Emma Watson 'nude photos will be leaked within days' claim 4Chan hackers

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

 The actress Emma Watson is being targeted by hackers who are threatening to publish nude photos of her in retaliation for her speech where she announced that she was a feminist.
Although the countdown does not specifically say that naked pictures will be published, the site is believed to have been made by members of the internet forum 4chan, who were behind the recent release of hacked pictures of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton.
US website Gawker quoted posts, since deleted, that appear to show the timing of the release is no accident and that the publication of pictures would be a direct response to her speech.
One of the comments quoted says: "She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online."
The hackers say they will leak nude photos of the Harry Potter star in under five days time.
An image of Emma Watson wiping away a tear appears on the site beside a digital timer which is counting down the seconds until the release.
The words: "Never forget, the biggest to come thus far" are written in capital letters on the bottom of the screen.
Earlier this month Ms Watson came to the defence of her friend Ms Lawrence after dozens of images showing the Hunger Games actress in various states of undress were leaked on 4Chan.
The actress tweeted : “Even worse than seeing women's privacy violated on social media is reading the accompanying comments that show such a lack of empathy.
More than 100 celebrities were affected by the scandal last month after an unidentified hacker stole explicit images and videos from Apple's iCloud service.
Apple said it was "outraged" by the attack and encouraged users to update their accounts with a "strong" password and enable two-step verification.
But over the weekend, celebs including Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Hudgens and Amber Heard were targeted - and more alleged nudes were leaked
Watson disclosed she became a feminist after being told she was too “bossy” for wanting to direct a play at the age of eight.
Watson, who starred as Hermione in the Harry Potter series, said she had been “confused” at being insulted for wanting to take charge, while boys were allowed to direct without question.
Saying being a “feminist” had initially seemed “uncomplicated” to her, she argued it is now considered “aggressive” and “anti-men” by too many people.
Watson, who has recently become the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, has now called on women and men alike to reclaim “feminism” for the benefit of all.
In her first major speech, made at the UN headquarters in New York, the actress launched the “HeForShe” campaign, to call on men to speak up for oppressed women everywhere.
Watson, who admitted she may be dismissed by critics who wondered what “this Harry Potter girl” was doing at the UN, asked men to “take up the mantle” to speak up for their “daughters, sisters and mothers”.
The actress, who studied at Oxford and Brown universities, said: “Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.”
Speaking of her own decision to call herself a feminist, she told an audience: “I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called “bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys were not.”
She added she seen her female friends dropping out of sports teams because they did not want to appear “muscly”, while her male peers struggled to express their feelings.
“I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me,” she said. “But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word.
“Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive. Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?”
She added: “I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.
“If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”
The campaign, HeForShe, is described as a “solidarity movement for gender equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other of humanity, for the entirety of humanity”.
Watson argued men were also suffering as a result of inequality, enduring mental illness but feeling unable to ask for help for fear of appearing “less macho”.
“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive,” she said. “Both men and women should feel free to be strong.
“If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.”

Russia gang steals 1.2 billion passwords

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, August 6, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

A Russian group has hacked 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses, according to Hold Security - a US firm specialising in discovering breaches.

Hold Security described the hack as the "largest data breach known to date", BBC reports

It claimed the stolen information came from more than 420,000 websites, including "many leaders in virtually all industries across the world".

Hold Security did not give details of the companies affected by the hack.

"They didn't just target large companies; instead, they targeted every site that their victims visited," Hold Security said in its report.

The hackers also got access to data from botnets - a network of computers infected with malware to trigger online fraud.

Hold Security said the botnets helped the hacking group - which it dubbed CyberVor - identify more than 400,000 websites that were vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Hackers can tap USB devices in new attacks, researcher warns

Posted by Unknown on Friday, August 1, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

Reuters: USB devices such as mice, keyboards and thumb-drives can be used to hack into personal computers in a potential new class of attacks that evade all known security protections, a top computer researcher revealed on Thursday.
Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin’s SR Labs, noted that hackers could load malicious software onto tiny, low-cost computer chips that control functions of USB devices but which have no built-in shields against tampering with their code.
“You cannot tell where the virus came from. It is almost like a magic trick,” said Nohl, whose research firm is known for uncovering major flaws in mobile phone technology.
The finding shows that bugs in software used to run tiny electronics components that are invisible to the average computer user can be extremely dangerous when hackers figure out how to exploit them. Security researchers have increasingly turned their attention to uncovering such flaws.
Nohl said his firm has performed attacks by writing malicious code onto USB control chips used in thumb drives and smartphones. Once the USB device is attached to a computer, the malicious software can log keystrokes, spy on communications and destroy data, he said.
Computers do not detect the infections when tainted devices are inserted into a PC because anti-virus programs are only designed to scan for software written onto memory and do not scan the “firmware” that controls the functioning of those devices, he said.
Nohl and Jakob Lell, a security researcher at SR Labs, will describe their attack method at next week’s Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas in a presentation titled: “Bad USB – On Accessories that Turn Evil.”
Thousands of security professionals gather at the annual conference to hear about the latest hacking techniques, including ones that threaten security of business computers, consumer electronics and critical infrastructure.
Nohl said he would not be surprised if intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency have already figured out how to launch attacks using this technique.
Last year he presented research at Black Hat on breakthrough methods for remotely attacking SIM cards on mobile phones. In December, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden demonstrated that the U.S. spy agency was using a similar technique for surveillance, which it called “Monkey Calendar.”
An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
SR Labs tested the technique by infecting controller chips made by major manufacturer Taiwan’s Phison Electronics Corp, and placing them into USB memory drives and smartphones running Google Inc’s Android operating system.
Similar chips are made by Silicon Motion Technology Corp and Alcor Micro Corp . Nohl said his firm did not test devices with chips from those manufacturers.
Phison and Google did not respond to requests for comment. Officials with Silicon Motion and Alcor Micro could not immediately be reached.
Nohl said he believes hackers would have a “high chance” of corrupting other kinds of controller chips besides those made by Phison, because their manufacturers are not required to secure software. He said those chips, once infected, could be used to infect mice, keyboards and other devices that connect via USB.
“The sky is the limit. You can do anything at all,” he said.
In his tests, Nohl said he was also able to gain remote access to a computer by having the USB instruct the computer to download a malicious program with instructions that the PC believed were comikeyboard
ng from a keyboard. He said he was also able to change what are known as DNS network settings on a computer, essentially instructing the machine to route Internet traffic through malicious servers.
Once a computer is infected, it could be programmed to infect all USB devices that are subsequently attached to that PC, which would then corrupt machines that they contact.
“Now all of your USB devices are infected. It becomes self-propagating and extremely persistent,” Nohl said. “You can never remove it.”
Christof Paar, a professor of electrical engineering at Germany’s University of Bochum who reviewed the findings, said he believes the new research will prompt others to take a closer look at USB technology, and potentially lead to the discovery of more bugs. He called on manufacturers to move to better protect their chips to thwart any attacks.
“The manufacturer should make it much harder to change the software that runs on a USB stick,” Paar said.

Iranian hackers use fake Facebook accounts to spy on U.S., others

Posted by Unknown on Thursday, June 12, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a fake news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber intelligence firm said on Thursday.

ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the hackers' targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, members of the U.S.-Israeli lobby, and personnel from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The firm declined to identify the victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as infect machines with malicious software.
 
 "If it's been going on for so long, clearly they have had success," iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.

ISight dubbed the operation "Newscaster" because it said the Iranian hackers created six "personas" who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.

The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other online social networks for these 14 personas, populated their profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend target victims, according to iSight.

The operation has been active since at least 2011, iSight said, noting that it was the most elaborate cyber espionage campaign using "social engineering" that has been uncovered to date from any nation.

To build credibility, the hackers would approach high-value targets by first establishing ties with the victims' friends, classmates, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks run by Facebook Inc, Google Inc and its YouTube, LinkedIn Corp and Twitter Inc.

The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.

The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.

"This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow," said Jones. "They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar."

ISight said it had alerted some victims and social networking sites as well as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and overseas authorities. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Facebook Inc spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.

"We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts at various points of interaction on the site and block malware from spreading," Nancarrow said.

LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the 14 fake profiles uncovered by iSight were currently active.

Twitter declined to comment and Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

POST-STUXNET ERA

ISight disclosed its findings as evidence emerges that Iranian hacking groups are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Cybersecurity company FireEye Inc reported earlier this month that a group known as the Ajax Security Team has become the first Iranian hacking group to use custom-built malicious software for espionage.

Iranian hackers stepped up their activity in the wake of the Stuxnet attack on Tehran's nuclear program in 2010. The Stuxnet computer virus is widely believed to have been launched by the United States and Israel.

ISight said it could not ascertain whether the hackers were tied to the government in Tehran, though it believed they were supported by a nation state because of the complexity of the operation.

The firm said NewsOnAir.org was registered in Tehran and likely hosted by an Iranian provider. The Persian term "Parastoo" was used as a password for malware associated with the group, which appeared to work during business hours in Tehran, according to iSight.

Among the 14 false personas were reporters for NewsOnAir, including one with the same name as a Reuters journalist in Washington; six employees who purportedly worked for defense contractors; a systems administrator with the U.S. Navy; and an accountant working for a payment processor.

A spokesman for Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns Reuters, declined to comment.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Ninety hackers arrested in 19 countries

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, May 20, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

It is nicknamed “creepware,” and more than half a million people around the world have been prey to its silent computer snooping.
An international crackdown by the FBI and police in 19 countries has brought more than 90 arrests in what authorities say is a serious strike against a widespread and growing problem.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in New York told reporters the global investigation “exposed and crippled a frightening form of cybercrime that has affected hundreds of thousands of users around the world.”
The sweep, capping a two-year operation, was coordinated so suspects didn’t have time to destroy evidence. It included the arrest of a Swedish hacker who was a co-creator of Blackshades, Alex Yucel, who was apprehended in Moldova.
In total, one of the largest global cybercrime crackdowns has yielded the arrests of more than 90 people linked to the Blackshades malware, with more than 300 searches conducted, Bharara said.
The malware, which sells for as little as $40, can be used to hijack computers remotely and turn on computer webcams, access hard drives and capture keystrokes to steal passwords — without the victim ever knowing it.
According to Bharara and the FBI, criminals have used Blackshades for everything from extortion to bank fraud, and it has become one of the world’s most popular remote administration tools, or RATs, used for cybercrime in just a few years.
“The RAT is inexpensive and simple to use, but its capabilities are sophisticated and its invasiveness breathtaking,” Bharara said. “For just $40, the BlackShades RAT enabled anyone anywhere in the world to instantly become a dangerous cybercriminal, able to steal your property and invade your privacy.”
To prove his point, the FBI released screen grabs showing how the malware works, including an ungrammatical message that would pop up on the computer screens of victims that said: “Your computer has basically been hijacked, and your private files stored on your computer has now been encrypted, which means they are impossible to access, and can only be decryped/restored by us.”
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