Fergie's Tech Blog

Mark Fiore: Hierarchy Complicitus

More Mark Fiore brilliance.

Via The San Francisco Chronicle.

Enjoy.

- ferg

posted by Fergie @ 4/07/2010 09:51:00 PM 0 comments

Romania Swoops In on 70 Cyber Theft Suspects

Kim Zetter writes on Threat Level:

Romanian police arrested 70 suspects Tuesday who they claim were involved in eBay scams and other cybercrimes since 2006.

Believed to be members of three separate gangs, the scammers used phishing attacks to get the login credentials of eBay account holders, then used the accounts to auction nonexistent goods. Police have identified approximately 800 victims who sent money for non-existent Rolex watches, cars, yachts, private airplanes and other luxury goods. Buyers from around the world lost an estimated $1 million after they sent money for winning auctions, but never received goods. According to one Romanian news source, an American buyer paid about $90,000 for a luxury aircraft in one auction.

The crooks allegedly operated in Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. Police have so far recovered only a small, undetermined amount of money in the raids. Romanian authorities posted a video of one of the police raids on YouTube (above).

Suspects in several countries reportedly exchanged homes, cars and phone cards among themselves.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Valley of the Kings, involved hundreds of law enforcement agents in multiple cities and more than 100 search warrants. It was a joint operation between the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Secret Service and the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT).

posted by Fergie @ 4/07/2010 12:21:00 PM 0 comments

Bank Of America Employee Charged for Plotting to Deploy ATM Code for Theft

An AP newswire article by Mike Baker, via The Sun News, reports:

A Bank of America Corp. employee plotted to deploy malicious computer code within the company's systems so that ATM machines would dispense cash without any record of a transaction, federal prosecutors allege in court documents.

Rodney Reed Caverly was tasked with maintaining and designing computer systems at the bank, including computers that conducted ATM transactions. Prosecutors in the western district of North Carolina said he sought to use computer code within the company's protected computers so that the ATMs would make fraudulent disbursements.

Caverly was able to obtain more than $5,000 during a seven-month period in 2009, prosecutors allege.

The details of Caverly's case were filed on Thursday in a "bill of information" document, which typically signals that a plea deal is forthcoming. An attorney for Caverly, Christopher Fialko, declined to comment. Federal prosecutors didn't return a phone call.

posted by Fergie @ 4/06/2010 05:43:00 PM 0 comments

Spy Network Pilfered Classified Docs From Indian Government and Others

Kim Zetter writes on Threat Level:

A spy network targeting government networks in India and other countries has been pilfering highly classified and other sensitive documents related to missile systems, the movement of military forces and relations among countries, according to a report released Tuesday.

It also grabbed nearly a year’s worth of personal correspondence from the Dalai Lama’s office, even after reports published last year indicated that the Dalai Lama’s network had been compromised in what is believed to be a separate breach.

The researchers say the spying is an example of a sophisticated shift that has occurred in malware networks from “what were once primarily simple to increasingly complex, adaptive systems spread across redundant services and platforms” and from ones that primarily focused on exploitation for criminal purposes to ones that are focused on “political, military, and intelligence-focused espionage.”

The spynet, dubbed Shadow Network, was discovered by a group of computer-security researchers in Canada and the United States who have been monitoring the espionage for at least eight months and watched as the spies siphoned classified and other restricted documents from the Indian Defense Ministry and other computer networks.

posted by Fergie @ 4/06/2010 01:24:00 PM 0 comments

'Cyber Attack' Aimed At Texas Electricity Provider

Robert Arnold writes on Click2Houston.com:

Local 2 Investigates has uncovered details about a so-called "cyber attack" on one of Texas' largest electricity providers, Local 2 reported.

A confidential e-mail obtained by Local 2 explains a "single IP address in China" tried 4,800 times to log in to the Lower Colorado River Authority's computer system.

In the e-mail the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas reports all login attempts failed and went on to term the incident a "suspected sabotage event." The e-mail explained the FBI had been notified.

According to its Web site the LCRA provides electricity to more than a million Texans in rural cities and towns. When contacted by Local 2, officials with the LCRA would "neither confirm, nor deny" the incident or the contents of the e-mail.

Officials with the FBI's Houston office also declined to comment.

When Local 2 contacted ERCOT we were referred to the North American Electricity Corp., which sets and oversees reliability standards, including cyber security, for the nation's electricity providers.

A spokesperson for NERC has yet to respond to our request for a comment, citing the holiday weekend.

posted by Fergie @ 4/03/2010 10:12:00 PM 0 comments

Web Site of China-Based Journalist Club Attacked

An AP newswire article, via SFGate.com, reports:

An organization for foreign journalists based in China has become the latest victim of cyberattacks targeting the Web sites or e-mail accounts of human rights groups and reporters focused on China.

Cyberattacks linked to China have gained more attention since Google Inc. accused Chinese hackers in January of trying to plunder its software coding and of hijacking the Gmail accounts of human rights activists protesting Beijing's policies.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said in an e-mailed statement Friday that its Web site was taken down because of denial-of-service attacks apparently launched over the last two days by computers within China and in the United States.

"We do not know who is behind these attacks or what their motivation is," the statement said.

Denial-of-service attacks involve a flood of computers all trying to connect to a single site at the same time, overwhelming the server that handles the traffic.

posted by Fergie @ 4/02/2010 09:04:00 PM 0 comments

In Passing: John Forsythe

posted by Fergie @ 4/02/2010 01:09:00 PM 0 comments

Personal Traits Will Be Used To Screen U.S.-Bound Air Passengers

David S. Cloud writes in The Los Angeles Times:

The Obama administration will announce Friday a new screening system for flights to the United States under which passengers who fit an intelligence profile of potential terrorists will be searched before boarding their planes, a senior administration official said.

The procedures, which have been approved by President Obama, are aimed at preventing another attack like the one attempted by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspected of ties to Al Qaeda who allegedly tried to blow up an airliner Christmas Day with a bomb hidden in his underwear, the official said.

After that attempt, the administration began mandatory screening of airline passengers from 14 high-risk countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

Under the new system, passengers on flights from all countries could be subject to special screening before boarding if they have personal characteristics that match the latest intelligence information about potential attackers, the official said.

U.S. officials would not describe all the categories of information that would be included under the new procedures.

posted by Fergie @ 4/01/2010 09:25:00 PM 0 comments

DHS Studying Global Response to Conficker Botnet

Robert McMillan writes on ComputerWorld:

One year after the Conficker botnet was front-page news around the world, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is preparing a report looking at the worldwide effort to keep it in check.

The report, to be published within the month, shows how an ad hoc group of security researchers and Internet infrastructure providers banded together into an organization they called the Conficker Working Group. Its goal was to address what was at the time the world's most serious cyberthreat.

"We said, 'This was a very good example of the private sector, globally, working together to try to solve a cybersecurity attack, so let's fund the creation of a lessons-learned report to just document what worked, what didn't work,'" said Douglas Maughan, a program manager with the Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate.

The report could provide a template for future cyber-responses, security experts say.

posted by Fergie @ 4/01/2010 06:35:00 PM 0 comments