Showing posts sorted by relevance for query FBI. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query FBI. Sort by date Show all posts

FBI Arrested Anonymous Hacker After Posting Girlfriend's Abusive Photo

FBI Arrested Anonymous Hacker After Posting Girlfriend's Abusive Photo 
FBI arrested  a 30-year-old computer programmer from Galveston named Higinio O. Ochoa III, who is widely known as @AnonW0rmer. He was active member of Anonymous affiliated 'CabinCr3w' He made a mistake that probably makes his fellow hackers cringe at the stupidity of it. Taunting law enforcement, he posted a photo of his girlfriend from the neck down, breasts pushed up with a sign taped to her saying ''PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w <3 u B****'s!' 
Trouble is, the photo was taken with an iPhone...with GPS co-ordinates embedded in the photo. The FBI said it confirmed the identity of Ochoa, who calls himself 'w0rmer' online and is a member of 'CabinCr3w', an offshoot of hacking group Anonymous. GPS co-ordinates embedded in the photo - as are found in all pictures taken by a smartphone - showed authorities the exact street and house in Wantirna South, Melbourne where it was taken. Different tweets from @Anonw0rmer pointed to other sites referring to 'w0rmer', including one which had Ochoa's name with it and more pictures of his girlfriend. Authorities then found Ochoa's Facebook page, on which he named Kylie Gardner from Australia as his girlfriend. The FBI was then satisfied she was the woman in the photo taken in South Wantirna. Even though the breasts photo does not show the woman's face, the FBI is convinced it is the same woman. They add it is definitive proof that Ochoa is w0rmer.  
In a post allegedly written by Ochoa on Pastebin, he said 'around 8 agents from the FBI stormed my apartment'. He was taken to an FBI office in Houston where he paid a $50,000 bail. Ochoa appeared in court on April 10 before a magistrate, where the photograph evidence above was revealed in the FBI's affidavit. It comes a month after former Lulzsec leader and Anonymous member Sabu was revealed as an FBI informant. But in the Pastebin post, Ochoa claimed he was not guilty of the same betrayal.
He wrote: 'I did tell FBI that I would participate in the capture of my fellow crew mates, a play which undoubtfully both satisfied and confused the FBI. Those however who know me best would vouch for me undoutfully that doing so would put this movement at risk. ALL information provided to the FBI merely made MY case weaker and caused internal confusion showing the inherent weakness in the system.'




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FBI's Cybercrime Unit Taken New Initiative to Nab Hackers & Intruders

FBI's Cybercrime Unit Taken New Initiative to Nab Hackers & Intruders 

The month of October has been declared by FBI as the National Cyber Security Awareness Month of 2012 , and in the last week of this month the cyber crime division of FBI has started a new program which will specially emphasis on hackers and intrusion. The main aim of this program is to focusing on hackers and to prevent cyber crime. Last month  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a report based on information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) detailing recentcyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams. Now the recent movement of FBI will surely inject fear into the heart & mind of hackers. According to FBI's official release - Early last year, hackers were discovered embedding malicious software in two million computers, opening a virtual door for criminals to rifle through users’ valuable personal and financial information. Last fall, an overseas crime ring was shut down after infecting four million computers, including half a million in the U.S. In recent months, some of the biggest companies and organizations in the U.S. have been working overtime to fend off continuous intrusion attacks aimed at their networks. The scope and enormity of the threat—not just to private industry but also to the country’s heavily networked critical infrastructure—was spelled out last month in Director Robert S. Mueller’s testimony to a Senate homeland security panel: “Computer intrusions and network attacks are the greatest cyber threat to our national security.”
To that end, the FBI over the past year has put in place an initiative to uncover and investigate web-based intrusion attacks and develop a cadre of specially trained computer scientists able to extract hackers’ digital signatures from mountains of malicious code. Agents are cultivating cyber-oriented relationships with the technical leads at financial, business, transportation, and other critical infrastructures on their beats. 

Today, investigators in the field can send their findings to specialists in the FBI Cyber Division’s Cyber Watch command at Headquarters, who can look for patterns or similarities in cases. The 24/7 post also shares the information with partner intelligence and law enforcement agencies—like the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and the National Security Agencyon the FBI-led National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force.
A key aim of the Next Generation Cyber Initiative has been to expand our ability to quickly define “the attribution piece” of a cyber attack to help determine an appropriate response, said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Bureau’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. “The attribution piece is: who is conducting the attack or the exploitation and what is their motive,” McFeely explained. “In order to get to that, we’ve got to do all the necessary analysis to determine who is at the other end of the keyboard perpetrating these actions.”
The Cyber Division’s main focus now is on cyber intrusions, working closely with the Bureau’s Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions.  “We are obviously concerned with terrorists using the Internet to conduct these types of attacks,” McFeely said. “As the lead domestic intelligence agency within the United States, it’s our job to make sure that businesses’ and the nation’s secrets don’t fall into the hands of adversaries.”
In the Coreflood case in early 2011, hackers enlisted a botnet—a network of infected computers—to do their dirty work. McFeely urged everyone connected to the Internet to be vigilant against computer viruses and malicious code, lest they become victims or unwitting pawns in a hacker or web-savvy terrorist’s malevolent scheme.
“It’s important that everybody understands that if you have a computer that is outward-facing—that it’s connected to the web—that your computer is at some point going to be under attack,” he said. “You need to be aware of the threat and you need to take it seriously.” 


To Listen the Podcast of FBI's "“The intrusions are occurring 24/7, 365 days a year.” Click Here






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FBI Agent's Laptop Hacked, 12 Million Apple UDID Stolen By Anonymous (#FFF)

FBI Agent's Laptop Hacked, 12 Million Apple UDID Stolen By Anonymous (#FFF)

#Antisec an Offshoot part of infamous hacker collective Anonymous claims to have stolen a file from an FBI laptop which contained more than 12 million unique Apple device indentity numbers. The hackers declares this hack as part of their Friday rampage (#FFF) though the breach did not took place on Friday
The data which hackers stole came from a laptop belonging to Supervisor Special Agent at the FBI, Christopher K. StanglStangl, who joined the FBI in 2003 after graduating from Monmouth University, has been with the agency for nine and a half years and won an award in 2010 for helping bust a cyber crime ring. He was also sucked into another Anonymous stunt earlier this year when at least one of their supporters breached an FBI conference call that had been discussing Anonymous and LulzSec. Stangl was listed among those invited into the call, in an e-mail that was posted on PastebinIn a video posted to Facebook in 2009 (and which will likely be getting a lot more views in the coming days), Stangl is shown wearing a dark suit and tie, speaking to the camera, and calling for “cyber security experts” to join the FBI.

According to the hacker :-

"During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of “NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose."

The data is just part of a larger database of 12,367,232 UDIDs, and personal information such as full names, cellphone numbers, addresses and zipcodes belonging to Apple customers. The data was allegedly stolen via exploiting a Java vulnerability. In a pastebin note, the hacker posted several download links of the hacked database. Several security experts have already stated that the stolen data is correct. For those you are not familiar with the term UDID -Each iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) is assigned a unique alphanumeric number known as a UDID. This was previously used by app developers to track data usage for their apps, until Apple decided to reject any apps which sought to gain access to this number in the most recent official iOS update. As well as believing that the FBI was using these identifiers to track people, though AnticSec, in its missive on Pastebin, said it didn't agree with the idea of hardware coded identifiers anyway: "We always thought it (UDIDs) was a really bad idea. That hardware coded IDs for devices concept should be eradicated from any device on the market in the future." To read the full press release of #Antisec click Here




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FBI Started National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012

FBI Started National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012

Last week the  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a report based on information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) detailing recent cyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams. As you all know that the Month of October is celebrated as National Cyber Security Awareness Month for last nine years. This year also FBI declared the October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012. According to the official blog of FBI - the threat has continued to grow even more complex and sophisticated. Just 12 days ago, in fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that “cyber security may well become our highest priority in the years to come.” 

For its part, the FBI is strengthening its cyber operations to sharpen its focus on the greatest cyber threats to national security: computer intrusions and network attacks. We are enhancing the technological capabilities of all investigative personnel and hiring additional computer scientists to provide expert technical support to critical investigations. We are creating two distinct task forces in each field office: Cyber Task Forces, focused on intrusions and network attacks that will draw on our existing cyber squads; and Child Exploitation Task Forces, focused on crimes against children. We are also increasing the size and scope of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force—the FBI-led multi-agency focal point for coordinating and sharing cyber threat information to stop current and future attacks.

The FBI also runs several other cyber-related programs, including the Innocent Images National Initiative—which combats online child predators—and the Internet Crime Complaint Center—a partnership between the Bureau and the National White Collar Crime Center that serves as a clearinghouse for triaging cyber complaints and provides an easy-to-use online tool for reporting these complaints.

Because of the interconnectedness of online systems, every American who uses digital technologies at home or in the office can—and must—play a part in cyber security. For example, if you open a virus-laden e-mail attachment at work, you could infect your entire company’s computer network. Don’t be the weakest link: get educated on cyber safety.

Here are a few basic steps you can take to be more secure:

  • Set strong passwords, and don’t share them with anyone.
  • Keep a clean machine—your operating system, browser, and other critical software are optimized by installing regular updates.
  • Maintain an open dialogue with your family, friends, and community about Internet safety.
  • Limit the amount of personal information you post online, and use privacy settings to avoid sharing information widely.
  • Be cautious about what you receive or read online—if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.


Visit the links below for more tips on protecting your computers and other electronic devices, information on cyber threats, and details on how to report cyber crimes or scams:



For more information:






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Anonymous Member John Anthony Borell Charged For Hacking into Utah Police & Salt Lake City Police Dept

Anonymous Member John Anthony Borell Charged For Hacking into Utah Police & Salt Lake City Police Dept

FBI successfully tracked the #OpPiggyBank of Anonymous where two hackers from Anonymous named CabinCr3w & ItsKahuna took responsibility of hacking into the database of the Salt Lake City PD and exposed confidential information such as Full name of the Employ, Address, Phone Number, email-id, password hash and so on. According to a report of Huffington Post - An Ohio man linked to the hacker collective "Anonymous" pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of breaching the websites of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association and the Salt Lake City Police Department. John Anthony Borell III took credit for the attacks on Twitter, said FBI officials, who subpoenaed the direct messages the suspect traded with Salt Lake City reporters. The FBI traced Borell's Twitter account to a workplace computer.
"That didn't hurt the investigation, of course, when people make comments like that," FBI agent David Johnson said Monday. Borell appeared with a public defender at federal court in Salt Lake City after being released from a halfway house for the appearance. He faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on two counts of computer intrusion, prosecutors said. FBI agents say they don't know what motivated an Ohio man to tamper with the Utah police websites in January. Prosecutors say Borell intruded on the chiefs' website server Jan. 19, then broke into the police department's website Jan. 31. Salt Lake City police spent $33,000 to repair damage to their website and shore up security, and the hacker was able to access citizen's supposedly confidential crime tips and even some personal information on police officers, Johnson said. Borell was recently arrested after Federal Bureau of Investigations agents found him using Twitter and Internet Relay Chat logs. The investigation was spurred by two tips sent in to tips.fbi.gov and ic3.gov that stated Borell was a member of hacking collective Anonymous. It also provided a number of pseudonyms he was associated with including Kahuna, TehTiger, and anonJB.
The indictment states that Borell used the SQL Injection technique to access and take down the websites utahchiefs.org and slcpd.com (Salt Lake City Police Department). The FBI found Twitter direct messages and tweets in which Borell admitted to taking down the websites. Further proof of his identity was found when the FBI looked through chat logs in IRC. There, Borell explained that his father was an attorney and was advising him against talking to the FBI. Agents searched Ohio-based attorneys and found two local attorneys named “John Anthony Borell Esq.”
We would also like to give you reminder that another member of Anonymous affiliated CabinCr3w named Higinio O. Ochoa III, also get busted after he posted girlfriend's breast photo.




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FBI Used LulzSec To Track & Spy on Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

FBI Used LulzSec To Track & Spy on Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

After the inside story of Anonymous former leader Hector Xavier Monsegur aka "Sabu" case get revealed, the world came to know that Sabu was working as an under cover agent of FBI which lead a series of arrest for several key members of hacker collective Anonymous & LulzSec. Now we got another twist which came from a new book written by Parmy Olson, the London bureau chief for Forbes Magazine, saying that FBI used an agent inside the LulzSec hacker group to track and spy on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to the book, an associate of WikiLeaks contacted LulzSec spokesman Topiary on June 16 hours after the assault on the CIA. The two would eventually converse over an Internet Relay Chat channel that was reported to be witnessed by Assange, who confirmed his identity by providing a video to the hacker in real time during their chat. For a few weeks, writes Olson, Assange and/or his associate returned to the LulzSec IRC channel “four or five more times,” during which others occasionally engaged in conversation with both sides. During at least one of those conversations, Assange’s contact at WikiLeaks offered LulzSec a spreadsheet of classified government data contained in a file named RSA 128, which she says was heavily encrypted and needed the manpower of black hat hacktivists to decode.
According to an exclusive report of RT - Aside from a few unsealed court documents, details about the now-defunct hacktivism group LulzSec remains few and far between. One journalist is saying she got inside the organization though — along with Julian Assange.
“We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency” is an upcoming book from Parmy Olson, the London bureau chief for Forbes Magazine. And although her alleged account has not yet hit the shelves, a lengthy excerpt has been leaked to the Web — and its contents suggest that that the world’s once most powerful hacking collective was in correspondence with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he allegedly reached out to the organization for assistance. The US government says that they had already infiltrated LulzSec by then, though, meaning that WikiLeak’s plea to the hacking collective was actually being offered to an FBI mole.
According to Olson, the June 2011 attack on the public website of the US Central Intelligence Agency by LulzSec caught the attention of Assange, who was residing in the countryside manor of an English journalist while on house arrest.Once he saw that a LulzSec-led invasion had crippled CIA.gov, Assange allegedly sent out two tweets from the WikiLeaks Twitter account, only to delete the micomessages shortly after:
"WikiLeaks supporters, LulzSec, take down CIA . . . who has a task force into WikiLeaks," read one."CIA finally learns the real meaning of WTF” reads the other.
Assange “didn't want to be publicly associated with what were clearly black hat hackers” writes Olson, speaking of computer compromisers who target network for perhaps no real intention other than mischief making. “Instead, he decided it was time to quietly reach out to the audacious new group that was grabbing the spotlight,” she says. Olson says that one of those hackers aware the newfangled relationship was Hector Xavier Monsegur, who spearheaded LulzSec by serving as a leader of sorts under the handle Sabu. Perhaps unbeknownst to all engaged in the IRC chats, however, was that Sabu had been arrested on June 7 and, according to the federal government, began immediately working as an FBI informant.
"Since literally the day he was arrested, the defendant has been cooperating with the government proactively," Assistant US Attorney James Pastore said at a secret bail hearing on August 5 2011, according to a transcript released this March after his arrest was made public.
While details of Sabu’s escapades under the direct influence of the FBI are obviously being kept confidential, federal attorneys have said that the hacker more or less masterminded the group under their command until LulzSec dissolved on June 25; Jake Davis — Topiary — was arrested in the UK on August 1. If Olson’s allegations add up, that could mean that the FBI’s top-secret informant, Sabu, was speaking directly with America’s cyber-enemy number one: Julian Assange.
On Wednesday this week, the UK Supreme Court agreed to extradite Assange to Sweden, where he is facing a lawsuit unrelated to his involvement with WikiLeaks. Once there, however, the United States may be able to more easily fight to have him sent stateside to be charged with aiding the enemy — the crime being pegged to alleged WikiLeaks contributor Bradley Manning, who now faces life in prison for that involvement. The uncertainty of who exactly conversed with whom might be near impossible to confirm given the widespread anonymity of hacktivists tied with LulzSec and Anonymous alike, but if Olson’s account adds up, the FBI’s inside man may very well have come close to working with Assange. On his part, Topiary claims that he never received the RSA 128 file.




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FBI & NCFTA Combining Forces to Fight Better Against Cyber Crime



Long before it was acknowledged to be a significant criminal and national security threat, the FBI established a forward-looking organization to proactively address the issue of cyber crime. Since its creation in 1997, the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), based in Pittsburgh, has become an international model for bringing together law enforcement, private industry, and academia to share information to stop emerging cyber threats and mitigate existing ones.
“The exchange of strategic and threat intelligence is really the bread and butter of the NCFTA,” said Special Agent Eric Strom, who heads the FBI unit—the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU)—assigned to the NCFTA. “The success of this effort at every level comes down to the free flow of information among our partners.”
When the nonprofit NCFTA was established, the biggest threat to industry was from spam—those annoying unsolicited e-mails that fill up inboxes. Today, the organization deals with malicious computer viruses, stock manipulation schemes, telecommunication scams, and other financial frauds perpetrated by organized crime groups who cause billions of dollars in losses to companies and consumers.
The NCFTA essentially works as an early-warning system. If investigators for a major banking institution, for example, notice a new kind of malware attacking their network, they immediately pass that information to other NCFTA members. Alliance members—many have staff permanently located at the NCFTA—then develop strategies to mitigate the threat. FBI agents and analysts from CIRFU, also located at NCFTA headquarters, use that information to open or further existing FBI investigations, often in concert with law enforcement partners around the world.
“Cyber crime has changed so much since those early days of spamming,” Strom said. “And the threat continues to evolve globally, which is why the NCFTA’s work is so critical to both business and law enforcement.”
The organization draws its intelligence from hundreds of private-sector members, Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). That extensive knowledge base has helped CIRFU play a key role in some of the FBI’s most significant cyber cases in the past several years. (See sidebar.)

-News Source (NCFTA & FBI)


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


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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An army of techies waging war on spam




It's a vast, invisible battle, going on all the time - and, unbeknownst to you, your computer may be one of the battlegrounds.
The struggle pits thousands of smart, evil folks, who send out trillions of pieces of spam e-mail, against the people in law enforcement and business guarding against them and trying to shut them down.
On the front lines against spam and cybercrime, some analyze malicious computer code (malware), and others - in the young science of cyberforensics - examine computers and drives confiscated in investigations.
Spam - hated word - is again in the news. A May 3 FBI alert warned of e-mail carrying purported images or videos of Osama bin Laden. "This will leave you speechless)," the spam says. "See picture of bin laden dead!"
Don't even open it, warned the alert. "This malicious software or malware can embed itself in computers and spread to users' contact lists, thereby infecting the systems of associates, friends, and family members."
Pumped out by networks (botnets) of malware-enslaved personal computers, unwanted e-mail - random junk, ads, porn, viruses, Trojan horses, get-rich-quick offers from Nigerian nobility - makes up most of all e-mail sent in the world. By far. Estimates range around 80 percent - but a 2007 Microsoft security report in October put it at 97 percent. It ranges from crud to criminal. As for malware, the United States has about 2.2 million computers (more than any other country) infected, according to Microsoft numbers (likely to be low).
"I guarantee," says FBI Special Agent Brian Herrick, director of the FBI Cyber Crime Squad in Philadelphia, "that thousands of Inquirer readers probably have computers infected with spam or malware, part of a botnet just pumping out spam."
The cyberthugs have an advantage, says Special Agent Cerena Coughlin, also of the Cyber Crime Squad. "We can stop them for a while, but they always come up with ways to circumvent it. And we're more restricted. We have to follow the letter of the law - they don't."
The extent of it is staggering. Before U.S. marshals took it down in March, the Rustock botnet was pumping out an estimated 30 billion spam e-mails a day. The botnets - big names include ZeuS, SpyEye, Dogma, Koobface, and Alureon - are run by criminal groups that use servers and supercomputers in several countries. Tracing their activity is extremely difficult and calls for highly skilled technical workers.
One of 16 such FBI squads in the country, the Philadelphia Cyber Crime Squad has 15 agents working full-time on cybercrime; the national program began in 1996. Working with national and international agencies, the squad studies and traces viruses, junk, and spam. Cases involve computer intrusions (everything from local hackers to international cyberespionage and terrorism), child exploitation (as in pornography), intellectual-property rights (copyright infringement, movies, music, software, proprietary business secrets), Internet fraud, and identity theft.
Coughlin says, "We are insanely busy. This is the third-busiest squad in the country, because of where it is and all the affected business and government concerns nearby. We don't have enough bodies for all the work there is."
In the Philadelphia area, the FBI joins hands with local businesses such as banks, agribusiness, and utilities (enterprises often attacked by spam and cybercrime) in a group called InfraGard. There are more than 1,400 local members - "So many people want to be part of it that we don't even need to solicit members," Coughlin says.
At monthly meetings, members share information, news, and tips. The FBI gives presentations and talks, and individual members speak about the cases they face. "It's a communication channel," Herrick says, "between the U.S. government and people in industry down in the trenches, looking to protect critical infrastructure."
Current president of the local chapter of InfraGard is Brian Schaeffer, chief information officer of Liberty Bell Bank in Marlton. He says, "I get thousands of cyberattacks a day. A lot of them are idiots just wanting to show what they can do. But a lot of them are looking to access banking information."
Like most banks, Liberty Bell has a strong firewall, "so hackers take a back-door approach," sending bank clients "phishing" e-mails - which pretend to be trustworthy communications but hide nasty intentions. "If a client even opens such an e-mail, they can get into their account information, their contacts, the keys to the kingdom."
Such attacks mean that "not only do I have to defend my own system, but also I try to help the customers with theirs. If their computers get infected, their account and credit information could get sold to strangers, and that could hurt us all." Schaeffer tells of an elderly couple who came to his bank one day, and just by coincidence, a bank clerk brought him a suspicious request "to withdraw a huge amount of money from their account - but there they were, sitting with us, so we knew some hackers had got at their information through e-mail."
He says InfraGard "has given me a network of people I can go to if I see things I never saw before. If I have a question, there's likely to be someone with an answer."
The other side of the battle is cyberforensics. Think of it as CSI with computers. It's happening right now, with the cache of computers, flash drives, and other cyberstuff taken from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. U.S. agents instantly began to analyze this precious trove for criminal evidence - and links to other al-Qaeda operatives.
Work much like this goes on in Radnor at the FBI's Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, one of 16 such labs in the country. As with InfraGard, the flavor is distinctly federal/local. Law enforcement agencies - such as the police departments of Philadelphia, Lancaster, Lower Merion, and Lower Providence - send officers to guest-work at the lab and receive training and experience in fighting computer crime.
Supervisory Special Agent J.P. McDonald directs the lab, which has been involved in some of the highest-profile local investigations of recent years, including the 2007 Fort Dix attack plot, the manhunt for the Coatesville arsonists, the case of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, and the 2007-08 "Bonnie and Clyde" case of Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton, now in prison for fraud and identity theft.
"You can track the growth of cyberforensics along the same timeline as computers," McDonald says. "The FBI's program began in 1999, and, as of the mid-2000s, cyberevidence now has recognition and a firm track record in courts."
The lab is a techie's paradise, with gadgets and screens galore, racks of digital evidence sealed in antistatic wrap, sophisticated hard-drive readers, radiofrequency-shielded spaces, and kiosks for quick analysis of cell phones and thumb drives. "The majority of what we do," McDonald says, "is analysis of what's in a machine, how it got there, and then making a timeline of the history of what got there when."
"People's electronic devices are really an extension of their thoughts," says Philadelphia Police Lt. Edward Monaghan, deputy director of the lab. "If you're into NASCAR, you're likely to have NASCAR stuff in your computer. Thugs who are into drugs and money like to have their pictures taken with drugs, guns, and money. It sounds dumb, but they love it. That's what cyberevidence is all about."
The FBI's Herrick is resigned to a long battle: "There's probably some high school kid someplace in the Midwest - or maybe Europe or Asia someplace - who's cooking up something nobody's ever seen before. You really have to stay on your game with these guys."



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Anonymous Released Sensitive Conference Call Between FBI & Scotland Yard

Anonymous Released Sensitive Conference Call Between FBI & Scotland Yard

Hacktivist Anonymous continuing their F**k Friday rampage. In the last Friday they have recorded & released a sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard. The group released a roughly 15-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking group and its spinoff group LulzSec. FBI source said that "The information was intended for law enforcement," the source also told that those responsible will be held accountable. 
The authenticity of the recording could not be immediately verified and it's unclear how the hacking group obtained it. Names of some of the suspects being discussed were apparently edited from the recording. "The information was illegally obtained and a criminal investigation is underway," FBI spokesman Tim Flannelly told FoxNews.com. He did not provide any additional details.
If authentic, the discussion itself appears quite sensitive. Those on the call talk about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis -- two British suspects linked to Anonymous -- and discuss details of the evidence gathered against other suspects "We've set back arrests of Kayla and T-flow until we know what's happening," 
In a pastebin Anon also released a email titled "Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call" with with all the email-ids of FBI & Scotland Yard officers, time, Access Code and detailed time. In their twitter AnoymousIRC said "The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now." 
Anon made the conference call available for download in mp3 and also released a YouTube video




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Out of four one online criminal are the informer of FBI


One in four computer hackers is secretly working for the FBI and U.S. secret service to inform on their peers, it has been claimed. By threatening long prison sentences, officers have managed successfully to infiltrate communities of the online criminals, recruiting a huge number of informants.
The moles, who are already embedded deep inside the hacking community, are then reporting back to the FBI about large-scale identity fraud in an attempt to earn themselves softer sentences. Some major illegal forums where hackers sell stolen credit card details and forged identities are even being run by the FBI moles, it has been claimed. The management of other sites have been taken over by FBI agents posing as ID theft specialists, or 'carders', where they can use the intelligence to land genuine hackers with lengthy jail sentences. It is thought their work has already managed to put dozens of online criminals in jail - leaving the underground hacking world riddled with paranoia about infiltration. Eric Corley, who publishes 2600, the hacker quarterly, told the Guardian that as many as a quarter of all hackers in the U.S. may have been recruited by authorities as moles. 'Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation, he said.
John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website similar to WikiLeaks that attempts to publish secret documents, added: 'It makes for very tense relationships. There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted.' Among many convictions is the extremely high-profile case of Bradley Manning, who is being held on suspicion of passing on documents to WikiLeaks.
He was shopped to authorities by Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker turned informant.
Lamo, who is viewed in online communities as a 'Judas' and has been called 'the world's most hated hacker', has said: 'Obviously it's been much worse for him but it's certainly been no picnic for me. He followed his conscience, and I followed mine.
Barrett Brown, a spokesman for the 'hacktivist' group Anonymous, told the Guardian: 'The FBI are always there. They are always watching, always in the chatrooms. You don't know who is an informant and who isn't, and to that extent you are vulnerable.'
Kevin Poulsen, senior editor at Wired magazine, added: 'We have already begun to see Anonymous members attack each other and out each other's IP addresses.
'That's the first step towards being susceptible to the FBI.'

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FBI Gave Warning To Hacktivists: You're Breaking The Law


FBI official in charge of cybercrime speaks for the first time with the media specifically about hacktivism. Last July, the FBI executed what is arguably its most public campaign against hacktivists—individuals who breach computer systems to make a political or ideological statement. On Tuesday, July 19, the G-men cuffed 12 men and two women allegedly associated with hacktivist group Anonymous for their supposed involvement in a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack against PayPal's website in December 2010. The July raid appeared to be the largest public indication that the FBI was finally making headway in its investigation of hacktivist activity during a year when groups including Anonymous and LulzSec made a mockery of public- and private-sector computer systems. Between December 2010 and August 2011 alone, they broke into dozens of corporate and government networks with outrage, defiance and glee. In fact, hacktivist activity had long been on the FBI's radar, according to Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. He first noticed it in the late 1990s, when he was working as a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters on computer intrusion cases. At the time, hacktivism consisted mostly of website defacements, he says. Today, it's more menacing. Consider the outcomes of just three data breaches launched in the name of hacktivism.


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PayPal Sent 1,000 IP Addresses List of Anonymous to FBI


In cooperation with the FBI, PayPal sent them a list of about 1,000 IP addresses that carried malicious code during Anonymous' attacks on it last year, which helped agents target specific people in recent raids that led to 16 arrests.
An affidavit filed by Special Agent Chris Thompson reveals that PayPal worked closely with the feds to nail down those responsible for the attacks on it, from the time the attacks started to about a week later, when PayPal found warnings about the FBI sweeps circulating amongst participants in the attacks.  
As early as December, FBI agents had been in contact with Dave Weisman, PayPal's senior manager of its Electronic Crimes and Threat Intelligence Unit. They shared a conference call two days after PayPal was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack in retaliation for suspending donations  to WikiLeaks through its PayPal account. PayPal reported several attacks to the FBI that occurred between Dec. 6 and 10.
On Dec.15, PayPal provided agents with a thumb drive that contained "logs and report detailing information regarding approximately 1,000 IP addresses that sent malicious network packets to PayPal during the DDoS attacks."
The 1,000 IP addresses were derived from logs created by a PayPal-owned Radware device that records the attackers' IP addresses and the malicious signature it's programmed to recognize. According to the affidavit, a senior security engineer at eBay identified the specific set of strings being used in the attacks, and found only half a dozen variations, leading investigators to be able to pinpoint the patterns of the infiltration.
The IP addresses captured by PayPal were able to be linked to specific premises through subpoenas served upon AT&T and other Internet Service Providers. One of the 1,000 IP addresses given to the FBI by PayPal sent more than 3,600 "malicious network packets" to PayPal between Dec. 8 and 9. A federal grand jury subpoena was served on AT&T on Jan. 6, which AT&T complied with a response on Jan. 18, which led to Valori S. Reid and Peter B. Reid, and their 19-year-old son Ethan, in Arlington, Texas. 
The Reids weren't arrested, but their home was the site of one of 35 search warrants executed by the FBI in relation to the Anonymous investigation. 

Here is a screen shots or warning for every suspects who might have been involved in that operation:-  


-News Source (NBC)

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FBI Will Shutdown DNSChanger Name Servers On March 8 (Operation Ghost Click)

FBI Will Shutdown DNSChanger Name Servers On March 8 (Operation Ghost Click)
It is widely known to all that the FBI will shut down the DNSChanger name servers on the 8th March, so it can be expected that the Internet connection of many users over the whole spectrum will be hampered during this operation because the trojan named DNSChanger has occupied millions of computers in more than 100 countries. FBI has planned the whole stuff earlier in November 2011 & it was named Operation Ghost Click. What many people do not know is that the clean DNS servers which are operated by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) and used to replace the rogues will be shut down on March 8, 2012.[1] From the start, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York permitted the ISC to operate these servers for a period of 120 days.[1]  However, on February 17, 2012 the US government requested this deadline be extended to July 9, 2012.[2]
Barring an extension from the FBI, those systems still infected with DNSChanger will cease receiving DNS services from the ISC controlled name servers on this date.  In other words, they will not be able to properly access internet resources.  This gives information security professionals less than two weeks to detect, locate and remediate any systems on their networks that are still infected. The DNSChanger Working Group (DCWG) estimates there are still approximately 450,000 systems still infected as of January 28, 2012.[3]  Other statistics show that DNSChanger may be present in half of the Fortune 500 companies as well as at least 27 government organizations.[4,5,6] In early February 2012 Internet Identity disclosed there were 3 million systems still infected globally.[5,6]  This is a relatively small number of systems when compared to other virus outbreaks.  Regardless it represents a challenge to security professionals. This can be a substantial undertaking for large enterprises.  The nature of DNSChanger was to redirect infected systems to malicious destinations.  Many of these sites in turn installed additional malware.  By finding a DNSChanger infected system you will be finding a system that has additional infections.[7]  This should justify the need for a thorough sweep for DNSChanger infections. Luckily there are many resources available to detect and remediate DNSChanger infections.  The easiest way is to utilize a network monitoring tool to isolate DNS traffic to the ISC operated DNS resolvers.
The Offending Netblocks Are:[1,8]:-
85.255.112.0/20 (85.255.112.0 through 85.255.127.255)
67.210.0.0/20 (67.210.0.0 through 67.210.15.255)
93.188.160.0/21 (93.188.160.0 through 93.188.167.255)
77.67.83.0/24 (77.67.83.0 through 77.67.83.255)
213.109.64.0/20 (213.109.64.0 through 213.109.79.255)
64.28.176.0/20 (64.28.176.0 through 64.28.191.255)

FBI has published a paper with instructions on how to detect DNSChanger on individual systems.


-Source (FBI, Infosec Island)


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Leaked FBI Documents is Calling "Anonymous is A National Security Threat"


According to a PDF containing what purports to be a leaked psychological assessment of the leaders of LulzSec and Anonymous by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (which also profiles serial killers), Anonymous is not only not a collection of individuals, it's a coherent group that poses a threat to national security.
Neither the FBI nor Dept. of Homeland Security have commented on the "leak," which may be a fake according to the TechHerald, but seems to reflect accurately the thinking behind a series of DHS warning bulletins and crackdowns that have resulted in 75 raids and 16 arrests of Anonymous members just this year.
Anons themselves refer to the group as a rough, almost coincidental collective of individuals that occasionally cooperate on projects to protest specific things. There are approximately eight vortices of special interest within the collective, according to interviews, postings and counter-arguments posted by various Anonymi in response to invective by those it attacked.
Attacks are the work of small groups of interested individuals who, on their own initiative and using public argument as their weapon, gather like-minded Anonymi to protest governmental outrages or attack injustice in whatever form they find it, according to de facto leaders in the non-existent but vocal #OPpublicrelations.
In March, for example, members of Anonymous and 4Chan debated, in the finest traditions of American Democracy and citizen activism, whether to attack and defeat the Internet scourge that is Rebecca Black – the annoying but harmless pop "singer" whose made herself famous with a mom-and-dad-funded music video on YouTube that repeated the same lyrics so often it became apparent those might be the only words she knows.(Other, less world-shaking Anonymous projects resulted in significant attacks against the embattled governments of Egypt and Syria, the exposure of government atrocities in Bolivia, civil protest against censorship on the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, attacks on Visa, Mastercard and Paypal in support of whistleblower site WikiLeaks and a long-simmering, high-profile protest against unrestricted greed, corrosive dishonesty of Wall Street and the and economic destruction from which the rest of the country suffers while financiers continues to prosper.)
The FBI has analyzed various instant messages, forum postings, emails, Twitter posts and other documentation and decided Anonymous behaves more like a coherent organization led by a small number of powerful and focused activists, not a politically involved group of individuals using the Anonymous banner as gathering point.
  • "The Anonymous ‘collective’ has risen from an amorphous group of individuals on the Internet to the current state of a potential threat to national security. Due to the nature of Anonymous, they believe that they are a leaderless collective. However, it has been shown that there is a defined leadership group," the document reads.

  • "A thorough assessment of each UNSUB’s online activities, speech patterns, and general writings was collected by the FBI. Each UNSUB was individually assessed by members of the SBU (sic) and a psychological profile created from these datasets."

  • Most of the members of Anonymous are under 30, but the bulk of its leadership are not teenage hacker/script-kids as many portray themselves, according to the FBI.

  • "It is likely" that Sabu, one of the more vocal spokestrolls for the LulzSec mini-collective of Anonymous, "works in the information security sector and has been doing so since the early days of the internet and hacking activities. His use of net speak is interspersed with proper American English diction and grammar that implies he is an American citizen and has been educated,” the FBI notes said.

BS, quoth the Anon:

"Anonymous is not a group, it does not have leaders, people can do ANYTHING under the flag of their country," according to one member in an email interview with the AP. "Anything can be a threat to National Security, really," the member said in an email interview. "Any hacker group can be."
If the document is real, it ends on a disturbingly dangerous and presumptive conclusion: that attacks and protests by Anonymous will eventually lead to the death of members of Anonymous, law enforcement or the public that will drive many supporters away from Anonymous.
Until then, Anonymous, whether collectively or individually, may be unstoppable in practical terms.

The overall assessment for the movement however is the following:

1. The movement is out of control and there seems to be no real coherent motivation
2. The leaders have begun to hide themselves a bit more due to arrests that have been made
3. Their reliance on technology will eventually be their downfall
4. Their interpersonal relationships are weak points, as such they should be leveraged
5. Their increasing attacks on infrastructure will eventually lead to serious results that could in fact lead to deaths

-News Source (IT World)


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FBI is ramping Up Cyber-Attack Defense



The FBI has been called to investigate cyber attacks at Google and Sony in the past week, incidents that shed light on "the ever-present danger from sophisticated Internet attack," FBI Director Robert Mueller said intestimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee."Along with countless other cyber incidents, these attacks threaten to undermine the integrity of the Internet and to victimize the businesses and people who rely on it," he said.The hearing, a video of which is available online, was focused on President Obama's request to extend Mueller's term as director until 2013. The director gave an opening statement on threats facing the intelligence organization and how it's working to combat them, and then fielded questions from the committee.
Mueller cited cyber attacks as one of the FBI's top challenges in the next 10 years, and said the agency needs to step up efforts to combat them, something it's currently working on."The increase of cyber as a mechanism for conducting all sorts of crimes--and also it being a highway to extracting our most sensitive secrets or extracting IP from our commerce" is a key concern, he said. "We as an organization need to continue to grow the capability of addressing that arena in the future."In addition to addressing growing cybersecurity needs, Mueller cited other technology-focused priorities of the organization during his testimony. One is the use of the Internet for terrorist cells to communicate, organize, and radicalize new terrorists, something the FBI is aimed at stifling, he said."In the age of the Internet, these radicalizing figures no longer need to meet or speak personally with those they seek to influence," Mueller said. "Instead, they conduct their media campaigns from remote regions of the world, intent on fostering terrorism by lone actors here in the United States."Another concern Mueller said he will continue to work on is his quest for the intelligence agency to expand its wiretapping capability to avoid a problem known as "going dark." The term refers to situations in which the agency has legal authorization to obtain Internet communications but cannot do so in a timely fashion due to a company's lack of technology to get the information quickly and efficiently.
An increase in high-profile and sophisticated cyber attacks in the United States is pushing the FBI to bolster its ability to fight cybercrime and foster stronger cybersecurity, its director told Congress this week.

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Anonymous Started #Op-Solidarity To Protest Against FBI, MET & Other Agencies


Well known hacker group Anonymous declared Operation Solidarity (#OpSolidarity) to protest against FBI in the US, MET and all other agencies who have arrested freedom fighting Anon's in recent months.

According To the Official Press Release Of Anonymous:-

"This is a message from Anonymous to all Anon's, FBI in the US, MET Police in the UK, and all other agencies who have arrested freedom fighting Anon's in recent months:
To Anon's: While the show of support for all arrested Anonymous and LulzSec members has been great, including all donations to said Anon's legal funds, we feel this is not enough. There is so much more that we, as a whole, can do to further pressure the FBI, MET, and other authorities into releasing, and dropping charges on our fellow freedom fighters. I am here by declaring #OpSolidarity to be in effect as of now. Brain storm with other Anon's to come up with new ways to hit MET, FBI, and other agencies; with the sole purpose of getting them to drop charges against our brothers and sisters. I know each and everyone of you, if you got v&, would want the other Anon's to do the same for you, and show our solidarity to the world. Cyber protesters have been arrested by corrupt government agencies all of the world; this is not okay. Show them, that this is not okay.

To MET, FBI, and other police agencies currently holding suspected Anonymous members in custody:
    We, Anonymous, demand the immediate release of the following people: Jake Davis aka "Topiary", Christopher Wayne Cooper aka “Anthrophobic;” Joshua John Covelli aka “Absolem” and “Toxic;” Keith Wilson Downey, Mercedes Renee Haefer, aka “No” and “MMMM;” Donald Husband, aka “Ananon;”  Vincent Charles Kershaw,  aka “Trivette,” “Triv” and “Reaper;” Ethan Miles, James C. Murphy, Drew Alan Phillips, aka “Drew010;” Jeffrey Puglisi, aka “Jeffer,” “Jefferp” and “Ji;” Daniel Sullivan, Tracy Ann Valenzuela, and Christopher Quang Vo. Along with all other persons currently being detained by authorities worldwide for being suspected members of Anonymous. Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide.

    I have been a Hacktivist since the mid 90's, and active within Anon for a few years, and i have never ONCE disclosed my name on any dumps, roots, or site defacements. I have also changed my handle every year or so for the last 10 years. I have done this because i was afraid of getting caught at some point. I disclose my name now for one reason, and one reason alone: I am not afraid anymore. You cannot arrest an idea, nor can you stop one as powerful as the one Anonymous, Anti-Sec, and LulzSec are championing. We are not afraid anymore.

"You are not failures, you have not blown away. You can get what you want, and you are worth having it. Believe in yourself." - Jake Davis aka "Topiary"

-Bree
@anon_bree

We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget fallen Anonymous members
Expect Us.."

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