What Risk We are Posing! Everyone Can Become Target of the Latest Cyber Security Threats

What Risk We are Posing! Everyone Can Become a Target of the Latest Cyber Security Threats

According to a report by the Washington Post, hackers may soon be setting up a plan to unfold in 2013 that will target 30 different U.S. banking institutions. McAfee Labs, who has compiled a new cyber security report, says that banks should be on the lookout for software that creates false online transactions or targets transfers tied to large dollar amounts.

Sources say that these threats can all be tied back to “Project Blitzkrieg”, which is a program that has been around since 2008. Within the past four years, it has already stolen $5 million and plans to continue for as long as possible. During the past few months, between 300 and 500 victims located within the U.S. have fallen victim to Project Blitzkrieg’s schemes. By the spring of 2013, McAfee says that things could get even worse for U.S. banks and their customers.

Experts note that this scheme may be tied to reports from back in October by security company RSA that mentioned how a hacker out of Russia named “vorVzakone” has been openly discussing his plan to recruit a team to plan the largest Trojan attack tied to banking. McAfee warns that these threats should be taken extremely seriously as the beginning of 2013 is soon to unfold. The software can become extremely dangerous to those doing their banking online because it can replicate transactions and even delete e-mail notifications about certain transfers.

While U.S. banks will no doubt be increasing their security protocols to protect themselves from any unnecessary attacks, most already know that they are continually being cited as targets from hacking groups around the globe. Back in September, both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America saw their sites crash because of DDoS attacks.

Samsung Smart TV Dangers

The Register has recently reported that Samsung’s newest Smart TV is completely open and vulnerable to hacking because it gives hackers the ability to steal data very quickly. According to security company ReVuln, this vulnerability most notably affects consumers who own and use their Samsung 3D TVs for internet purposes.

Those who use their Smart TVs can rent movies, browse the web for a cheap line rental, go on Facebook, and more. ReVuln claims that they have found an exploit which allows hackers to see everything the user is doing while they are using their TV, retrieve and access information like web history, and hook up an external thumb drive to the TV to conveniently steal all of this information for future use. While ReVuln noticed this exploit while using a Samsung 3D TV, the true problem is that it seems to affect all of the latest Samsung TVs with internet capabilities, which includes many different makes and models.

As these TVs continue to act more as larger PCs, it is only a matter of time until we see even more security vulnerabilities tied to them in the very near future.

Gas Station Bluetooth Skimming

News site KRCA out of Sacramento notes that crooks are using Bluetooth devices in order to steal credit card information from those who are paying for gas at the pump. The biggest issue the cyber security experts noticed is that these thieves do not even have to be near the gas station in order to steal information.

Crooks are using skimming devices that utilize Bluetooth and contain a variety of common security keys that can be used to access gas pumps for maintenance. They don’t simply pull out their device and begin swiping information for oblivious consumers. Thieves will start by installing skimmers on the pumps to collect information from those pumping gas and then pick them back up. Detectives say that these types of devices are impossible to detect.

According to experts, thieves can be up to 100 yards away and continually collect credit card information from unsuspecting users. Because of this, these crooks are impossible to detect, and the problem may only grow larger in the near future.

Troublesome QR Codes

QR codes seem to be everywhere these days. They’re typically on everything from advertisements to products that we purchase on a daily basis. In the Netherlands, hackers are posting QR codes in heavily trafficked areas like airports and major streets. When these QR codes are scanned in by a user’s smart phone, they are taken to a malicious website that may attempt to phish information from the user or possibly infect their smartphone with malware.

Disclaimer:- Before perfection, on behalf of Team VOGH, I would like to personally thank Eve Halton  for sharing this magnificent article with our readers. Eve is a very much passionate Fleet Street, she  has done her graduation in International Business and Journalism. She gained decent experience in writing articles on several fields like global politics, economics, sustainability issues, cyber security & many more.

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British Spy Agency GCHQ Performed DDoS Attack Against Anonymous -Snowden Documents Transpired

British Spy Agency GCHQ Performed DDoS Attack Against Hacktivist Anonymous & LulzSec -Snowden Documents Transpired

While excavating the past, it was always found that cyber criminals, large hacker collective groups were the culprits for engaging voluminous denial of service attack. But this widely transfusing story get a one eighty degree reverse turn, when the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed another trade secret. Recently a lurid story get spot lighted, as the whistle blower Snowden unfold yet another breathtaking stealthy  documents taken from the National Security Agency. The clandestine documents taken the mask from the so called good guys, unveiling British spy agency GCHQ had launched a secret war against the infamous hacktivist collective Anonymous and a splinter group known as LulzSec several years ago. Many of you guessed right, this was happened when Anonymous were targeting various UK companies and government websites. The documents disclose that GCHQ carried out seemingly illegal DDoS attacks against the collective, flooding their chatrooms with so much traffic that they would become inaccessible – and all with the approval of the British government. The revelations come less than a year after several LulzSec activists were jailed by a British court for carrying out similar DDoS attacks against targets including the CIA, the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), News International, Sony and the Westboro Baptist Church, among others. 

This sensational issue was made public by NBC News deferentially with the help of none other than Edward Snowden. In their exclusive report headed 'War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers,' NBC said -The blunt instrument the spy unit used to target hackers, however, also interrupted the web communications of political dissidents who did not engage in any illegal hacking. It may also have shut down websites with no connection to Anonymous. According to the documents, a division of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart of the NSA, shut down communications among Anonymous hacktivists by launching a “denial of service” (DDOS) attack – the same technique hackers use to take down bank, retail and government websites – making the British government the first Western government known to have conducted such an attack.

The documents, from a PowerPoint presentation prepared for a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, show that the unit known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, boasted of using the DDOS attack – which it dubbed Rolling Thunder -- and other techniques to scare away 80 percent of the users of Anonymous internet chat rooms. 

The existence of JTRIG has never been previously disclosed publicly. The documents also show that JTRIG infiltrated chat rooms known as IRCs and identified individual hackers who had taken confidential information from websites. In one case JTRIG helped send a hacktivist to prison for stealing data from PayPal, and in another it helped identify hacktivists who attacked government websites. 

As soon as this story getting all the spot lights, immediately the GCHQ responded to this saying all their movements and operations were lawful. “All of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensure[s] that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All of our operational processes rigorously support this position.” -GCHQ said the press. To know more detail about this story, don't forget to stay tuned with VOGH. 

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'PayPal 14' Culprits Enter Guilty Pleading Over Pro-WikiLeaks DDoS Attack Versus PayPal

Accused 'PayPal 14' Culprits of Anonymous Enter Guilty Pleading Over Pro-WikiLeaks DDoS Attack Versus PayPal

I am quite sure that all of your regular readers still remember the devastating cyber attack from Anonymous against PayPal, the attack was conducted under the banner of Operation PayPal (#OpPayPal). The infamous hacker community stated a reason for this mass protest as the online payment company suspending the account of WikiLeaks. #OpPayPal is considered as one of the most demolishing cyber attack ever taken in cyber space. PayPal with law enforcement agencies immediately taken steps and start investigation, in the primary step PayPal sent 1000 IP address of Anonymous hacker who was linked on that attack to FBI. As expected the hackers who were behind that attack was serially busted by the police. And finally the accused anonymous hacker appeared in federal court in California on Thursday and will be formally sentenced in one year. Eleven of the so-called “PayPal 14” members each pleaded guilty in court to one felony count of conspiracy and one misdemeanor count of damaging a computer as a result of their involvement in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack waged by Anonymous in late 2010 shortly after PayPal stopped processing donations to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Prosecutors say the defendants used a free computer program called the Low Ion Orbit Cannon, aka LOIC, to collectively flood PayPal’s servers with tremendous amounts of illegitimate internet traffic for one week that winter, at moments knocking the website offline as a result and causing what PayPal estimated to be roughly £3.5 million in damages. 

Pending good behavior, those 11 alleged Anons will be back in court early next December for sentencing, atpleading guilty to the misdemeanor counts only, likely removing themselves from any lingering felony convictions but earning an eventual 90 day jail stint when they are finally sentenced. A fourth defendant, Dennis Owen Collins, did not attend the hearing due to complications involving a similar case currently being considered by a federal judge in Alexandria Virginia in which he and one dozen others are accused of conspiring to cripple other websites as an act of protest during roughly the same time.

which point the felony charges are expected to be adjourned. Two of the remaining defendants cut deals that found them. In his press reaction defense attorney Stanley Cohen said the terms of the settlement were reached following over a year of negotiations, “based upon strength, not weakness; based upon principle, not acquiescence.” In the courtroom all the accused hacker stood up and said, ‘We did what you said we did . . .We believe it was an appropriate act from us and we’re willing to pay the price.’ 

On the other hand Cohen, who represented PayPal 14 defendant Mercedes Haefer in court, said one of the hacktivists told him after Thursdays hearing concluded that "This misdemeanor is a badge of honor and courage." When media questioned Michael Whelan, a lawyer for one of the defendants, he declined to comment on the plea. 

-Source (RT)

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Citi Bank & Bank of America Faced Sent Offline After Massive DDoS Attack (Operation Ababil)

Citi Bank & Bank of America Faced Sent Offline After Massive DDoS Attack (Operation Ababil)

Late in last year we have reported that major banking and finical sector of America faced massive cyber attack. The attack came just after 'anti Islamic' video was posted online. During the time of attack the hacker group named 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' said "these series of attacks will continue until the Erasing of that nasty movie from the Internet". But now its seems that, the earlier deceleration of the hacker collective group was fake, as they again engaged denial of service attack against large banking sector, where Citi Bank and Bank of America fallen victim. Several website of those above banks were reported offline for a certain period of time. "Just moments ago Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters attacked CitiBank and made all the parts out of reach. This was the 2nd attack this day. Banks could not stop al-Qassam Cyber fighters this week" - said the hacker group in their blog. In thier blog Hilf-ol-Fozoul reports that on Thursday several domains of Citi Bank such as citicards.com, citibank.com and citi.com were inaccessible during the pick hours. "In the 3rd week from Operation Ababil, Bank of America faced technical difficulties due to heavy traffic made by al - Qassam Cyber Fighters and users can no more reach the site." said the hackers. 

The Citi Bank’s representatives acknowledged the cyber attack while saying “Currently we are aware & are working on technical issues with Citi websites. We will let you know when service is fully restored. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please call the number on the back of your card if you need immediate assistance,” on Twitter. But the representatives of Bank of America have not issued any statements on the matter.

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British Court Convicts Anonymous Hacker "Nerdo" For DDoS Attack Over WikiLeaks Funding

British Court Convicts Anonymous Hacker "Nerdo" For DDoS Attack Over WikiLeaks Funding

Another alleged Anonymous hacker faced cour rule. A British court has convicted a 22-year-old for allegedly being a ‘key figure’ behind Anonymous DDoS attack on PayPal in revenge for its freezing WikiLeaks payments. A 22-year-old British student Christopher Weatherhead, self described "hacktivist", going by the name of "Nerdo" was convicted by the jury on a count of conspiracy to impair computer operations. The conviction came after guilty pleas of three of Weatherhead's co-conspirators.

"Christopher Weatherhead is a cyber criminal who waged a sophisticated and orchestrated campaign of online attacks on the computer systems of several major companies," prosecutor for the CPS Organized Crime Division Russell Tyner said in a statement. "These were lawful companies with ordinary customers and hard working employees. This was not a victimless crime."

This court rule came as a part of its ongoing pursuit to strike back at hackers, U.K. courts have convicted a member of Anonymous for conspiracy.

That very cyber attack, for which Christopher Weatherhead has been charged was dubbed "Operation Payback" where Weatherhead and several other Anonymous members targeted those companies that opposed internet piracy, but switched to companies like Mastercard, Visa and PayPal after they refused to process payments to WikiLeaks. Recently in our report, we described that Operation Payback cost a massive damage, for PayPal it cost more than €4.3 million. According to CPS, those campaigns carried by the hacker cost the companies more than $5.6 million in additional staffing, software, and loss of sales. 

The student denied the accusation claiming he was merely an Anonymous chatroom operator and never took part in the attacks. The judge allegedly demanded that Weatherhead provide “as much information as possible” and threatened him with a jail term. The court ruling in Mr. Weatherhead's case will be announced later. 

-Source (Cnet)

 

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DDoS Attack From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage

DDoS Attack From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage 

The distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) from hacktivist Anonymous has cost PayPal more than €4.3 million. The attack which was named Operation Payback were initially aimed at companies that opposed internet piracy, but switched to companies like Mastercard, Visa and PayPal after they refused to process payments to WikiLeaks. After that attack PayPal -the global leader in online money transfer and payments has paid around £3.5 million defend and arm itself against such kind distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In a report BBC said that more than one hundred skilled employees from eBay, PayPal's parent company, spent almost three weeks working on DDoS-attack-related issues and that PayPal had bought software and hardware to defend itself against further attacks. In all, the total cost of this work came to £3.5 million. This details have been revealed in a court case at Southwark Crown Court where a defendant, Christopher Weatherhead (studying at Northampton University when who allegedly took part in the campaign), is facing charges of conspiring to impair the operation of computers. He has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011.

Sandip Patel, prosecuting, said the group caused PayPal "enormous economic harm". Mr Patel said they used distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which flooded the targets computers with enormous amounts of online requests. Target websites would crash and users would be directed to a page displaying the message: "You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung."

Mr Patel said: "This case, simply put, is about hackers who used the internet to attack and disable computer systems - colloquially described as cyber-attackers or vandals." He said Mr Weatherhead, who used the online name Nerdo, posted plans on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel encouraging an attack on PayPal. 

He said PayPal was the victim of a series of attacks "which caused considerable damage to its reputation and loss of trade". 

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HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous

HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous 

Massive attack against banking and financial sector continues, this time HSBC became the latest victim of cyber attack. The attack which interrupt the service for 10 hours long were mainly originated from Iran and Russia. After 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' now it was the time for Fawkes Security, an offshoot of hacktivist group Anonymous, quickly took credit for the attack, acknowledging the take down in posts yesterday afternoon on Twitter and Pastebin The group claimed to have knocked HSBC’s main site, along with its US, UK and Canadian counterparts offline and on Friday,claimed it logged 20,000 debit card details from the site while it was down. 

According to HSBC newsroom- "On 18 October 2012 HSBC servers came under a denial of service attack which affected a number of HSBC websites around the world." But HSBC denied any sort of data loss. Fawkes Security claimed to have details of more than 20K cards, but in their release HSBC said "This denial of service attack did not affect any customer data, but did prevent customers using HSBC online services, including internet banking." 

But now the whole situation is under control, websites belonging to British bank and financial services company HSBC are back online and working normally. According to an update posted on its website, HSBC restored all of its websites globally to full accessibility as of 3:00am UK time. 

New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank and PNC was brought down by few hacker collective group as protest against the anti Islamic movie. After this attack the name of HSBC has also been enlisted with those poor victims (affected banks & finance sector) who suffered DDoS attack in last month.

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Facebook Outage in Many European Countries Not Caused By Anonymous But DNS Problem

Facebook Outage in Many European Countries Not Caused By Anonymous But DNS Problem 

World's most popular and largest social network Facebook faced another downtime. This time the outage effected millions of users in European countries including Denmark, France, Norway, Germany and Italy. After June this is the second outage which effected large number of Facebook users. Last time Facebook users faced disturbance while using their favorite social network. Facebook users across the globe experienced log-in difficulties for several hour. But this time, the social networking giant remain down for a decent time. The outage may have caused Facebook’s share price to go down. For a site with 900 million users worldwide, even a minor outage has a huge effect. Like the June issue, here also hacker collective came first and took credit of the outage. According to a twitter account of the hacktivist group named  Anonymous Own3r, took responsibility of the outage, In his tweet he claimed to figure out several vulnerabilities in Facebook, which causes the outage. In a pastebin note, the hacker publishes those so called vulnerabilities. Also in his tweet the hacker claimed to have control in many servers owned by Facebook. 

But Facebook completely denies the hacker attack & said the cause of the outage was nothing but DNS issue, neither hacker attack nor DDoS.  Here we want yo give you reminder that in 2011 Anonymous openly declared to take down Facebook. The operation was dubbed #Op-Facebook and Anonymous told that they will hit FB on the 5th of November last year. But in reality it was just a threat and as expected Anonymous failed to execute Operation Facebook. Later in June this year, Anonymous took credit for a couple of hours outage of Facebook, and here again Anonymous affiliated member repeated the same story, which again proves completely baseless, and in short it was nothing but a publicity stunt. 

In case of large social network like Facebook, such kind of DNS issues can be happened. Whatever immediately after this outage Facebook released a statement saying -

"There has not been a hack of Facebook. We have investigated these claims, and they are not valid. The evidence cited was produced by an automated vulnerability scanner that alerts developers of potential vulnerability, and we have found these all to be false alerts.

We expect Anonymous just like we expect any other attack on any other day. Due to our size, we face the same threats as seen everywhere else on the Web, but we have developed partnerships, back-end systems, and protocols to confront the full range of security challenges we face. Facebook has always been committed to protecting our users’ information, and we will continue to innovate and work tirelessly to defend this data.

Earlier (Thursday), we made a change to DNS as part of a traffic-optimization test, and that change resulted in some users being temporarily misrouted. We detected and resolved the issue immediately, but a small number of users located primarily in Western Europe experienced issues accessing the site while the DNS addresses repopulated. We are now back to 100 percent, and we apologize for any inconvenience..."

-Source (All Facebook)

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Most Organized Banking-Trojan Called 'Gozi Prinimalka' By Russian Hackers Targeting U.S. Banks

Most Organized Banking-Trojan Called 'Gozi Prinimalka' By Russian Hackers Targeting U.S. Banks

We all might be aware of massive attack which took place last month, targeted several leading banking and financial sector of United States. The attack came just after 'anti Islamic' video was posted online. The US National Security officials accused the Iranian government for engaging cyber attacks against US Banks mainly Bank of America. Sooner or later the situation came under control. But cloud of trouble for US Banking sector is not gone completely, recently security professionals unveiled that a cartel of Russian hackers is planning to launch a separate attack aimed at stealing money from about 30 U.S. financial institutions, an apparent attempt to piggyback and capitalize on the ongoing cyber attacks on U.S. banks. The emergence of Russian hackers suggests a potential shift in the motivation of the cyber attacks from ideological to financial and also points to a longer duration of the ongoing attacks. Security experts have picked up on chatter in the cyber underworld indicating Russian cyber hackers have set their sights on about 30 U.S. financial institutions. Dubbed “Operation Blitzkrieg,” the attack is planned for this fall on 30 U.S. banks, though it’s not clear which specific institutions will be targeted. In a blog post last week, RSA said it “believes this is the making of the most substantial organized banking-Trojan operation seen to date.”

So far it’s not clear who the specific Russian hackers are, but famous security professional & blogger Brian Krebs pointed to series of posts beginning in early September on Underweb forums by a Russian hacker who uses the nickname “vorVzakone,” which translates to “thief in law.” RSA said “underground chatter” indicates the gang plans to deploy a Trojan, called “Gozi Prinimalka,” in an effort to complete fraudulent wire transfers via Man-In-The-Middle (MiTM) manual session-hacking scenarios. Herberger said MiTM is a type of attack that aims to deceive targets by violating otherwise secure communications, similar to tapping into a landline phone conversation or breaching a VPN session. “If successfully launched, the full force of this mega heist may only be felt by targeted banks in a month or two,” RSA said. The Trojan is part of a family of malware used by a crime gang that has successfully siphoned at least $5 million from banks, RSA said. The Russian hackers are also offering to pay individuals who help them carry out the attacks, indicating a desire to monetize the intrusions.

So now the vows of hacker group named 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' is proving to be more dangerous for US. The hacker group earlier said "These series of attacks will continue until the Erasing of that nasty movie from the Internet". For your reminder this hacker group was responsible for all the major DDoS attacks against US financial sector. “It’s not uncommon that people who have a financial motive may try to take advantage of nefarious techniques,” said Herberger. “They will jump in because they can take advantage of the fact banks are laboring and security departments are becoming overrun and softened for a different kind of motivated attack.” The emergence of the threat from Russian groups underscores the prolonged nature of the attacks against corporations, especially in the financial industry. “Security teams are coming to terms that these attacks are long,” often measured in days and weeks, said Herberger. However, security teams often aren’t “staffed for attrition.”

-Source (FOX Business)

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Leading US Banking & Financial Sector Suffering From Massive DDoS Attack

Leading US Banking & Financial Sector Suffering From Massive DDoS Attack 

Few days ago in a report we said that US National Security officials accused the Iranian government for engaging cyber attacks against US Banks. The attack came just after 'anti Islamic' video was posted online. Attacks against the websites of leading banks in the United States have the banking and financial services industry on edge. The Financial Services ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) set its Threat Level to “High” on Wednesday, September 19, indicating a high risk of cyber attacks. Attacks against the websites of leading banks in the United States have the banking and financial services industry on edge. A Muslim hacking group calling itself Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters took responsibility for attacks on the New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America and Chase last week. This week brought attacks against Wells Fargo, US Bank and PNC. Wells Fargo used its Twitter account to apologize for service interruptions on Wednesday and said it was working to "quickly resolve this issue." Most of the targeted banks were back online and operational Thursday. The events prompted U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to use an interview on C-SPAN to point the finger of blame at the Iranian government and its elite Quds Force.
Wheather it is Iran Govt or that hacker group 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' but the main issue of concern is that the Banking and financial sector has been highly disturbed since last few weeks. Though the situation came under control at last Thursday but still experts are predicting that this ongoing cyber attack is not over yet. In their statement the hacker group vows to engage more attack. "These series of attacks will continue until the Erasing of that nasty movie from the Internet," said the hacker.

-Source (Naked Security) 

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GoDaddy Outage Was Not Beacuse of Hacker Attack But Technical Difficulties

GoDaddy Outage Was Not Beacuse of Hacker Attack But Technical Difficulties 

GoDaddy -the website which is widely known as a DNS and hosting provider remained down for most of time on 10th September came back online in the 10th evening. As expected thousands of other web sites reportedly went offline as their hosting provider GoDaddy experienced massive service disruptions. GoDaddy, which claims to be the world's biggest web hosting company, confirmed the problems on its official Twitter account but has not yet stated the cause of the disruptions. A hacker code named "Anonymous Own3r" on Twitter took responsibility of the outage. The attack came on behalf of the hacker collective group 'Anonymous' as a protest against GoDaddy's support of the SOPA act. The hacker stated the reason of the outage is a massive denial of service (DDoS) attack which was generated from an IRC-Botnet. A tweet from the @AnonOpsLegion account: "#TangoDown -- http://www.godaddy.com/ | by@AnonymousOwn3r" was the initial public promotion of the outage, leading some to believe that the Anonymous online activist collective was behind the disruption. However, the AnonymousOwn3r account clarified in various tweets that: "it's not Anonymous coletive [sic] the attack is coming just from me." But this claim was later disputed by posts from the @YourAnonNews account which is known to be one of the legitimate twitter source of Anon. 

After completing the investigation of the outage, GoDaddy released a press note where they have clearly said that the outage was not because of DDoS attack but internal technical difficulties. According to Scott Wagner Go Daddy CEO -

"GoDaddy.com and many of our customers experienced intermittent service outages starting shortly after 10 a.m. PDT. Service was fully restored by 4 p.m. PDT. The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a "hack" and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.

At no time was any customer data at risk or were any of our systems compromised. Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it. We take our business and our customers' businesses very seriously. We apologize to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience."

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Hackers Shutdown Several Swedish Government Websites (#OpFreeAssange)

Hackers Shutdown Several Swedish Government Websites (#OpFreeAssange)

Operation Free Assange dubbed '#OpFreeAssange' continues. After British Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Hertfordshire Police now the supporter of  WikiLeaks have targeted several Swedish government websites. As expected here also the attacker follows the same mechanism and that is massive denial of service (DDoS), which effected the websites of the Swedish government portal, Armed Forces and the Swedish Institute. Niklas Englund, head of digital media at the Swedish Armed Forces, said it was unclear who was behind the so-called denial-of-service attacks, in which websites are overwhelmed with bogus traffic. But he noted that an unidentified group urging Sweden to take its ‘‘hands off Assange’’ claimed responsibility on Twitter. So far it is not clear whether the hacker is linked with infamous hacker collective group Anonymous. But we all know that not only Anon, but also hackers from different part of the world has already joined  #OpFreeAssange. This protest has becoming wilder day by day as activist are hitting hundreds & thousands of websites based on Europe, mainly UK everyday. 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been sheltering at Ecuador’s Embassy in Britain since June 19 in an effort to avoid extradition to Sweden, where prosecutors want to question the founder of the secret-spilling WikiLeaks site over alleged sex crimes.

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Anonymous Targets Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) & Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)

Anonymous Targets Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) & Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)

Australian rampage of Anonymous continues, after took down of several Australian Government website & a massive data breach from Australian ISP named AAPT now the nuisance hacker collective group today attempted to hack into both the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) websites. The attack was took place in early Friday, and here also Anon enlisted this cyber attack among their F**k Friday rampage also known as #FFF. The hacker group claimed to have shut down a computer server belonging to Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, reportedly briefly closing down access to its public webpage. On its Twitter feed Anonymous Australia (@AuAnon) wrote: "The anonymous Operation Australia hackers have today again been busy with further attacks on the ASIO and DSD website."

According to sources - ASIO server faced massive traffic generated from a DDoS botnet, which immediately effected the normal service and later when loads get increased then as expected ASIO became passive and gone offline. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) acknowledged some disruption to its website. "ASIO's public website does not host any classified information and any disruption would not represent a risk to ASIO's business."- said ASIO spokesman. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ASIO's website was down for at least 30 minutes Friday morning, but it appeared to be loading normally Friday afternoon. Operation Australia, which has its own @Op_Australia Twitter stream said it would "stop the attacks at 10pm Aus. BUT we will never stop watching!". 

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WikiLeaks Again Under DDoS Attack For Last 5 Days

WikiLeaks Again Under DDoS Attack For Last 5 Days

Yet again Wikileaks official website faced denial of service attack. Earlier we have seen two similar attack, first it was in 2011 when  an Anonymous member took responsibility of that Attack on Wikileaks website. That  time the attacker executed a massive Denial of Service while using newly developed tool #refref. In an exlusive report by Corero Network Security said the attack on Wikileaks site was one of the largest DDoS attack ever took place in 2011. Back in May this year, Wikileaks was also taken down by a DDoS attack which also infected controversial file sharing site "The Pirate Bay". As per sources the site has been down for the last five days, during which it has been experiencing a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. So far it was the longest attack ever happened against Wikileaks. The most notable thing is that according the organisation already claimed a government entity is behind the hit. Many of other unofficial sources are connecting this attack with a recent story, which restarted the WikiLeaks donation. At the time of the attack team VOGH took the following screen shot which clearly showing that Wikileaks.org was indeed inaccessible. 

The first tweet was sent out on August 3:-

WikiLeaks.org is down for unknown reasons. We are investigating. wikileaks.org is still up.

#WikiLeaks donation page and FDNN portal down. You can still donate via supporter merchandise: http://wikileaks.spreadshirt.com/ http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/wikileaksbeattheblockade2

WikiLeaks has been under sustained large scale DDoS attacks since August 3. Help us purchase more bandwidth: http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

Speculation on DDoS attack against WikiLeaks timing: 1. Olympics cover 2. Upcomng release. 3. Ongoing Syria, Stratfor releases

Wikileaks est actuellement sous le feu d’une attaque DDOS d’ampleur.

wlcentral.org and http://justice4assange.com are now down.

Update: http://wikileaks.org https://secure.fdn2.org/fdn2/nouser http://cabledrum.net/ still down. http://wlcentral.org/ http://justice4assange.com/ back online.

UPDATE: WikiLeaks battles ongoing DDoS attack

#WikiLeaks .onion mirror available: http://isax7s5yooqgelbr.onion/ Accessible only through Tor

Most WikiLeaks mirrors have been brought offline as well, with some coming back today. Even sites simply related to WikiLeaks have been targeted. These include the WikiLeaks-endorsed website Cabledrum, including its mirror of the WikiLeaks website, and French non-profit FDNN, which hosts a WikiLeaks' donation portal. The latter was attacked shortly after WikiLeaks linked to it as an alternative to donate while the WikiLeaks website is down. WL Central and Justice for Assange were also attacked for a short period of time. According to Zdnet a hacker group calling themselves 'AntiLeaks' is claiming responsibility for the attack, and has issued the following statement:-
"You can call me DietPepsi. I am the leader of AntiLeaks. We are not doing this to call attention to ourselves. We are young adults, citizens of the United States of America and are deeply concerned about the recent developments with Julian Assange and his attempt at aslyum in Ecuador.
Assange is the head of a new breed of terrorist. We are doing this as a protest against his attempt to escape justice into Ecuador. This would be a catalyst for many more like him to rise up in his place. We will not stop and they will not stop us."

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Russian Hacker 'Dmitry Zubakha' Arrested For DDoS Attacks on Amazon, eBay & Priceline

Russian Hacker 'Dmitry Zubakha' Arrested For DDoS Attacks on Amazon, eBay & Priceline

A twenty five years old hacker from Russia get arrested for allegedly perforimg two massive DDoS (Denial-of-Service) attacks on one of the most popular online shopping site Amazon.com and eBay in 2008. Dmitry Olegovich Zubakha also known as "Cyber bandit" in most of the hacker's underground community was indicted in 2011, but he was just arrested in Cyprus on Wednesday. The arrest of Zubakha took place under an international warrant and  currently he is in custody pending extradition to the United States. According to the indictment unsealed on Thursday said- Zubakha, with the help of another Russian hacker planned and executed DDoS attacks against Amazon.com, eBay, and Priceline in the middle of 2008. Zubakha and his co-conspirator launched the attack with the help of a DDoS botnet to generate a large number of traffic which interrupts the normal service of those online shopping sites. According to a press release by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the attacks made it "difficult for Amazon customers to complete their business on line."

He has been charged by law enforcement for stealing more than 28,000 credit cards in 2009 for that reason, Zubakha and his partner are also charged with aggravated identity theft for illegally using the credit card of at least one person. At present the charges in the indictment conspiracy, intentionally causing damage toa protected computer resulting in a loss of more than $5000, possession of more than 15 unauthorized access devices (credit card numbers), and aggravated identity theft are just allegations. Zubakha faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy, up to teh years in prison and a $250,000 fine for intentionally causing damage to a protected computer, up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine for possessing unauthorized access devices, and an additional two years in prison for aggravated identity theft. 

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BoNeSi- A New DDoS Botnet Simulator Tool Available For Download

BoNeSi- A New DDoS Botnet Simulator Tool Available For Download 

After Armageddon now we got BoNeSi, the DDoS Botnet Simulator is a Tool to simulate Botnet Traffic in a testbed environment on the wire. It is designed to study the effect of DDoS attacks. BoNeSi generates ICMP, UDP and TCP (HTTP) flooding attacks from a defined botnet size (different IP addresses). BoNeSi is highly configurable and rates, data volume, source IP addresses, URLs and other parameters can be configured. There are plenty of other tools out there to spoof IP addresses with UDP and ICMP, but for TCP spoofing, there is no solution. BoNeSi is the first tool to simulate HTTP-GET floods from large-scale bot networks. BoNeSi also tries to avoid to generate packets with easy identifiable patterns (which can be filtered out easily).

It is highly recommend to run BoNeSi in a closed testbed environment. However, UDP and ICMP attacks could be run in the internet as well, but you should be carefull. HTTP-Flooding attacks can not be simulated in the internet, because answers from the webserver must be routed back to the host running BoNeSi. A demo video of BoNeSi in action can be found here.

To Download BoNeSi Click Here

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LulzSec Hacker Ryan Cleary & Jake Davis Plead Guilty at London Court For Hacking CIA & Pentagon

LulzSec Hacker Ryan Cleary & Jake Davis Plead Guilty at London Court For Hacking CIA & Pentagon

Two British LulzSec hacker Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake Davis, 19 today admitted hacking into the websites of the CIA and the Pentagon as well as the Serious Organised Crime Squad in the UK. Accoridng to an exclusive report of The Guardian both Jake Davies, also known as "Topiary" and Ryan Cleary, known under the names "Anakin," "hershcel.mcdooenstein", "George hampsterman" and "ni"  have confessed attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), National Health Service, News International, Sony, Nintendo, Arizona State police, and other sites in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to cause the sites to cash. Cleary also confessed to four separate charges including hacking into US Air Force Agency computers at the Pentagon.

Cleary and Davis plotted to carry out the attacks with other unknown members of internet groups Anonymous, Internet Feds, and LulzSec. Other websites targeted by the pair were Westboro Baptist Church, Bethesda, Eve Online, HBGary, HBGary Federal, PBS Inc, and Infragard. Cleary also confessed today to four separate charges, including hacking into US Air Force Agency computers, based at the Pentagon.

Both men appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court to enter guilty pleas to a series of charges brought against them.

But both Cleary and Davis denied allegations they posted 'unlawfully obtained confidential computer data' to public websites including LulzSec.com, Pirate Bay, and PasteBin, in order to encourage offences contrary to the Serious Crime Act.

Alleged co-hackers Ryan Ackroyd, 25, and a 17-year-old A-level student, from south-London, deny their involvement in the DDoS attacks and will stand trial on April 8, 2013.

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