Hacking, Security & Privacy - Page 18

It looks like spouses are calling divorce lawyers after finding potentially unfaithful partners listed as members of Ashley Madison.

A report published by The Times indicates relationship counseling services and divorce lawyers have seen an uptick in phone calls and correspondence from angry spouses. After 33 million members were exposed, it's likely a similar trend is likely to happen in the United States and elsewhere in the world - as more people search the database.

The data dump has created "lots of difficult emotions" for partners finding spouses in the Ashley Madison data dump, said Denise Knowles, a counselor at Relate counseling service, told The Times.

Avid Life Media has suffered a major PR disaster after hackers were able to spend a lengthy amount of time stealing data from the Ashley Madison website. The Impact Team hacker group, reportedly made up of "very" experienced hackers, has collected information from Ashley Madison "over the past few years."

"Bad. Nobody was watching," The Impact Team told Motherboard, when asked about security protocols. "No security. Only thing was segmented network. You could use Pass1234 from the Internet to VPN to root on all servers."

The group also has plenty of other information taken from Avid Life Media, including "300GB of employee emails and docs from internal network. Tens of thousands of Ashley Madison user pictures. Some Ashley Madison user chats and messages. 1/3 of pictures are dick pictures and we won't dump. Not dumping most employee emails either. Maybe other executives."

It's not a surprise that federal agencies have fully embraced mobile technology like smartphones and tablets, but there is great concern that 40 percent of government employees put sensitive data at risk by ignoring agency policies.

A recent study from mobile security firm Lookout discovered employees rooting, jailbreaking and sideloading applications, while still having direct access to work documents, work email, and other possibly sensitive data. The study also found 49 percent of federal employees don't have any form of anti-malware or anti-virus security solution installed, and employees use unsecured devices while handling sensitive data.

Not that the policies used by government agencies should be followed in the private sector, but gives decision makers guidelines on behaviors that don't work - and how to avoid them.

With news already coming out that the Ashley Madison hack has seen over 700 Australian Government employee email addresses named, sitting alongside members of the White House and US congress and even dirtying the name of Sao Paulo due to the sheer number of accounts within, there is now even more to add to the plate.

This latest update comes in the form of yet another information dump, being twice the size of the last one. Released onto the dark web, this information leak is largely targeted at Noel Biderman, the CEO of Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life. Alongside including many of his business emails, this leak is coupled with a statement which reads "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now."

Measuring around 20GB, this leak is said to be focused mainly on internal operations and information - quite possibly to ensure people take this leak seriously and removing the possibility of Ashley Madison calling it off as a hoax.

The Aussies are in trouble, with the latest Ashley Madison hacking scandal unveiling over 700 Australian Government email address' linked to the affairs website, but it looks like they aren't the only ones. Looking further into the data, The Big Story published an article outlining that members of the White House and US Congress were also involved in the mix.

Including those holding high positions in multiple Government offices (including law enforcement), the hacked and published list includes some powerful titles which The Big Story explained as; "at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counter terrorism response team."

Although you may view it as morally unjust, there will be no legal action taken against these Government employees, sources say. This inaction is due to there being no elected officials involved, nor have these people committed a felony. Further to this information, the names have not been publically posted or confirmed by the US Government.

Millions of people have been exposed following the recent data dump of stolen Ashley Madison accounts, though there is something a bit frightening to consider: the possibility of people committing suicide, or being injured or killed.

The Impact Team released data of 37 million users of the popular infidelity website, and details include names, email addresses, and sexual preferences.

"We have to be very cautious and I think sensitive to this," cybersecurity specialist Brian Krebs told the Guardian. "There's a very real chance that people are going to overreact. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw people taking their lives because of this."

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's chance at creating some type of plea agreement with the US Justice Department is not likely - and a possible agreement window is rapidly closing. Snowden's attorneys and the government haven't spoken about a deal in almost one year, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg.

The US government isn't in dire need of gaining information from Snowden, because they have a much clearer picture of the data he took. However, the American said he would like to one day return to the United States, but that hasn't seemed like a plausible scenario for quite some time now.

"Many people in government believe that the journalists who received Snowden's material are not capable of protecting it from a competent and committed state level adversary service," said Ben Wittes, a Brookings Institution national security law specialist, told Bloomberg. "Even if Snowden did not give the material to others, they argue it would have bene ripe for the picking."

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush believes the United States government needs broader surveillance capabilities, and tech companies shouldn't be fighting back about encryption.

"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush recently said, as published by the AP. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."

Bush also noted that recent Patriot Act changes forcing an end to bulk collection of American phone records wasn't the right idea - and was done with "no evidence" Americans' civil liberties were violated.

In further shocking news, the Ashley Madison hacking scandal has not only seen Australian Government employees damned by the leak, but there has further been an investigation into statistics based around the findings.

This investigation came in the form of locations, naming how many Ashley Madison accounts were linked to major cities around the globe. Topping the list of 25 cities by a large margin was Sao Paulo, sitting at over 370,000 accounts in total, backed up by New York at 268,171 in second place. These results were certainly not locked to a single continent either, with London and Melbourne (Australia) both ranking quite highly.

As reported by News.com.au, these numbers also don't take total population into account. So not only are you looking at places like Perth (Australia) having 88,697 total Ashley Madison members, but this city has 1/10th of the inhabitants when compared to the #1 ranked Sao Paulo.

In recent news, dating and affairs website Ashley Madison was hacked and user information posted on the dark web. Among this information were over 700 Australian Government email address' ranging from members of parliament to high-held positions in the police force. With more uncovered members said to be found soon, the Queensland Government wants to know exactly how its workers ended up on this list.

With these 'Queenslanders' holding positions such as detective, government official and regional Councillor, the Queensland Government's IT section are reportedly conducting a full investigation in order to find out exactly how these email addresses came to be included in these lists.

There is a possibility that some emails were signed up by other people in a bid to inconvenience a worker they don't like, however, that's not likely to be the case for all members on the list.

With the Ashley Madison affair website being hacked recently, seeing user information leaked on the dark web, news has just come to light that some Australian Government officials and employee's have been using their email address' for more than just business meetings and proposals.

This pastebin list contains over 700 leaked Australian Government employee email address', ranging from members of the New South Wales Police force to the Australian Defense Force and even the Victorian Education Department. Reportedly "copied from a post on a forum on the darknet," these email addresses are just some among millions now readily available to the public.

Wondering if you or your friends have been exposed? You can enter your (or another persons email) into this website to see what comes up.

The argument surrounding the use of encryption has placed tech companies and Internet users against national governments desperately trying to find ways to access data. President Barack Obama reportedly wants an open discussion with Silicon Valley leaders, but it looks like both sides aren't even close to coming to terms about encryption.

"We support the privacy rights of individuals," according to law enforcement officials in the United States, UK, Spain, and France. "But in the absence of cooperation from Apple and Google, regulators and lawmakers in our nations must now find an appropriate balance between the marginal benefits of full-disk encryption and the need for local law enforcement to solve and prosecute crimes. The safety of our communities depends on it."

However Google, Yahoo, and other tech companies are ready to fight for the rights of Internet users - and that means preventing government intrusion - and built-in backdoors for government and law enforcement access.

Popular websites like Drudge Report and Weather.com posed a threat to visitors by serving poisoned Web ads, installing CryptoWall ransomware or ravaging victimized machines with adware. The problem spread to even more websites, with reports saying eBay, AOL.com, wunderground, and other popular sites also posed a threat to site visitors.

"The same cybercrime lowlifes that infected the Yahoo website a few weeks ago have struck again, and were serving poisoned Web ads which either dropped CryptoWall ransomware or infected the PC with adware," said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4.

To block these types of infections, KnowBe4 recommends click-to-play mode for Adobe Flash - if not disabling it completely - and making sure anti-virus and anti-malware software is updated. Of course, educating employees on various forms of cybersecurity risks is an important step, which could at least alert them to potential problems.

Making good on their threat from last month, hacking collective The Impact Group has released nine gigabytes of Ashley Madison user data, which includes upwards of 37 million users details, onto the dark web

The hacker group was demanding that Avid Life Media, owner of Ashley Madison, as well as two other sites; Cougar Life and Established Men was to be taken offline or else the data would be released. Avid Life Media confirmed the leak, but kept the site online. Gizmodo have confirmed the availability of the dump, which includes email addresses, credit card transactions and profiles.

If you've ever use the site in the past, best to either fess up and get some flowers on the way home, or lawyer up.

We already know that most Americans are spied on in every facet of their lives, but it's now come out that AT&T has been working very, very closely with the NSA, sharing Americans' data with them on a scale that should scare most people.

The New York Times is behind the report, where the documents they've seen have said that the NSA has praised AT&T's "extreme willingness to help". The NSA has official instructions to its officials, where when they visit AT&T facilities, they're said to be very polite, with the US spy agency reminding agents that "This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship".

In 2010 alone, AT&T provided the NSA with 1.1 billion domestic cell phone records per day in a bid to stimulate its relationship with the US spy agency before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In one document from 2013, it has been said that AT&T's "...corporate relationships provide unique accesses to other telecoms and I.S.P.s". This means that other companies that have been using AT&T's networks for transfers, are not safe from the eyes of the NSA, because AT&T has been handing over the information in bulk.

Just mentioning Edward Snowden tends to elicit a lot of emotion from Americans, and while many of you applaud what he did, it looks like many Americans would like to see the former NSA contractor prosecuted.

Fifty-three percent of Americans believe the federal government should prosecute Snowden, while 26 percent don't want to see the American face charges if he comes home, according to a poll from Morning Consult. Meanwhile, 29 percent would "strongly support a criminal case" if American authorities detain Snowden.

It doesn't look like politics are playing much of a roll, with 64 percent of Republicans, 56 percent of Democrats, and 44 percent of independents supporting charges.

The "Islamic State Hacking Division," a hacker group claiming to be affiliated with the extremist group operating in Syria and Iraq, took credit for posting the personal information of hundreds of US military and government personnel.

Compromised data included names, email addresses, passwords, phone numbers and other information of personnel of the Air Force, Marine Corps, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and NASA.

Leaked data also reportedly included credit card information from US State Department officials, along with Facebook message screenshots between military personnel. The group previously targeted Canadian military cadets, and hacked websites to share images from Syria.

There are plenty of folks in Washington, D.C. unhappy with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and you can count retired Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) as one of those people. Snowden remains holed up in Moscow, Russia, with very few options considering the severity of charges he faces in the United States.

Chambliss believes there could be only one way to punish Snowden for his actions:

"We need to hang him on the courthouse square as soon as we get our hands on him," Chambliss recently told students at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. "I hope none of you have any sympathy for him."

The Obama Administration desperately seeks changes to encryption, hoping technology companies will install hidden backdoors just for them. Former NSA analyst Edward Snowden is defending the argument supported by companies such as Google and Apple, as politicians in Washington demand better access.

"The central problem with insecurity mandates has never been addressed by its proponents: if one government can demand access to private communications, all governments can," Snowden said in an email published by The Intercept. "No matter how good the reason, if the US sets the precedent that Apple has to compromise the security of a customer in response to a piece of government paper, what can they do when the government is China and the customer is the Dalai Lama?"

"Technologists and companies working to protect ordinary citizens should be applauded, not sued or prosecuted," Snowden also said in the email.

The Chinese government and suspected hacker groups with ties to Beijing are enjoying their attacks against the United States economy, according to a secret map compiled by the National Security Agency (NSA). Each red dot signifies a major corporate, private or government cyberattack victim from suspected Chinese sources:

When it comes to cybersecurity, the United States clearly hasn't taken the threat seriously enough, and it's glaringly obvious to organized hackers and foreign governments. Although the folks in Washington absolutely love to spy on others, they haven't done a very good job trying to prevent these attacks.

If the map is accurate, the NSA has a pretty good idea on which companies, government networks, and critical infrastructure the Chinese hackers are interested in compromising.