Pirate Bay Co-Founder’s Sentence Cut In Half

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg's prison sentence for hacking and fraud has been reduced from two years to one. (Photo: Reuters)

Pirate Bay co-founder, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg had his prison sentence for hacking and fraud reduced from two years to one. A Swedish appellate court made the decision on Wednesday after finding that one of the hacking charges against Svartholm Warg lacked sufficient evidence, the Associated Press reported. Namely, charges relating to the hacking of Nordea Bank AB were dismissed, while other hacking charges were upheld.

The Pirate Bay co-founder's sentence was cut in half because the Svea Court of Appeal said it could not rule out Svartholm Warg's claim that others could have remotely accessed his computer to hack into the Nordea Bank AB's servers. While the court dismissed the bank hacking charges, it upheld the conviction against Svartholm Warg of hacking into the servers of two other companies, Applicate and Logica, which handle sensitive information for Sweden's police force and tax authority. The Wall Street Journal reported that Svartholm Warg was originally convicted of hacking into all three companies' servers in June, resulting in the two-year sentence.  

The Pirate Bay is one of the world's biggest free file-sharing websites, giving millions of users a way to illegally download music, movies and software. Since launching the site in 2003, Svartholm Warg and fellow co-founder Fredrik Neij have been embroiled in controversy. In 2009, the co-founders, along with company spokesman Peter Sunde and businessman Carl Lundstrom, were given one-year sentences for copyright violation by a Swedish court and ordered to pay 46 million kronor ($6.5 million) in damages to the entertainment industry.

Svartholm Warg left the country while appealing that ruling. He was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 and deported back to Sweden after an international arrest warrant was issued against the Pirate Bay co-founder, per the AP. He served out his first sentence for copyright violation while under detention over his hacking charges.

But while the Pirate Bay co-founder might have had his sentence reduced in Sweden, he might not be out of hot water yet. Decrypted Tech reported that Svartholm Warg is facing extradition to Denmark, as he is a suspect in a breach that resulted in the theft of driving records and social security numbers. The Danish authorities expect to have Svartholm Warg in custody in a few days.

Source: idigitaltimes.com

Facebook site infiltrated!

The Facebook security teams has confirmed that the social networking site was targeted in a "sophisticated attack" last month.

The digital intrusion apparently occurred when a small number of Facebook personnel visited a compromised mobile developer website.

"The site hosted an exploit which then allowed malware to be installed on these employee laptops. The laptops were fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software. As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines," a Facebook rep explained.

"After analyzing the compromised website where the attack originated, we found it was using a 'zero-day' (previously unseen) exploit to bypass the Java sandbox (built-in protections) to install the malware. We immediately reported the exploit to Oracle, and they confirmed our findings and provided a patch on February 1, 2013, that addresses this vulnerability."

Interestingly, Facebook says it wasn't not alone in the above-mentioned attack, as other sites were infiltrated as well.

However, the rep was also quick to point out that the social networking site had found "no evidence" of compromised user data.

"As part of our ongoing investigation, we are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," the rep added.


Source: www.tgdaily.com/

Symantec: Hackers Hit Chemical Companies

Cyber attacks traced to China targeted at least 48 chemical and military-related companies in an effort to steal technical secrets, a U.S. computer security company said Tuesday, adding to complaints about pervasive Internet crime linked to this country.

The targets included 29 chemical companies and 19 others that make advanced materials used by the military, California-based Symantec Corp. said in a report. It said the group included multiple Fortune 100 companies but did not identify them or say where they were located.

"The purpose of the attacks appears to be industrial espionage, collecting intellectual property for competitive advantage," said the report.

Security experts say China is a center for Internet crime. Attacks against governments, companies and human rights groups have been traced to this country, though finding the precise source is nearly impossible. China's military is a leader in cyberwarfare research but the government has rejected allegations of cyberspying and says it also is a target.

The latest attacks occurred between late July and September and used e-mails sent to companies to plant software dubbed "PoisonIvy" in their computers, Symantec said. It said the same hackers also were involved in attacks earlier this year on human rights groups and auto companies.

Symantec said it traced the attacks to a computer system owned by a Chinese man in his 20s in the central province of Hebei. It said that when contacted, the man provided a contact who would perform "hacking for hire."

Symantec said it could not determine whether the Chinese man was a lone attacker, whether he had a direct or indirect role or whether he hacked the targets for someone else. It called him Covert Grove based on a translation of his Chinese name.

The U.S. and Chinese governments have accused each other of being involved in industrial espionage.

Security consultants say the high skill level of earlier attacks traced to China suggests its military or other government agencies might be stealing technology and trade secrets to help state companies.

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said last month that Chinese efforts to steal U.S. technology over the Internet had reached an "intolerable level." He called on the U.S. and other governments to pressure Beijing to stop.

Another security firm, McAfee Inc., said in August it had found a five-year-long hacking campaign that it called Operation Shady Rat against more than 70 governments, international institutions, corporations and think tanks.

In February, McAfee said hackers operating from China stole information from oil companies in the United States, Taiwan, Greece and Kazakhstan about operations, financing and bidding for oil fields.

Thousands of Chinese computer enthusiasts belong to hacker clubs and experts say some are supported by the military to develop a pool of possible recruits. Experts say military-trained civilians also might work as contractors for companies that want to steal technology or business secrets from rivals.

China has the world's biggest population of Internet users, with more than 450 million people online, and the government promotes Web use for business and education. But experts say security for many computers in China is so poor that they are vulnerable to being taken over and used to hide the source of attacks from elsewhere.

Last year, Google Inc. closed its China-based search engine after complaining of cyber attacks from China against its e-mail service.

That case highlighted the difficulty of tracking hackers. Experts said that even if the Google attacks were traced to a computer in China, it would have to be examined in person to be sure it wasn't hijacked by an attacker abroad.

By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer

Hackers Threaten To Destroy Facebook!

Notorious hacker collective Anonymous on Tuesday threatened to “kill” Facebook on Nov. 5, according to a YouTube video spotlighted on official channels used by the group.

“Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed,” the group wrote in a transcript of its YouTube video. “If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook [sic] for the sake of your own privacy.”

Facebook did not immediately respond with an official comment about the threat.

Anonymous claims it is doing Facebook users a service because the company is “selling information to government agencies.” It also asserts that Facebook’s privacy controls are a joke and that users cannot actually delete their accounts.

“Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your ‘privacy’ settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you ‘delete’ your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time,” the group wrote. “Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more ‘private’ is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family.”

Nov. 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates when Fawkes and others placed explosives under the British House of Lords in 1605. The Guy Fawkes mask and story was popularized in the ten-issue comic series V for Vendetta and the movie based upon it.

The @YourAnonNews Twitter account appeared to confirm the video was actually issued by Anonymous, with a tweet on Tuesday night stating: “Remember remember the fifth of November the FaceBook treason and plot…”

The threat to destroy Facebook comes only a day after the group successfully hacked and defaced the Syrian Ministry of Defense’s website. Anonymous has gained much exposure in the last year with attacks on PayPal, Visa, Amazon, Bank of America, and various world governments. The group was blamed for the massive attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network but it denied involvement.

Even though Anonymous has had success in hacking some major websites in the past, it’s questionable that it would be successful against Facebook. When you consider that the hacking group has given Facebook several months to prepare for an attack, it’s extremely unlikely Facebook would be brought down. But when you’re talking about a group of hackers with an aim to sow dischord, you can never be certain.

The roughly made YouTube video issued by Anonymous can be watched below:

DefCon Kid Hacker Uncovers Zero-Day Exploit

 A number of media sources have made light of DefCon's "Kids Village", but a 10-year old hacker discovered an entire class of vulnerabilities and presented her findings as well or better than most of the conference's attendees.

The hacker goes by the handle CyFi, and she co-founded "DefCon Kids Village" -- a series of presentations for 60-odd aspiring hackers aged 8-16 who attended the conference in Las Vegas. The theme for the first year of the Kids Village was responsible hacking...although admittedly, some of the "white hat" skills demonstrated included lock picking and various Google hacks.

CyFi's own presentation was called "Apps—A Traveler of Both Time and Space, And What I Learned About Zero-Days and Responsible Disclosure." In it, she demonstrated how she could manipulate the clock on her cell phone to fool apps into thinking that more time had passed -- but there are a few other steps that CyFi, in the spirit of "responsible disclosure", did not spell out for the listeners.

"I'll show a new class of vulnerabilities I call TimeTraveler," CyFi's summary read. "By controlling time, you can do many things, such as grow pumpkins instantly. This technique enables endless possibilities. I'll show you how...Thank you AT&T, DEFCON, EFF and Lookout!!!!! :)"

The pumpkins were part of a social farming game that can be found on iOS and Android devices. Their slow growth (and CyFi's impatience) was the catalyst for the hacker's coding experiments. CyFi discovered that the code and clock alterations enable any number of changes to occur instantly within the framework of the game -- thus, the "new class of vulnerabilities".

In the true spirit of DefCon, CyFi di not divulge her 'real' name. Nor did she mention the names of the games that she'd hacked (i.e., "responsible disclosure"). However, she did proudly admit to being a "a ten-year-old hacker, artist and athlete living in California" who "really likes coffee, but her mom doesn’t let her drink it."

By James Lee Phillips, who is a Senior Writer & Research Analyst for IBG.com. With offices in Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York, & London, IBG is quickly becoming the leading expert in Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Website Development and Reputation Management. 

     

Sega says 1.3 million affected by data breach

The hack that took down Sega's online gaming service late last week has affected 1.3 million customers.

That was one of the details confirmed by the publisher on Sunday.

A cyber attack on the publisher's Sega Pass service - a subscription-based feature that allows gamers to play unlimited Sega games online - forced the service to be shut down.

"We have identified that a subset of  SEGA Pass members emails addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were obtained. To stress, none of the passwords obtained were stored in plain text. Please note that no personal payment information was stored by SEGA as we use external payment providers, meaning your payment details were not at risk from this intrusion," Sega wrote in an e-mail to its customers.

On Sunday, Sega confirmed 1.3 million people were affected but did not have an estimate for when Sega Pass would be back online. The company said it is working on increasing its security.

The Sega Pass website has been replaced with a terse message that reads, "SEGA Pass is going through some improvements so is currently unavailable for new members to join or existing members to modify their details including resetting passwords. We hope to be back up and running very soon. Thank you for your paitence." (sic)

This of course comes just off the heels of Sony's massive data breach which forced the Playstation Network offline for over a month, resulting in what is estimated to be billions of dollars in damages.

Unlike Sony's service, Sega Pass is not an e-commerce platform for other publishers, so the damage is limited only to Sega itself. But with such a large number of users affected, it isn't a small attack by any means.

Source: www.tgdaily.com

   

Sony hit again with two hacks

Japanese ISP subsidiary is broken into, while phishers use Sony server in Thailand

An intruder has apparently broken into So-net, an internet service provider subsidiary of Sony, and stolen about $1,200 worth of virtual tokens.

So-net disclosed the compromise in an alert (written in Japanese) on its homepage on Thursday.

Meanwhile, security firm F-Secure today disclosed that it has also discovered a phishing site that's hosted on a Sony server in Thailand.

"Basically this means that Sony has been hacked, again," Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer, noted in the blog post. "Although in this case the server is probably not very important," he added.

News of the latest breaches come barely a month after Sony disclosed intrusions at its PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Online sites that compromised data on close to 100 million account holders.

A So-net spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, that the breach of the ISP is unlikely connected to the previous compromises.

The Sony-owned So-net ISP lets consumers accumulate reward points that can be redeemed for Sony merchandize and services. The intruders illegally redeemed points belonging to about 130 consumers. Another 73 accounts were compromised, but their points were not redeemed, the Journal noted.

In addition, about 90 email accounts are also believed to have been compromised in the breach

According to the Journal, an intruder using one IP address, tried to access So-net's point service close to 10,000 times before finally gaining access. So-net itself appears to believe that the intruder had usernames of account holders and used an automated program to generate possible passwords, the Journal said.

It's not immediately clear why the company apparently doesn't have a mechanism for flagging multiple failed attempts to access its systems.

The intrusions are believed to have taken place on May 16 and May 17. So-net discovered the breach on May 18, after receiving consumer complaints. So-net stopped the point redemption service following the discovery of the breach.

he latest breaches are relatively minor in scale compared to the massive breach at PSN and Sony Entertainment Online. Even so, it only adds to the company's embarrassment.

The earlier intrusions forced Sony to take its PSN service offline for several weeks while it struggled to identify the scope of the problems and how to fix them.

The company started re-launching the service this week but isn struggling to keep it running smoothly.

For instance, earlier this week Sony was forced to once again take a portion of its PlayStation network offline because of a programming error that could provide hackers a way to break into its networks.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan, or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

       

FBI arrests more than 80 cyber criminals after computer virus siphons $3m from U.S. accounts

More than 80 people have been charged in connection with $3million being stolen from American bank accounts by hackers in eastern Europe.

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The con artists used computer viruses to steal user names and passwords from unsuspecting victims, and then used the information to siphon off money from their accounts.

Foreign students were used in the heist to open up bank accounts in the U.S., which  were then used to transfer money that had been stolen in the cyber-theft scheme.

Vulnerable: Hundreds of unsuspecting computer users were targeted in a cyber theft scheme that raided $3million from bank accounts using Trojan viruses

In court papers unsealed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, 37 offenders were charged with their roles in hacking into dozens of victims' accounts.

Charges included conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering, false identification use and passport fraud.

Fifty-five others have been charged after a year-long investigation by the FBI.

Attorney Preet Bharara compared cyber criminals to classic bank robbers, saying: 'The mouse and the keyboard can be far more effective than the gun and the mask..

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Mr Bharara revealed that the victims of the attacks included five banks and dozens of individuals across America.

Ten people were arrested early today - nine in the New York area and one in Pittsburgh. The others had already been arrested with at least 17 being fugitives.

The FBI said the cyber attacks included malware known as the Zues Trojan, which was typically sent as an email to computers at small businesses and offices.

Once the email's attachment was opened, the virus embedded itself in the victims' computers to secretly monitor their computer activity.

The virus recorded their keystrokes and captured their user names and passwords when they next logged into their online bank accounts.

The Trojan program also stole passwords for email log-ins and social networking websites that ordinarily only the user would know.

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Individuals known as 'money mules' were used in the States to actually steal the money from individual accounts.

Mr Bharara said those arrested consisted almost entirely of mules and four people who managed them.

'The Zeus Trojan allegedly allowed the hackers, from thousands of miles away, to get their hands on other people's money - with far less exertion than a safe cracker or bank robber'

New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance said people from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus had come to the States on student visas.

They were then recruited through social networking sites and newspaper ads to fraudulently open hundreds of bank accounts.

The money stolen from the victims would then be deposited into those illegal accounts and transferred in smaller amounts elsewhere.

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Authorities said those who actually set up the bank accounts would keep up to ten per cent for themselves, sending the rest to those higher up in the scheme.

Mr Vance said: 'This advanced cyber crime ring is a disturbing example of organised crime in the 21st century - high-tech and widespread.'

Gregory Antenson, commanding officer of the city police department's Financial Crimes Task Force, said the police had shown up at a bank in the Bronx in February to investigate a suspicious $44,000 withdrawal.

This investigation then led them into the international probe that was already under way.

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Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office, said: 'The Zeus Trojan allegedly allowed the hackers, from thousands of miles away, to get their hands on other people's money - with far less exertion than a safe cracker or bank robber'.

Source:www.dailymail.co.uk