Hard to tell how good this guy was. He could have
tried to Phish thousands of “celebrities” and only managed to get
to 130. (Apparently it is mandatory for celebrities to have sex
tapes.)
Feds arrest
hacker for stealing scripts, celeb identities and sex tapes
The Department of Homeland Security has arrested
and charged (PDF)
a man from the Bahamas for stealing unreleased movie/TV scripts along
with celebrities' files and sensitive information. According to The
New York Times, the 23-year-old hacker named Alonzo Knowles
contacted a radio host in an effort to sell his loot, which included
the scripts for six episodes of a hit drama currently being filmed.
When the unnamed host got in touch with Homeland Security, the agency
cooked up a sting operation and had him put Knowles in touch with an
undercover investigator posing as a buyer.
… The accused allegedly tried to sell the
agent 15 scripts
and the social security numbers of two athletes and a movie actress
for $80,000. He also showed the agent a sex tape, saying that it's
merely a "sample of things [he] can get" -- he had "more
stuff along these lines and can get more" if the buyer was
interested.
… He reportedly admitted to the undercover
agent that when it was too
difficult to hack a particular celebrity, he would look at pictures
online to see who his friends are and then hack them instead.
He'd also send fake automated text messages telling recipients that
their accounts had been hacked, and some people actually replied with
their passwords. Other times, he'd send a virus to celebrities'
computers to infiltrate their systems.
Is government really able to run anything?
Inslee:
Error releases up to 3,200 inmates early
For
three years, state Department of Corrections staff knew a
software-coding error was miscalculating prison sentences and
allowing inmates to be released early. On Tuesday, Gov.
Jay Inslee gave the damning tally: up to 3,200 prisoners set free too
soon since 2002.
The problem stemmed from “good time” credits
applied to certain prison sentences, and was
discovered, according to the Corrections Department, only
after a victim’s family alerted officials in 2012 that
they might be planning to release an offender too early. Once the
broader problem was discovered, a scheduled software fix got caught
up in repeated IT delays, yet to be explained.
“That this
problem was allowed to continue to exist for 13 years is
deeply disappointing,” Inslee said. “It is totally unacceptable,
and frankly it is maddening.”
… The governor ordered the DOC to halt all
releases of prisoners whose sentences could have been affected until
a hand calculation is done to ensure offenders are being released on
the correct date. [Why not
three years ago? Bob]
For my Canadian students, eh?
Howard Solomon reports:
Of all the publicly-disclosed data or privacy breaches in this country in 2015, one topped them all by a wide margin: Ashley Madison.
With over 30 million records exposed from the dating site, a $578 million class action suit filed against parent Avid Life Media, the CEO resigning after his emails were published, the attack is easily one of the largest reported in Canadian history.
But it’s easy for infosec pros to sit back and think, ‘Thank Gawd my company isn’t such a big fat target.’ Instead, they should remember all of the smaller breaches that happened this year as a lesson that corporations and government departments aren’t the only targets. Here’s just three of them:
Read more on IT
World Canada, where Solomon actually mentions a number of
incidents, including a few you may not have heard about.
Economics and debasing a virtual currency?
Rand –
National Security Implications of Virtual Currency
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 22, 2015
Joshua Baron, Angela O’Mahony, David Manheim,
Cynthia Dion-Schwarz: “This
report examines the feasibility for non-state actors, including
terrorist and insurgent groups, to increase their political and/or
economic power by deploying a virtual currency (VC) for use in
regular economic transactions. A VC, such as Bitcoin, is a digital
representation of value that can be transferred, stored, or traded
electronically and that is neither issued by a central bank or public
authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency (dollars,
euros, etc.), but is accepted by people as a means of payment. We
addressed the following research questions from both the
technological and political-economic perspectives: (1) Why would a
non-state actor deploy a VC? That is, what political and/or economic
utility is there to gain? How might this non-state actor go about
such a deployment? What challenges would it have to overcome? (2) How
might a government or organization successfully technologically
disrupt a VC deployment by a non-state actor, and what degree of
cyber sophistication would be required? (3) What additional
capabilities become possible when the technologies underlying the
development and implementation of VCs are used for purposes broader
than currency? This report should be of interest to policymakers
interested in technology, counterterrorism, and intelligence and law
enforcement issues, as well as for VC and cybersecurity researchers.”
To steal a line from Jaws, “We're gonna need a
bigger jail!” (This guy makes me look anorexic.) But wait! The
fun is not over yet!
Kim Dotcom
Eligible to Be Extradited to U.S., New Zealand Court Rules
Internet entrepreneur Kim
Dotcom and three co-defendants are eligible to be extradited to
the U.S. to face charges including criminal copyright infringement,
money laundering and conspiracy to commit racketeering, a New Zealand
court ruled on Wednesday.
… His New Zealand-based lawyer Ron Mansfield
told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Dotcom is positive he can
succeed in the higher courts in New Zealand. “We’ve just got
through the starter’s gates, we haven’t lost the race. We remain
pretty confident.”
Interesting, it is. This Infographic, you should
see.
Wait, The
Force Awakens Made How Much?
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