Fergie's Tech Blog: 07/04/2010

Prosecutor: Hackers Harassed FBI Tipster With Threats, Sex Toys

Scott Gordon writes on NBC Dallas/Ft. Worth:

Members of a shadowy group of computer hackers, including one in prison, tried to obstruct an FBI investigation and harassed a government tipster with emailed threats, attacks online, and even sex toys sent to his home address, according to a court document.

The allegations were included in a search warrant, authorizing agents to search the houses and seize computer equipment of four suspected members of a group known as the Electronik Tribulation Army.

The searches were conducted late last month in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and California.

ETA’s former leader, Jesse William McGraw, of Arlington, pleaded guilty in May in a high-tech scheme to manipulate the air conditioning system of the Dallas medical clinic where he worked as a security guard.

More here.

Security Expert Pulls Presentation After Legal Threats

Lucian Constantin writes on Softpedia News:

Raoul Chiesa, a renowned European security expert, was forced to cancel his presentation at the Hack in the Box (HITB) Security Conference after legal threats from ATM vendors. His was supposed to present the results of years of research into the underground economy.

Mr. Raoul Chiesa is an Italian white hat hacker, who works with with several international crime fighting organizations. The researcher is a permanent stakeholder at the European Network & Information Security Agency (ENISA) and a senior advisor with the Global Crimes Unit of the United Nations Interregional Crime & Justice Research Institute (UNICRI).

Mr. Chiesa was scheduled to give a presentation entitled "The Underground Economy," which is based on research done by UNICRI in the past several years. Some of the research has already served as basis for ENISA report called "ATM Crime: Overview of the European situation and golden rules on how to avoid it" that was released in September 2009. According to this report ATM crimes in the European Union increased in frequency by 149 percent and resulted in losses over 485 million euros in 2008.

According to Byte Mods, Chiesa's talk was canceled at the last minute and replaced by Job de Haas' presentation called "Side Channel Analysis on Embedded Systems." The cited reason were legal threats and pressure from ATM vendors, because his presentation included info on how cybercrooks exploited vulnerabilities in ATMs.

More here.

Note: Raoul is a close personal friend of mine -- I can understand his frustration on this issue. - ferg

Happy 234th Birthday, America

Happy Independence Day, America.

Programming Note: Traveling Over the Holiday Weekend

Business calls early next week, and unfortunately I have to travel over the holiday weekend to be in meetings in Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday.

I'll be back midweek, so thing should be back to normal (whatever that is) soon thereafter.

Thanks for following, and enjoy your long Independence Day weekend!

- ferg