the opposite."

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