A 16 year old from the UK has been arrested by British police on suspicion of being behind the hack of confidential FBI files in late 2015. The young man was said to be the leader of a small collective of hackers who were responsible for the attack which stole information …
Read More »Leaked Hateful Eight screener copy linked to Hollywood executive
Whenever a movie shows up on torrent sites before it's even released in cinemas, you know the authorities are going to take it seriously. Which is why the FBI has been investigating the torrented copy of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which turns out, came from a ripped copy of a …
Read More »Silk Road investigating agent given 71 months in jail
As much as the judge may have thrown the book at accused Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, handing him a life-sentence for running the dark-net marketplace, some would argue that the corrupt secret service agents working the case deserve worse. The second of them has now been sentenced however and has been …
Read More »U.S. judge tried to bribe FBI agent to reveal text messages
As further indication that police and intelligence agency access to digital records can be abused, a U.S. judge attempted to bribe an FBI agent with beer in the hopes that it would give him access to the text messages sent from two separate phone numbers. Eventually they settled on $100 …
Read More »Hilary Clinton agrees to hand over private email server to FBI
Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton has been under fire from government agencies and the public, for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state to the Obama administration. Since official emails are technically the property of government, the lack of oversight and the potential for …
Read More »FBI wants encryption backdoor to combat ISIS
Another day, another leading public figure who's calling for the breaking of encryption so that it can effectively track terrorist organisations. This time it's the head of the FBI, James Comey, who said that his policing agency needed a “backdoor” to encryption standards so that the FBI could track the …
Read More »The FBI is terrified of encryption
Even though much of the world still seems rather complacent about the Edward Snowden revelations, there's no denying that the two years since then have seen a surge of interest in encryption and other message obfuscating technologies. Proponents of governments spying on their own citizens, don't like that at all, …
Read More »Dotcom demands independent analysis over alleged US trojans
One of the biggest back and forth struggles of the Kim Dotcom legal saga, was that the US wanted access to his decryption keys so that it could look into the data held on his personal systems, which were seized as part of the raid on his New Zealand mansion …
Read More »FBI investigating claims made by plane hacker
Digital security expert, Chris Roberts, was previously banned from a United Airlines flight after he tweeted that he could potentially release the air-masks after hacking into the plane's onboard network. Now however, he may be in even hotter water, as the FBI is said to be investigating his claims, though whether …
Read More »US feds claim JPMorgan hackers ‘gettable’
Last year, JPMorgan Chase, one of the world's largest banking institutions, was made to look foolish when over 83 million email addresses, phone numbers and business addresses of its customers were stolen by hackers. However, while many other large firms experiencing big data breaches have come up empty when it …
Read More »Google warns against FBI demands for expanded hacking
Currently, government agencies and local police forces in the US, are only able to obtain permission to hack into the computers and other electronic devices of suspects in their region and only then once they have a warrant. However, now the FBI and other organisations want to expand that power …
Read More »UK police have arrested second Lizard Squad member
The UK police have arrested a second member of online troll group, Lizard Squad, following the Christmas day DDOS attacks on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. An 18 year old was taken in to custody today after being linked directly to the attacks. The arrest was carried out by …
Read More »UK and US to stage hacking wargames
To live test digital defences in both the UK and the US, our national, salaried hackers are going to be going at one another in a series of online wargames, designed to mimic attacks from other nations' digital warriors. It will involve hacks against the financial sector, as well as …
Read More »FBI officially names North Korea as culprit of Sony hack
After a week or so of unconfirmed reports and rumors suggesting that North Korea was behind the Sony hack, terrorist threat and subsequent cancellation of upcoming film, The Interview, the FBI has finally revealed the results of its investigation. The North Korean government is indeed behind the Sony Pictures hack …
Read More »Silk Road 2 and other dark net markets downed by FBI
Running an online drug marketplace like the Silk Road is always going to be a risky endeavour. Not only does it make you the head of an organisation that makes millions through facilitating the sale of substances deemed illegal in many countries around the world, but its mere existence is a …
Read More »Second Snowden-like leaker potentially identified by FBI
While Edward Snowden's whistle blowing document dumps to the likes of The Guardian have given us invaluable information about how the intelligence agencies of the US and British governments see the public and their rights, the reveals were always a little to big for one man alone. Some of the …
Read More »Hackers charged with stealing from game developers, US army
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US, has charged four individuals with hacking into gaming companies like Microsoft, Epic Games and Zombie Studios, as well as the US army, and stealing trade secrets about unreleased software, financial information and other confidential data. The quartet of young men involved …
Read More »Anonymous Slovenia claims to have hacked the FBI
Despite having anonymity as their namesake and practice, there are localised version of the hacking movement Anonymous all over the world, and one of them – in this case the Slovenian branch – is claiming to have hacked the FBI, revealing details about its director and login information for many …
Read More »US authorities may flood Bitcoin market with Silk Road coins
Back when the US federal authorities busted Ross Ulbricht, the alleged Dread Pirate Roberts and founder of the Silk Road online drugs marketplace, it also seized almost 30,000 bitcoins that were sitting in the site's digital vault. Back then, those coins were worth $140 each, so around $4.2 million. An …
Read More »Guess who has the most bitcoins in the world?
In terms of total bitcoins? It's rumoured to be the currency's creator, who no one has ever identified. His supposed name is Satoshi Nakamoto, but really it could be anything as nobody knows anything about the man (if it is even is a man or a single person at at …
Read More »FBI offered ‘brownie points’ to NZ customs for Dotcom spying
According to new emails outed as part of the Kim Dotcom extradition trial, New Zealand customs officials were offered the chance to earn “brownie pointts,” by the organisation's operations manager, if they gave up secretive information on the people they were investigating and handed it over to the FBI. how to …
Read More »Many Tor sites compromised, including Tormail
At least half of all Dark Net websites using the TOR network have been compromised, infected with FBI sanctioned malware that can potentially track a site visitor's IP address and the owner of the Freedom Hosting company that provided a lot of the back end storage for many of the …
Read More »US telecom firm backed by judge in FBI staredown
A US telecoms firm has been facing off against the Federal Bureau of Investigation in court, challenging the federal authority over its consistent attempts to retrieve the data of private citizen's – and impressively, it won. Credo Mobile is the company in question, which has now hailed the victory as …
Read More »Dotcom can now sue NZ intelligence agency for spying
Kim Dotcom, the embattled founder of Megaupload and Mega, has won another victory in Kiwi court, after a judge denied the appeal of his opposition to overturn an initial ruling, that said he would be allowed to sue the New Zealand intelligence agency, GCSB. While that's all a little confusing, …
Read More »US cracking down on app piracy
While organisations like the MPAA and RIAA get a lot of press for lobbying governments into taking down music and movie related file sharing sites, the US authorities have been targeting a new kind of piracy as well – app piracy. In a single swipe, the US government has taken …
Read More »FBI on rampage to get Lulzsec
Lulzsec's recent high profile attacks have gained the attention of the FBI – who are now spending a lot of their resources trying to track and prosecute the organisation. In a series of raids, the agency targeted a datacentre in the US this week and walked away with a selection …
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