Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Department of Justice. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Department of Justice. Sort by date Show all posts

Anonymous Bring down Ireland's Dept of Finance & Justice (#OpMegaupload, #OpIreland)

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 1/26/2012 06:59:00 pm

Anonymous Bring down Ireland's Dept of Finance & Justice (#OpMegaupload, #OpIreland) 
After Federal Authorities, US Govt, Brazil Govt now its time for Ireland. So here it come, Anonymous targeted the websites of Ireland's departments of finance and justice on Wednesday in a protest against government plans to block websites that violate copyright laws (SOPA/PIPA). Officials said both websites were taken off-line for a sudden time in the early hours of Wednesday in a denial of service attack (DoS), in which those sites were bombarded with a huge number of traffic. According to an Anon member @AnonOpsSweden claimed responsibility for the attack, posting a series of tweets overnight encouraging hackers to attack the two sites. 

In A statement The Department of Justice said:-
Last night, the Department of Justice and Finance websites experienced a distributed denial of service attack. This is not an attempt to extract information from the website but is instead an attempt to stop access to a service.There seems to be no damage done to the website, however, a review is being conducted this morning. The situation continues to be monitored by the Department of Justice and the Department of Communication. Gardaí have been contacted on the matter. The Government is aware of the potential threat of this type of cyber attack and the Department of Communications is co-ordinating a whole of Government response to this threat, the Department added.




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Anonymous Hacker "Havittaja" Bring-down CIA & Department of Justice

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 4/17/2012 01:11:00 pm

Anonymous Hacker "Havittaja" Bring-down CIA & Department of Justice Website

Hacker from infamous Anonymous claimed to take down the official website of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) & Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Here also hackers followed their older tradition by engaging massive denial of service (DoS) attack to send the target offline. Due to large number of traffic CIA website was inaccessible for 45 mins. A Brazilian hacker code named "Havittaja" took responsibility of this attack by saying saying it was done for the "lulz", which refers to the popular online abbreviation "for laughs".

We have seen similar attack on CIA in last February, there also Anonymous took responsibility of that cyber attack and also claimed that this is yet another biggest denial of service attack of this year. We would also like to refresh your memory while saying not only Anonymous but also a hacker group named "CyberZeist" has revealed some classified information regarding the official website of CIA. He also exposed server details, DNS information, administrator login panel and so on. Even the hacker group leaked certain information about five undercover CIA agent's including real name, age, full postal address, banking details, credit card information, email-id & passwords. If you dig the history we will find that in 2011 Lulzsec hit CIA & SOCA with massive DDoS attack which immediately sent the website offline for a certain period of time.
If you talk about Department of Justice then we need to dig the 1st page of Operation Megaupload where hacktivist shutdown the official website of DOJ & FBI. 

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Anonymous Exposed The Private Information of The Special Agent, Officers, Cyber Crime Investigators Of Department Of Justice

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 11/26/2011 04:08:00 pm


The hacktivists claim to have hacked into Baclagan's Gmail account and to have accessed his voicemails and SMS message logs using unspecified techniques as part of their ongoing campaign against law enforcement officials and their "allies" in the computer security industry.
The email dump, released as a torrent last Friday in part of what has become the group's regular FuckFBIFriday release, is also said to contain personal information including Baclagan's home address and phone number. The cache of emails – which according to AntiSec are from the account of Fred Baclagan, a retired special agent supervisor of the Californian Department of Justice – includes 38,000 emails detailing various computer forensic techniques and cybercrime investigation protocols. 
Baclagan told that he was nobody special in the Justice Department ... which is what he would say, of course. He said that he had specialised in identity theft before he retired last year. "I'm really just a nobody," he told the Post, "just a local investigator, not involved in anything dynamic or dramatic

In the Press Release Anon Said:-

################################################################################
#        ANTISEC LEAKS DOJ SPECIAL AGENT SUPERVISOR'S PRIVATE EMAILS,         #
#               IACIS CYBERCRIME INVESTIGATOR COMMUNICATIONS                              #
#         care of the #OCCUPYWALLST CRACKDOWN RETALIATION TASK FORCE         #       
################################################################################

Greetings Pirates, and welcome to another exciting #FuckFBIFriday release.

As part of our ongoing effort to expose and humiliate our white hat enemies, we
targeted a Special Agent Supervisor of the CA Department of Justice in charge of
computer crime investigations. We are leaking over 38,000 private emails which
contain detailed computer forensics techniques, investigation protocols as well
as highly embarrassing personal information. We are confident these gifts will 
bring smiles to the faces of our black hat brothers and sisters (especially 
those who have been targeted by these scurvy dogs) while also making a mockery 
of "security professionals" who whore their "skills" to law enforcement to 
protect tyrannical corporativism and the status quo we aim to destroy.

We hijacked two gmail accounts belonging to Fred Baclagan, who has been a cop
for 20 years, dumping his private email correspondence as well as several dozen 
voicemails and SMS text message logs. While just yesterday Fred was having a 
private BBQ with his CATCHTEAM high computer crime task force friends, we were 
reviewing their detailed internal operation plans and procedure documents. We 
also couldn't overlook the boatloads of embarrassing personal information about 
our cop friend Fred. We lulzed as we listened to angry voicemails from his 
estranged wives and ex-girlfriends while also reading his conversations with 
girls who responded to his "man seeking woman" craigslist ads. We turned on his 
google web history and watched him look up linux command line basics, golfing 
tutorials, and terrible youtube music videos. We also abused his google 
voice account, making sure Fred's friends and family knew how hard he was owned.

Possibly the most interesting content in his emails are the IACIS.com internal
email list archives (2005-2011) which detail the methods and tactics cybercrime 
units use to gather electronic evidence, conduct investigations and make 
arrests. The information in these emails will prove essential to those who want 
to protect themselves from the techniques and procedures cyber crime 
investigators use to build cases. If you have ever been busted for computer 
crimes, you should check to see if your case is being discussed here. There are 
discussions about using EnCase forensic software, attempts to crack TrueCrypt 
encrypted drives, sniffing wireless traffic in mobile surveillance vehicles, how 
to best prepare search warrants and subpoenas, and a whole lot of clueless 
people asking questions on how to use basic software like FTP. In the end, we
rickrolled the entire IACIS list, causing the administrators to panic and shut
their list and websites down.

These cybercrime investigators are supposed to be the cream of the crop, but we
reveal the totality of their ignorance of all matters related to computer
security. For months, we have owned several dozen white hat and law enforcement
targets-- getting in and out of whichever high profile government and corporate
system we please and despite all the active FBI investigations and several
billion dollars of funding, they have not been able to stop us or get anywhere
near us. Even worse, they bust a few dozen people who are allegedly part of an
"anonymous computer hacking conspiracy" but who have only used 
kindergarten-level DDOS tools-- this isn't even hacking, but a form of
electronic civil disobedience. 

We often hear these "professionals" preach about "full-disclosure," but we are
sure these people are angrily sending out DMCA takedown notices and serving
subpoenas as we speak. They call us criminals, script kiddies, and terrorists, 
but their entire livelihood depends on us, trying desperately to study our 
techniques and failing miserably at preventing future attacks. See we're cut 
from an entirely different kind of cloth. Corporate security professionals like
Thomas Ryan and Aaron Barr think they're doing something noble by "leaking" the
public email discussion lists of Occupy Wall Street and profiling the "leaders"
of Anonymous. Wannabe player haters drop shitty dox and leak partial chat logs
about other hackers, doing free work for law enforcement. Then you got people 
like Peiter "Mudge" Zatko who back in the day used to be old school l0pht/cDc 
only now to sell out to DARPA going around to hacker conventions encouraging 
others to work for the feds. Let this be a warning to aspiring white hat 
"hacker" sellouts and police collaborators: stay out the game or get owned and 
exposed. You want to keep mass arresting and brutalizing the 99%? We'll have to 
keep owning your boxes and torrenting your mail spools, plastering your personal 
information all over teh internets.

Hackers, join us and rise up against our common oppressors - the white hats, the 
1%'s 'private' police, the corrupt banks and corporations and make 2011 the year 
of leaks and revolutions! 

We are Anti-Security,
We are the 99%
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect Us!

For More information Click Here


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Anonymous Hacked MIT Website & Left Tribute Message For Aaron Swartz

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 1/16/2013 06:57:00 pm

Anonymous Hacked MIT Website & Left Tribute Message For Aaron Swartz

We have just passed a few days when the shocking news of Aaron Swartz's suicide take down the entire Internet and specially the cyber world. Swartz, a political activist and computer programmer, reportedly hanged himself last week in his Brooklyn apartment as he awaited trial on 13 felony counts for downloading and publishing roughly 4 million academic journal articles from the database JSTOR. Hours after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a pledge to investigate its involvement in events associated with the suicide of Aaron Swartz. But this step of MIT was not enough as the hacktivist group Anonymous taken this issue very seriously and started a campaign in which they targeted several websites of MIT. From 4 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. PT on Sunday evening, M.I.T.'s network lost access to most websites, including mit.edu, where Anonymous posted a red-lettered tribute message in Swartz's honor saying -

“Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — enabling the collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing — an ideal that we should all support,” 

Kimberly Allen, the media relations manager at M.I.T., did not immediately respond to a call from TheWrap requesting comment.
M.I.T. President Rafael Reif asked computer science professor Hal Abelson on Sunday to "lead a thorough analysis of M.I.T.'s involvement from" in Swartz's case. According to sources The Department of Justice dropped charges against Swartz on Monday, standard policy for when a defendant dies. JSTOR, which said it settled its claims against Swartz in June 2011, said it was "saddened" to hear of his death.
"We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaron’s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him," it said in a post on its website. "He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit."

Here is the full Message of Anonymous posted on MIT's website:-


"In Memoriam, Aaron Swartz, November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013, Requiescat in pace.
A brief message from Anonymous.
Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — enabling the collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing — an ideal that we should all support.
Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining. Aaron’s act was undoubtedly political activism; it had tragic consequences.
Our wishes
  • We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.
  • We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of copyright and intellectual property law, returning it to the proper principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.
  • We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response.
  • We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.
For in the end, we will not be judged according to what we give, but according to what we keep to ourselves.
Aaron, we will sorely miss your friendship, and your help in building a better world. May you read in peace.
—-
Who was Aaron Swartz? A hero in the SOPA/PIPA campaign, Reddit cofounder, RSS, Demand Progress, Avaaz, etc…:
—-
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.
“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.
Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy
—–
You were the best of us; may you yet bring out the best in us.
-Anonymous, Jan 13, 2013.
—-
(Postscript: We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites. We understand that it is a time of soul-searching for all those within this great institution as much — perhaps for some involved even more so — than it is for the greater internet community. We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened, but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge instead the responsibility they have — that we all have — to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud, and honour the ideals and dedication that burnt so brightly within him by embodying them in thought and word and action..."


VOGH Reaction:- There is nothing much to say, we are speechless after what happened. Swartz suicide is surely a defeat of freedom. Last but not least VOGH team along with the whole cyber world will miss Aaron Swartz, RIP!


-Source (TC & Wired)






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A Tribute to The 10 Most Infamous Student Hackers of All Time

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 9/15/2012 04:01:00 pm

A Tribute to The 10 Most Infamous Student Hackers of All Time

Since last two years, we the VOGH team has been covering all the latest cyber security updates. But today lets do some thing different. One of our frequent reader and fan Katina Solomon has requested us to share a fantastic article. Everyday VOGH draws headlines of hackers around the world and their activities. While trying to maintain speed with time, we usually forgot our past. Today we will take you into the past, where we will discuss about those heroes, who are always been ill treated by the society & the system while revamping those heroes into cyber-criminals or infamous hackers. Its our question to our humanity "Did the system has done justice with them??" 
Hacking has always been inherently a young person’s game. The first usage of the word “hacker” was to describe pranksters meddling with the phones at MIT. Many hackers have cited boredom, a desire for change, or the thrill of going somewhere one is not supposed to go as their motivation for hacking, all of which could apply to scores of common activities on college campuses. While today’s hacking scene is dominated by large hacking groups like Anonymous and Masters of Deception, many of the greatest hacks ever have been pulled off by college, high school, and even middle school kids who rose to infamy armed only with a computer and the willingness to cross the bounds of legality.
  1. Sven Jaschan: In the words of one tech expert, “His name will always be associated with some of the biggest viruses in the history of the Internet.” The viruses: the Sasser and NetSky worms that infected millions of computers and have caused millions of dollars of damage since their release in 2004. The man behind the viruses proved to be not even a man at all, legally. Seventeen-year-old hacker Sven Jaschan, a student at a computer science school in Germany, claimed to have created the viruses to become a hero by developing a program that would eradicate the rampaging Mydoom and Bagle bugs. Instead he found himself the subject of a $250,000 bounty courtesy of Microsoft, for which some of his classmates turned him in.
  2. Jonathan James: In 2000, at the age of 16, James, or “C0mrade” as he was known in the hacker community, infamously became the first juvenile federally sentenced for hacking. The targets of his notorious hack jobs were a wing of the U.S. Department of Defense called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NASA, and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. (By hacking the latter James gained the ability to control the A/C in the International Space Station.) All of these were pulled off “for fun” while James was still a student at Palmetto Senior High in Miami. Unfortunately, the fun ran out when James was tied into a massive identity theft investigation. Though insisting he was innocent, James took his own life, saying he had “no faith in the justice system.”
  3. Michael Calce: Yahoo. CNN. Ebay. Amazon. Dell.com. One by one in a matter of days, these huge websites crashed at the hands of 15-year-old Canadian high school student Michael Calce, aka “MafiaBoy.” Armed with a denial-of-service program he called “Rivolta” that overloaded servers he targeted, the young hacker wreaked $7.5 million in damages, according to court filings. Calce was caught when he fell victim to a common ailment of teenage boys: bragging. The cops were turned on to him when he began boasting in chat rooms about being responsible for the attacks. On Sept. 12, 2001, MafiaBoy was sentenced to a group facility for eight months on 56 counts of cybercrime.
  4. Kevin Mitnick: Before performing hacks that prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to declare him “the most wanted computer criminal in United States history,” Kevin Mitnick had already made a name for himself as a hacker in his school days, first at Monroe High School in LA and later at USC. On a dare, Mitnick connived an opening into the computer system of Digital Equipment Corporation, which some fellow hackers then used to steal proprietary source code from the company before ratting on him. While still on probation for that crime, Mitnick broke into the premises of Pacific Bell and had to go on the run from police in the aftermath, during which time he hacked dozens of systems, including those of IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and Fujitsu.
  5. Tim Berners-Lee: “Scandalous” is a synonym for “infamous,” and for this legendary computer scientist, knight of the British Empire, and inventor of the World Wide Web to have been a hacker in his school days is certainly a juicy factoid. During his time at Oxford in the mid-’70s, Sir Tim was banned from using university computers after he and a friend were caught hacking their way into restricted digital areas. Luckily by that time he already knew how to make his own computer out of a soldering iron, an old TV, and some spare parts. And also luckily for him, he will always be revered as the father of the Internet.
  6. Neal Patrick and the 414s: In the early ’80s, hacking was still a relatively foreign concept to most Americans. Few recognized the enormous power hackers could hijack with a few strokes on a keyboard, which explains why a young group of hackers known as the 414s (after a Milwaukee area code) were virtual celebrities after they hacked into the famous Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and elsewhere. While today hacking a lab where classified nuclear research is conducted could earn you a one-way ticket to Guantanamo, the 17-year-old ringleader and high school student Neal Patrick was on the cover of Newsweek. The group members got light sentences but prompted Congress to take a stronger role in cybercrime.
  7. Robert T. Morris: The first ever Internet worm, the Morris Worm derived its name from Cornell grad student Robert Tappan Morris. In 1988, Morris released the worm through MIT’s system to cover his tracks, which would seem to contradict his claims that he meant no harm with it. But that’s exactly what resulted: the worm spread out of control, infecting more than 6,000 computers connected to the ARPANET, the academic forerunner to the World Wide Web. The damages reached as high as an estimated $10 million, and Morris earned the ignominious distinction of being the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris got community service but was apparently not considered too infamous to be offered his current job as a professor at MIT.
  8. George Hotz: To some, George Hotz (aka “geohot,” aka “million75,” aka “mil”) is a public menace, a threat to electronic businesses everywhere. To many, Hotz is a hero. The high-schooler shot to fame/infamy in 2007 at the tender age of 17 by giving the world its first hacked, or “jailbroken” iPhone. He traded it for a new sports car and three new iPhones, and the video of the hacking received millions of hits. Apple has had to grudgingly come to terms with jailbreaking, seeing as the courts have declared it legal, but Sony Corp. is definitely not OK with such tampering. When Hotz hacked his PlayStation 3 and published the how-to on the web, the company launched a vicious lawsuit against him. In turn, the hacker group Anonymous launched an attack on Sony, stealing millions of users’ personal info.
  9. Donncha O’Cearbhaill: According to the FBI, this 19-year-old freshman at Trinity College Dublin is one of the top five most wanted hackers in the world. Well, he was; now that he’s been arrested he’s not really “wanted” anymore. The Feds contend the young man is a VIP member of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups that have already been mentioned and whose targets have included the FBI, the U.S. Senate, and Sony (in the Hotz backlash). It seems “Palladium” (O’Cearbhaill) took the liberty of listening in on a conference call between the FBI and several international police forces who were discussing their investigations of the hacking groups. He could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted for that hack alone.
  10. Nicholas Allegra: Just as George Hotz moved on from the Apple hacking game, Brown University student Nicholas Allegra is also hanging up his jersey. “Comex,” as he is known to millions of rooted iPhone fans, created the simple-to-use Apple iOS jailbreaking program JailbreakMe in 2007 and has since released two newer versions of it. However, Comex seems to have gone over to the dark side, accepting an internship with the very company whose products he became famous exploiting. Still, Allegra’s hacking skills are so advanced (one author puts him five years ahead of the authors of the infamous Stuxnet worm that corrupted Iran’s nuclear facilities) and so many people availed themselves of his talents, he will forever live in hacking infamy.

We want to dedicate the above post to the legendary hacker, who left us -Jonathan James aka “C0mrade”. Also the post is a tribute to all the so called 'infamous hackers'. You are our heroes and inspiration, you will always be there in our soul. Team VOGH salutes you...... 


-Thank you Katina & Online Degrees




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NASA & UFO Hacker Gary McKinnon Will Not Face Prosecution in UK

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 12/19/2012 03:45:00 pm

NASA & UFO Hacker Gary McKinnon Will Not Face Prosecution in UK

Infamous NASA hacker Gary McKinnon who broke into US government computer system, while hunting for evidence of UFOs and fought a long fight against extradition, has been told that he will now not face prosecution in the UK. After discussing the case with US Department of Justice and the police, The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided the appropriate jurisdiction for the McKinnon case to be heard is the US. According to Karen Todner, McKinnon's solicitor, the decision on Friday is an "interesting" one given that he was first arrested and questioned by UK police.

The reasons for that decision were:
  1. The harm occurred in the US - the activity was directed against the military infrastructure of the US;
  2. An investigation had already been launched in the US;
  3. There were a large number of witnesses, most of whom were located in the US;
  4. All of the physical evidence (with the exception of Mr McKinnon's computer) was located in the US;
  5. The US prosecutors were able to bring a case that reflected the full extent of Mr McKinnon's alleged criminality; and
  6. The bulk of the unused material was located in the US. Given the nature of the offences, this inevitably included highly sensitive information and the US courts were best placed to deal with any issues arising in relation to this material.

In a statement, the CPS's Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Kier Starmer QC, and Mark Rowley, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said that they had convened a joint panel to discuss the issue and decide whether a new criminal investigation should take place. They decided that the original reasoning for the trial being held in the US still held, and looked into the possibility of holding the trial in the UK. This would have involved transferring witnesses and sensitive physical evidence to the UK. The panel consulted with the US Department of Justice as to whether this would be possible, given that they believed that "the prospects of a conviction against Mr McKinnon, which reflects the full extent of his alleged criminality, are not high".
According to the statement, the US authorities "indicated to us that they would be willing to co-operate with a prosecution in England and Wales if that would serve the interests of justice." However, the US authorities did not feel that transferring all the witnesses and evidence to the UK would be in that interest, given the panel's representations. The statement goes on to say: "That is a decision the US authorities are fully entitled to reach and we respect their decision." On that basis, the panel concluded that a new criminal investigation should not be started and the Assistant Commissioner accepted that advice.





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Anonymous Retaliates For Megaupload Shutdown & Bring Down DOJ & FBI (#OpMegaupload)

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 1/20/2012 09:23:00 pm


Federal authorities shut down one of the Web’s most popular sites Thursday on charges that it illegally shared movies, television shows, e-books and so on. In the payback hacktvist Anonymous called #OpMegaupload performed "The Largest Attack Ever" where 5,635 Anon people bring down the websites of Universal Music, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Recording Industry Association of America while using one of the world's most popular and vastly used DDoSer LOIC. 

"The government takes down Megaupload? 15 minutes later Anonymous takes down government and record label sites,"  Tweeted by Anonymous. That note was followed shortly by this one: "Megaupload was taken down w/out SOPA being law. Now imagine what will happen if it passes. The Internet as we know it will end. FIGHT BACK." The tweet referred to the Stop Online Piracy Act, an Internet piracy bill being considered in the U.S. Congress. 
Detailing the attacks, which are being dubbed as the largest performed by the group, via numerous Twitter feeds, @YourAnonNews said: "You cannot censor the internet. You cannot subpoena a hashtag. You cannot arrest an idea. You CAN expect us #OpMegaupload"


The link is a page on the anonymous web hosting site pastehtml. It link loads a web-based version of the program Anonymous has used for years to DDoS websites: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. (LOIC). When activated, LOIC rapidly reloads a target website, and if enough users point LOIC at a site at once, it can crash from the traffic. Judging from a Twitter search, the link is being shared at a rate of about 4 times a minute, mostly by Spanish-speaking users, for some reason. (Here's a link to the Twitter search, just don't click the PasteHTML link.)
The thing is, DDoSing is a criminal offense that could earn you 10 years in prison, if you do it intentionally. With previous versions of LOIC, participants had to acknowledge this risk and press a button labeled "fire." But now, it appears some enterprising anonymous member has retooled it so that it automatically fires if you click an unassuming link and leave a window open.
Megaupload.com distributed a variety of digital content, including music and movies. Investigators say Megaupload’s executives made more than $175 million through subscription fees and online ads while robbing authors, movie producers, musicians and other copyright holders of more than $500 million. “This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice Department and FBI said in a statement.
On Thursday, the U.S. DOJ announced that it had charged seven people who allegedly were affiliated with the site with running an organized criminal enterprise responsible for worldwide online piracy of copyrighted content. The DOJ worked with authorities in New Zealand, who arrested four of the seven people.

"Twitter - @AnonymousWiki
January 19th, 2012
Popular file-sharing website megaupload.com gets shutdown by U.S Justice - FBI and charged its founder with violating piracy laws. Four Megaupload members were also arrested. The FBI released a press release on its website which you can view here: 
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/justice-department-charges-leaders-of-megaupload-with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement
We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn't think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.
#OpMegaupload 
The following sites were taken down in response to the FBI shutting down megaupload.com
:) TANGO DOWN


justice.gov
universalmusic.com
riaa.org
mpaa.org
copyright.gov
hadopi.fr
wmg.com
usdoj.gov
bmi.com
fbi.gov
..."

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#OpIreland- Department Of Foreign Affairs Ireland Hacked By Anonymous

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 2/03/2012 09:34:00 pm

#OpIreland- Department Of Foreign Affairs Ireland Hacked By Anonymous 
Protest against controversial act called SOPA, PIPA & ACTA continues. Anonymous hackers from Sweden stated a campaign named "#OpIreland" and mounted DDoS attacks against the websites of the aforementioned politician and junior minister Seán Sherlock, and the Departments of Finance and Justice last week, and sent them offline for certain time. Last night this hacker group turned their sights towards a number of websites tun by the Department of Foreign Affairs, but this time they took it upon themselves to do more damage. As a result the have breached the security and stolen senstivie data such as Full Name, Email-id, Password. All the leaks are posted on a pastebin release by the hacker group. In a twitter release @AnonOpsSweden took responsibility of this security breach.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed the breach but said that other servers belonging to the Department were not compromised. The Irish Aid website is still down as the Department's IT specialists are investigating the matter.
Earlier for #SOPAblackout issue anon has performed massive cyber attack. And also for #OpMegaupload they have bring down Federal Authorities, US Govt, Brazil Govt, Ireland's Dept of Finance & Justice, CBS TV Network, UFC.com and many more. 



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Justice Department saysGoogle product doesn't really have security credential

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 4/25/2011 01:12:00 pm

Google Inc. has maintained that its suite of office products aimed at government clients has been certified under a law that mandates strict information security rules for federal agencies.  But the Justice Department says that's not the case.
Google has maintained that Google Apps for Government, the company's government-focused email and office software product, is certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act, known as FISMA. FISMA requirements derive from a 2002 law designed to safeguard and manage digital information used by federal government agencies.  
Google has been trying to win more clients in the lucrative government email market, long dominated by rival Microsoft Corp. Building a special, extra-secure government version of its popular Google Apps software has been key to those efforts, and in various promotional and support documents, Google says its government offering is certified and accredited under FISMA.
But in documents unsealed last week as part of a lawsuit that Google filed in October against the Department of the Interior, the Justice Department disagrees.
In its recent brief, Justice Department lawyers wrote that "notwithstanding Google's representations to the public at large, its counsel, the [Government Accountability Office], and this Court, it appears that Google's Google Apps for Government does not have FISMA certification."
The brief cites a December email in which a security officer at the U.S. General Services Administration, which issues the certifications, tells another official that "google for government does not have a c and a yet," referring to a FISMA certification and accreditation, but that the company was seeking the credential.
The General Services Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google has responded that the consumer and business version of its office software -- Google Apps -- did receive a FISMA certification last July from the GSA.
"Google Apps for Government is the same system with enhanced security controls that go beyond FISMA requirements," said David Mihalchik, who oversees Google's government software intiatives, in a statement. He noted that Google "did not mislead the court or our customers."
In January, a judge granted Google a preliminary injunction in its case against the Interior department, in which Google alleged that in the agency's process to procure a new email system for its 88,000 employees, it had illegally skewed the bidding process to favor Microsoft products.
Microsoft jumped on the unsealed documents on Monday morning, with its Deputy General Council David Howard noting in a blog post the apparent contrast between Google's claims and those by the Justice Department.
"When it comes to security," Howard wrote, "the facts matter."
The city of Los Angeles has partially adopted Google's government email system for some of its 30,000 employees.

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Uganda Under Cyber Attack, 5 Govt. Site Hacked By Rwandan Hackers

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 2/15/2012 05:44:00 pm

Uganda Under Cyber Attack, 5 Govt. Site Hacked By Rwandan Hackers
Uganda under massive cyber attack. A hacker group named Rwandan Hackers took responsibility of this attack. Hackers targeted the official website of Ministry of Internal Affairs, Justice Law and Order Sector, Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Uganda, The Petroleum Exploration and Production Department of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development & National Medical Stores - Uganda. 
In this attack the hacker has hacked the database of all those sites and in a pastebin release he has posted all the credentials including server details, tables, user credentials, admin password hash and so on. According to the hacker the main aim of this cyber attack is "Freedom of the Press in Uganda"

Message Of the Hackers:-
"A new bill tabled before parliament threatens the freedom of the press in Uganda. The country's journalists need the world to speak out against it
that's why we hack uganda gov website.
One of the reasons why Museveni was originally labelled one of a new breed of African leaders was because of media freedoms. Magazines and newspapers thrived under the new "visionary" leader and broadcast media were liberalised, leading to the creation, over the years, of more than 150 private radio and television stations.
There have always been cracks in this relationship between state and the fourth estate, but they have become ever more glaring over the last 10 years, characterised by harassment of journalists critical of the government and the closure of media houses. In Uganda today, radio stations, especially those upcountry, in more rural areas where most Ugandans live, are considered very brave to host senior opposition figures, like Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change. Some stations have denied him paid-for airtime, citing "orders from above" or for fear of being blacklisted by the Intelligence and the Broadcasting Council.
But the latest assault on the media, which has sent chills down the spines of independent newspaper editors, is the press and journalists (amendment) bill 2010. Reports indicate it has been tabled in Cabinet, although a minister recently said it is yet to be discussed...."



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Anonymous Hit Brazil Govt. #OpMegaupload Continues

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 1/23/2012 12:13:00 am

 Anonymous Hit Brazil Govt. #OpMegaupload Continues
Operation Megaupload (#OpMegaupload) continues. This operation was started by Hacktivist Anonymous while protesting against the shutting down of Web’s most popular site Megaupload By Federal authorities. In the 1st payback Anon bring down US Dept. Of Justice, FBI & many other federal authorities sites. And that attack was considered as the "Largest Attack Ever" where 5,635 Anon people bring down the websites of Universal Music, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Recording Industry Association of America while using one of the world's most popular and vastly used DDoSer LOIC. 
But yet its not over Anonymous attacked websites of Brazil's federal district and Tangara da Serra city to protest the forced closure of Megaupload.com. Anonymous posted messages on Twitter describing attacks against hundreds of Brazilian sites that share the URL 'df.gov.br,' which are owned by the government of the federal capital in Rio de Janeiro. The Federal District press office denied Saturday that the hackers succeeded in shutting down the websites. The hackers did succeed in shutting down the website of popular Brazilian singer Paula Fernandes. They posted the image of a grim-faced joker with a message saying, "If Megaupload is down, you are down too."


In a statistic it is found that Since Last week more than 66,500 people from different part of the world have downloaded LOIC and taken part in #OpMegaupload 

Anonymous Message:- 






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AnonOps- Anonymous-OS Is Fake & Wrapped In Trojans (Anonymous Vs. Anonymous)

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 3/16/2012 07:33:00 pm

AnonOps- Anonymous-OS Is Fake & Wrapped In Trojans (Anonymous Vs. Anonymous)
Yesterday we cover the release of Anonymous-OS, which was claimed to be the first Operating System made by hacker collective Anonymous. But now we are facing a complete different scenario. After the release of the OS one of the so called official twitter account of Anon tweeted about the OS "The Anon OS is fake it is wrapped in trojans". From this tweet the controversy begins which takes two direction, one saying Anonymous did not release their own operating system and other saying the OS have certain backdoors, malware & trojan installed. In a SourceForge project page this Anonymous-OS was first made available but later the SourceForge Authority said that they have removed the page and also the distribution from their server as significant concerns were raised concerning the software bundle's authenticity and possible maliciousness. According to their official blog post :- 
Yesterday we starting hearing some buzz about a new project called “Anonymous-OS” - people claiming that it was not affiliated in any way with the group referring to itself as “Anonymous". We looked at the project, and decided that although the name of the project was misleading (we see no evidence that it is connected with Anonymous) it appeared, on initial glance, to be a security-related operating system, with, perhaps, an attack-oriented emphasis. We have, in the past, taken a consistent stance on “controversial” projects - that is, we don’t pass judgement based on what’s possible with a product, but rather consider it to be amoral - neither good nor bad - until someone chooses to take action with it.
VOGH Review:-
Anonymous-OS was based on Ubuntu 11.10 with number of hacking tools like HOIC, Sqlmap, Havij, Zenmap & so on. Basically the OS was represented to be a pentest distro. But just after the time of release a controversy came while saying - is the OS safe? In this issue the previous track record of Anonymous was not good. Remember few days ago in a report Symantec have discovered that a piece of Anonymous-recommended DDoS software called Slowloris contained an insidious Trojan that was stealing financial info from people using it. In #OpMegaupload, the largest attack ever where 5,635 Anon people bring down the websites of Universal Music, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Recording Industry Association of America while using one of the world's most popular and vastly used DDoSer LOIC. But in reality thousands of people has been tricked by Anon in the named of cause and justice. Here again the history repeated. In the so it's Anon Vs. Anon.


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3 Russian Cyber Criminal Who Was The Master Mind of Banking Trojan 'Gozi' Charged in New York

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 2/01/2013 08:53:00 pm

3 Russian Cyber Criminal Who Was The Master Mind of Banking Trojan 'Gozi' Charged in New York 

Yet again another serious issue of cyber crime get resolved when the FBI tracked and figured out the master mind of infamous 'Gozi banking Trojan' which effected more than millions of system world wide, including a handful at NASA, leading to tens of millions of dollars in lost banking funds and damages to computer systems and networks. Three alleged international cyber criminals from Russia, responsible for creating and distributing 'Gozi' that infected over one million computers and caused tens of millions of dollars in losses charged in Manhattan Federal Court. Mihai Ionut Paunescu aged 28, a Romanian, Deniss Calovskis, 27, a Latvian, and Nikita Vladimirovich Kuzmin, 25, of the Russian Federation, are charged with computer intrusion, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and access device fraud. Federal authorities said the three were arrested last week; Kuzmin is being held in New York, while Paunescu is in custody in Romania and Calovskis in Latvia. 
According to the press release of FBI -Deniss Calovskis, a/k/a “Miami,” a Latvian national who allegedly wrote some of the computer code that made the Gozi virus so effective, was arrested in Latvia in November 2012. Mihai Ionut Paunescu, a/k/a “Virus,” a Romanian national who allegedly ran a “bulletproof hosting” service that enabled cyber criminals to distribute the Gozi virus, the Zeus trojan, and other notorious malware and to conduct other sophisticated cyber crimes, was arrested in Romania in December 2012. 

The cases are being handled by the Complex Frauds Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Lai, Nicole Friedlander, and Thomas G.A. Brown, along with Trial Attorney Carol Sipperly of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice on the Paunescu case, are in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Indictments are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

DefendantAge and ResidenceChargesMaximum Penalty
Nikita Kuzmin25; Moscow, RussiaConspiracy to commit bank fraud; bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; computer intrusion95 years in prison
Deniss Calovskis27; Riga, LatviaConspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft67 years in prison
Mihai Ionut Paunescu28; Bucharest, RomaniaConspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit wire fraud60 years in prison


Brief About Gozi:-
The Gozi virus is malicious computer code, or “malware,” that steals personal bank account information, including usernames and passwords, from the users of affected computers. It was named by private sector information security experts in the U.S. who, in 2007, discovered that previously unrecognized malware was stealing personal bank account information from computers across Europe on a vast scale, while remaining virtually undetectable in the computers it infected. To date, the Gozi virus has infected over one million victim computers worldwide, among them at least 40,000 computers in the U.S., including computers belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as computers in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, France, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere, and it has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to the individuals, businesses, and government entities whose computers were infected.

The Gozi virus was distributed to victims’ computers in several different ways. In one method, the virus was disguised as an apparently benign .pdf document which, when opened, secretly installed the Gozi virus on the victim’s computer. Once installed, the Gozi virus—which was intentionally designed to be undetectable by anti-virus software—collected data from the infected computer in order to capture personal bank account information including usernames and passwords. That data was then transmitted to various computer servers controlled by the cyber criminals who used the Gozi virus. These cyber criminals then used the personal bank account information to transfer funds out of the victims’ bank accounts and ultimately into their own personal possession.


For Detailed Information Click Here


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US National Archives Has Blocked Search Containing 'WikiLeaks'

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 11/07/2012 04:13:00 am

US National Archives Has Blocked Search Containing 'WikiLeaks'

The movement of WikiLeaks faced another bar, as the searches for “WikiLeaks” in the public search engine for the US National Archives have been blocked. Any search containing the word “WikiLeaks (like “Congress” and “WikiLeaks”; "Obama" and "WikiLeaks") turns up an error message saying "The page you have requested has been blocked, because the URL is banned" as shown the picture below.

The whistle blowing website of WikiLeaks already lashed out at the move, saying the Archives has  literally turned into “Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.” In a tweet the official twitter account of WikiLeaks said “The US state is literally eating its own brain by censoring its own collective memories about WikiLeaks.” And, in another tweet WikiLeaks said, “The US National Archives censoring searches for its records containing the word ‘WikiLeaks’ is absolutely absurd.” 
The block is likely to be in line with the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act,” a form of internet censorship the US adopted back in 2010. It did not become law, but it prompted various US government agencies such as the White House Office of Management and Budget and the US Air Force to advise their employees not to read or access classified documents being made available by sites like WikiLeaks. The Library of Congress went further by blocking access to WikiLeaks content from its server in 2010. According to the official blog post of  Library of Congress “The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information.  Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.” The White House’s Office of Management and Budget today provided the guidance that “federal agencies collectively, and each federal employee and contractor individually, are obligated to protect classified information pursuant to all applicable laws, as well as to protect the integrity of government information technology systems.” -said Matt Raymond in the blog post of LOC. 
Though it is unknown when the Archives began blocking searches, but according to diplomatic cables released over the past months the US Justice Department’s investigation targeting of both Assange and WikiLeaks is real. So may be this block has connection or may be a return from the U.S. Govt of the last release of WikiLeaks that is  'Detainee Policies'  in what it said more than 100 classified or otherwise restricted files from the United States Department of Defense covering the rules and procedures for detainees in U.S. military custody. At the moment WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as the UK has forcefully asserted that it will deny him safe passage to Ecuador. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum in August over fears that if extradited to Sweden, Assange could be transferred to the US and once there, face execution.



-Source (RT)





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