Scientific Dictatorship

Cyber recruits key part of NSA hiring blitz

August 15, 2011 - 6:58am

By Jack Moore
Federal News Radio

The National Security Agency is on a hiring blitz. The cryptologic intelligence agency — home to the government's chief codemakers and breakers — announced its intention to hire as many as 3,000 people over the next two years, many of them cybersecurity experts.

In fact, NSA recruiters even took a trip to Las Vegas in the last few weeks to look for potential hires at DefCon, a high-profile hacker conference there.

Dickie George, the technical director of the Information Assurance Directorate at NSA, told the Federal Drive the agency is partnering with academia and industry to find the "best and brightest" in cybersecurity.

"We really need people who can solve hard problems," George said. "And network security is one of the hardest problems around."

However, the shortage of cyber pros doesn't only affect government, but also industry, he added.

"We need to develop the talent in this country to protect us from what's going on," he said. "And there's a lot going on." By joining forces with universities, he said, NSA and other government agencies hope to show a cyber career with the government can be an attractive option.

"There are great careers in this field," he said. "We want them to think about not being rocket scientists, but being cyber warriors, because that's what the country needs right now."

And the agency is looking in some unconventional places.

NSA raised some eyebrows when it was reported that the agency had visited the hacker convention, DefCon, in search of new cyber personnel.

"The community there is very vibrant; it's got a lot of talent," George explained. "Most of the people out there are doing the right things: They're trying to make products better, they're trying to improve the security of the Internet. And we need to work with those people ... We need to make sure they understand that we are the good guys."

But with many areas of the Defense Department preparing for flatter budgets and civilian hiring freezes already in the offing, NSA's robust hiring may be hard to account for.

But George characterized the current environment as a "cyber cold war," and said he's been given no indication to slow hiring.

"The importance of this mission and the importance to the nation of cybersecurity - it can't be understated," he said.

Today, the big value is intellectual property. "It's in the ideas," he added, in contrast to a bygone age where the value of industry was in large-scale manufacturing plants and material.

"This country is constantly being threatened by our adversaries," he said, which includes nation-states, terrorists and organized crime. "They're coming into this country and siphoning off our intellectual property. And that makes us really vulnerable."

Labels: hackers, National Security Agency, NSA

IMF hit by 'very major' cyber security attack

BBC

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it has been targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack.

Officials at the fund gave few details but said the attack earlier this year had been "a very major breach" of its systems, the New York Times reports.

Cyber security officials said the hack was designed to install software to create a "digital insider presence"...[Full Article]

Labels: hackers, hacking, IMF, International Monetary Fund

One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer'

The FBI and US secret service have used the threat of prison to create an army of informers among online criminals

UK Guardian

The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established.

Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community.

In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars.

So ubiquitous has the FBI informant network become that Eric Corley, who publishes the hacker quarterly, 2600, has estimated that 25% of hackers in the US may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears. "Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation," Corley told the Guardian.

"It makes for very tense relationships," said John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website depository for secret documents along the lines of WikiLeaks. "There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted."

The best-known example of the phenomenon is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who turned informant on Bradley Manning, who is suspected of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks. Manning had entered into a prolonged instant messaging conversation with Lamo, whom he trusted and asked for advice. Lamo repaid that trust by promptly handing over the 23-year-old intelligence specialist to the military authorities. Manning has now been in custody for more than a year.

For acting as he did, Lamo has earned himself the sobriquet of Judas and the "world's most hated hacker", though he has insisted that he acted out of concern for those he believed could be harmed or even killed by the WikiLeaks publication of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

"Obviously it's been much worse for him but it's certainly been no picnic for me," Lamo has said. "He followed his conscience, and I followed mine."...[Full Article]

Labels: FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hackers, informants

Worst Computer ‘Hacker’ in U.S. History Reveals He Was Paid Informant for Federal Government

American Free Press

By Frank Whalen

In 2008 Albert Gonzalez was charged with committing the largest cyber crime in U.S. history. Today, Gonzalez claims the Secret Service, with whom he was working as a paid informant, sanctioned his actions. An examination of the facts seems to validate his claims that he is a scapegoat used to protect far deeper conspiracies.

Gonzalez was recruited by the Secret Service in 2003 and officially released from its employ in 2008. He assisted the government in arresting dozens of the world’s most wanted cyber criminals. It was also during this time that the pieces of a much larger criminal puzzle came into focus by the Justice Department. According to The New York Times last year, the Justice Department’s chief cyber crime prosecutor, Kim Peretti, described in 2005 that she encountered a new cyber crime wave unlike anything ever seen before.

“The service keeps calling me, saying, ‘We’ve got another company that contacted us.’ The volume was getting bigger and bigger,” Ms. Peretti said. It is true. Cyber crime is huge business, netting criminals in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe hundreds of billions of dollars in stolen money every year. No one is immune from cyber crime, either.

In 2010, AmericanFreePress.net, the website operated by AFP, was targeted by cyber criminals on two occasions. The second attack was so destructive that it took down the entire website for a week, forcing drastic changes in the way the site is managed.

As far as Gonzalez is concerned, the Secret Service worked closely with and was educated by Gonzalez for years. The Times states that Ms. Peretti achieved her position because of Gonzalez.

Gonzalez’s reported annual salary of $75,000 from the Secret Service seems to validate the U.S. agency’s belief in his

skills. Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor, said to Wired in 2010, “It’s a significant amount of money to pay an informant, but it’s not an outrageous amount if the guy was working full time and delivering good results.”



Were those results on behalf of the U.S. government criminal in nature? In an April 8, 2011 Wired report, Gonzalez wrote, in a legal motion to withdraw his guilty plea, that Secret Service agent Steve Ward once told him, “Go do your thing . . . just don’t get caught.”

SC Magazine also cited Gonzalez’s motion. “The agents had me infiltrating chat rooms, setting people up, and then the agents would bust them. . . . They told me do what [I] have to do, just try not to get caught. All the time, I was educating the agents as to hacking methods and computer crimes.”

It seems possible that Gonzalez was following orders by hacking some 170 million credit card files from America’s biggest retailers, including the highly publicized TJ Maxx case. Perhaps he was allowed to keep some of the profits while recruiting other hackers to assist him in the acquisition of data, or he was instructed to use the evidence to frame other hackers whom the government was chasing.

Maybe the scope of this operation is the only reason Gonzalez hasn’t been “suicided” while in prison. The Times reporter states, “One of the imprisoned hackers told me there were major chains and big hacks that would dwarf TJ Maxx. I’m just waiting for them to indict us for the rest of them.”

Conceivably, after sitting in jail for a few years, Gonzalez realizes that his former employers intend for him to actually serve his 20-year sentence, and that’s why he’s now speaking out.

With the potential for credit card data theft to be monumentally larger, Gonzalez could have been an unwitting participant in a much bigger plan: worldwide financial collapse. In February 2010 the U.S. government had an exercise called Cyber Shockwave to see how this could manifest.

Frank Whalen has been a radio talk show host for the past 17 years, and worked as a consultant for Maxim magazine. To read more from Frank Whalen or to tune in to his radio show, see www.franklyspeakingradio.com.

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Labels: American Free Press, hackers, informants

PlayStation users told to check credit accounts

(AP)LOS ANGELES - Sony Corp. said Tuesday that the credit card data of PlayStation users around the world may have been stolen in a hack that forced it to shut down its PlayStation Network for the past week, disconnecting 77 million user accounts.

Some players brushed off the breach as a common hazard of operating in a connected world, and Sony said some services would be restored in a week. But industry experts said the scale of the breach was staggering and could cost the company billions of dollars.

"Simply put, one of the worst breaches we've seen in several years," said Josh Shaul, chief technology officer for Application Security Inc., a New York-based company that is one of the country's largest database security software makers...[Full Article]

Labels: hackers, hacking, PlayStation

Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years
[Full Article]

Labels: hackers, hacking

DHS Deploys Special Teams to Battle Hackers in Cyber War for Infrastructure

Just hours before reports emerged that hackers were for the first time attempting to take over specific infrastructure plants, a former CIA director told ABC News that weaknesses in critical infrastructure systems in the U.S. were among the country's greatest threats to national security.

"One of [the greatest threats] is the vulnerability of our electricity grid to hacking and to physical attack on things like transformers," former CIA Director John Woolsey said Tuesday. "We have 18 critical infrastructures in the United States: water, food, sewage, etc. All of the 17 others depend on the electrical grid.

"So the vulnerability of that grid to things like hacking is a very serious problem," he said.

The same day, officials at the Department of Homeland Security confirmed a report by The Associated Press that last month hackers targeted critical infrastructure systems with malicious computer code. While it is hardly the first time hackers have attempted to gain access to infrastructure systems, experts said it was first time they employed a certain type of "worm," called Stuxnet, that was created to seize complete control of a specific critical infrastructure location...

[Full Article]

Labels: Department of Homeland Security, DHS, hackers, hacking, Homeland Security, infrastructure

Is Your Webcam Spying On You?

DENVER - Web cameras make it easy to keep in touch with far away friends and family. If you have a web cam on your home computer, laptop or even your cell phone, a hacker can be lurking, just waiting for a chance to gain control.

Right now, hackers are spying on innocent users via their web cam and microphones. It starts with a simple email, link or program sent to you.

"The bad guys go out there and find vulnerabilities in different applications and programs," says Michael Gregg, COO of Superior Solutions Inc.

Once you click on it, your computer is overrun by the hacker's program...

[Full Article]

Labels: hackers, privacy, surveillance, webcam

Iranian MPs Praise IRGC For Disbanding Opposition Network

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Iranian lawmakers in a letter to the Islamic Republic Guards Corps lauded the IRGC for arresting 30 individuals on charge of waging a US-backed cyber war against the country and disbanding their cyber networks.

"The joyful news about the arrest and dismantling of one of the biggest and main groups of cyber networks backed by the (US) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which worked to gather information, once again disclosed another conspiracy against the Islamic Republic," said the letter by 220 parliamentarians...

Labels: CIA, hackers, Iran

Iran's Cyber-Police Spy Sites

Iranian security forces have arrested 30 people accused of waging cyber-war against the country with the backing of the United States.

A few hours after announcing the arrests the Islamic Revolutionary Guards said they had hacked 29 websites they allege are funded by US spooks. The sites use a cover of human rights activity to disguise an espionage network.

Tehran's Public and Revolutionary Court said on Saturday that the network of sites was designed to collect information about Iran's nuclear programme.

The sites were also accused of: "provoking sedition and illegal demonstrations and rallies through releasing unreal and unfounded news and reports after the June presidential elections ... providing media and news support for the Jundollah terrorist group and the monarchist opposition groups."...

Labels: hackers, Iran

Iran Nabs 30 Computer Hackers

Iran nabs 30 computer hackers

TEHRAN, March 15 (UPI) -- Iranian authorities arrested 30 people in connection with an alleged U.S.-backed effort to hack into Iranian computer networks

and spread propaganda.

Iranian authorities during the weekend said they broke up a ring of 30 people connected with Internet crimes in the country, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reports.

IRNA adds that the CIA set aside $400 million in 2006 to destabilize Iran. Tehran blamed London, Washington and Berlin for backing elements of the opposition movement that grew out of contested presidential elections in June...

Labels: CIA, hackers, Iran

Hacker Training

The Pentagon has ordered all troops and officials involved in protecting computer networks from enemy hackers to undergo training in computer hacking themselves.

A Feb. 25 update to a directive on information security from the office of the assistant defense secretary for networks and information integration requires workers involved in what the Pentagon calls computer-network defense to be certified in understanding as many as 150 hacking techniques.

The new training requirement comes as the Pentagon is moving ahead with creation of a new Cyberwarfare Command at Fort Meade, Md.

The certification will be carried out by specialists at the private International Council of E-Commerce Consultants, known as the EC-Council, which conducts what it calls "ethical hacker" training.

The council's president, Jay Bavisi, said the updated directive is the first time the Pentagon acknowledged publicly that it conducts hacker training...

Labels: Cyberwarfare Command, Fort Meade, hackers, Pentagon

Internet Censorship Protest Shuts Down Australian Government Websites

Hacker group in demonstration against web filter that blocks sites deemed offensive by authorities

Hackers protesting government censorship of the Internet have shut down several Australian government websites in a demonstration against the announcement that filters would be imposed to block access to websites deemed offensive by the authorities...

Labels: Australia, hackers, protest