Cyberattack

Massive Cyberattack Aimed at Flooding .Gov Email Inboxes With Subscription Requests

"Massive Email Bombs Target .Gov Addresses," Brian Krebs writes in Krebs on Security: "Over the weekend, unknown assailants launched a massive cyber attack aimed at flooding targeted dot-gov (.gov) email inboxes with subscription requests to thousands of email lists." more

Security Against Election Hacking - Part 2: Cyberoffense Is Not the Best Cyberdefense!

State and county election officials across the country employ thousands of computers in election administration, most of them are connected (from time to time) to the internet (or exchange data cartridges with machines that are connected). In my previous post I explained how we must audit elections independently of the computers, so we can trust the results even if the computers are hacked. more

Security Against Election Hacking - Part 1: Software Independence

There's been a lot of discussion of whether the November 2016 U.S. election can be hacked. Should the U.S. Government designate all the states' and counties' election computers as "critical cyber infrastructure" and prioritize the "cyberdefense" of these systems? Will it make any difference to activate those buzzwords with less than 3 months until the election? First, let me explain what can and can't be hacked. Election administrators use computers in (at least) three ways... more

Code Released by ‘Shadow Brokers’ Raises Alarming Concerns on Whether NSA Was Hacked

The release on websites this week of what appears to be top-secret computer code that the National Security Agency has used to break into the networks of foreign governments and other espionage targets has caused deep concern inside American intelligence agencies, raising the question of whether America's own elite operatives have been hacked and their methods revealed. more

Mysterious Hacker Claims to Have Hacked a Group Linked to the NSA

A mysterious hacker or hackers going by the name 'The Shadow Brokers' claims to have hacked a group linked to the NSA and dumped a bunch of its hacking tools. In a bizarre twist, the hackers are also asking for 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million) in an auction to release more files. more

Swimming Australia Website Comes Under DDoS Attack in Wake of Allegations Against Chinese Swimmer

The website of Swimming Australia has come under DDoS attack just hours after the Australian Bureau of Statistics went back online following a similar attack bringing the online census initiative to a halt. more

Australia’s First Online Census Halted Due to Multiple DDoS Attacks

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports deliberate and "malicious" attacks from offshore, designed to sabotage nation's first online 2016 Census. more

I Didn’t Put My Name on the Census

On many occasions I have written about the dangers of electronic communications in relation to data retention laws, government e-spying and other activities undermining our democracy and our liberty. To date governments still have to come up with evidence that all of this spying on their citizens has prevented any terrorist attacks. Terrorism has been given as the key reason for the government's spying. more

FBI Withheld Warning Democratic National Committee of Suspected Russian Role in Hack

Russian hackers believed to be affiliated with the Russian government continued to have access to Democratic Party computers for months during the critical phase in the U.S. presidential campaign, the sources have said. more

U.S. Issues Cyber Incident Coordination Policy

White House has issued new directive spelling out how the Federal government will coordinate its incident response activities in the event of a large-scale cyber incident. more

Pro-Trump Russians Accused for Democratic National Committee Email Hack, FBI Investigating

"DNC Hack Prompts Allegations of Russian Involvement," Damian Paletta and Devlin Barrett reported in the Wall Street Journal today: "U.S. authorities said they are still investigating who perpetrated the hack, but cybersecurity experts said the email release resembled past examples of political interference that other countries have tied to Russia." more

US Congress Website Recovers from a Crippling 3-Day DNS Attack

A number of websites owned and operated by the United States Congress are recovering from a three-day DNS attack. more

Average DDoS Attacks Now Large Enough to Take Most Organizations Completely Offline

Arbor Networks today released its Global DDoS Attack Data for the first half of 2016 affirming continued escalation in both the size and frequency of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. more

Pokemon Go Server Outage, Hacking Group Claims Credit

OurMine claims credit for DDoS attack on Pokemon Go servers: Several news outlets have reported the hacking group OurMine - also notorious for compromising social media accounts of various celebrities - on Monday took responsibility of hacking the game servers. more

Reprot Suggests China Hacked High-Level Officials at Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

The former chairman, chief of staff and general counsel of the agency were all infiltrated. more