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10 Developments That Changed The Face Of Computing


The history of computing is a fascinating one. Over the last 40 years or so computers have evolved from enormous and complex machines requiring specialized knowledge for operating, to small devices that most people can understand and operate in a few hours. This is a list of 10 software developments that have been the most revolutionary in the history of computing.p 10 The World Wide Web

The Stories Behind 15 of the Most Dangerous Hackers Ever


Thanks to a few prominent attacks, the word "hacker" has likely shown up in your news feed pretty often in the last year. And it's likely to pop up a lot more. Hackers can target bank information, PIN numbers, passwords—like they did with Target and other retail giants—but they also can stroke mayhem by shutting down a widely-used site or service. There's others types of sensitive information that can also be targeted: last year Hollywood celebrities had their iCloud accounts hacked, and their nude photos were released to the public. Additionally, Sony's emails and other documents were leaked, allegedly by hackers from North Korea. These types of attacks were done by "Black hat" hackers. Why the nickname? Because not all hackers are in it for the destruction. "Black hat" hackers hack to exploit data, "White hat" hackers hack to make systems more secure (and make money legally), and "Grey hat" hackers fall somewhere in between. The ones that make the 5 o'clock news are likely going to be black hat. Here are 15 of the most dangerously skilled hackers to have taunted governments, brought down websites, and made millions for themselves—before finally getting caught.


Adrian Lamo

Alias: The Homeless Hacker Age: 33 Adrian Lamo gained recognition by breaking into the computer networks of The New York Times, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft before he was arrested in 2003. He was known as the "Homeless Hacker" because of his habit of using coffee shops and libraries as his command centers. His hacking caught up to him when he attacked the Times in 2002, gaining access to the personal information of people who've written for the paper, and adding his name to their database of expert sources. After a 15-month investigation by prosecutors, a warrant was placed for his arrest and Lamo surrendered in California. He negotiated a plea bargain that gave him six months of house arrest, and he avoided serving jail time. His life after this point hasn't been pretty. He was accused of using a gun on a girlfriend, and was placed in a psychiatric hold in an unrelated incident and was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. But the biggest controversy of all is that Lamo was the one who reported Chelsea Manning to U.S. authorities after she leaked hundreds of thousands of government documents. His nickname amongst hackers after that was "snitch."


Jeanson James Ancheta

Alias: Resilient Age: 30 The California native became the first hacker to be charged with controlling an army of hijacked computers—called botnets—to send large quantities of spam across the Internet. He used the worm "rxbot" in 2004 to take control of 500,000 computers (which included U.S. military computers) and used their combined strength to take down major sites. He then put out ads for his services, and offered clients the opportunity to take down any website they wanted, for a price. Ancheta​ was caught in 2005 when one of his clients turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. He had to give up the $58,000 he made from hacking, pay back $16,000, give up his BMW, and serve 60 months in prison.


ASTRA

Age: 58 The hacker known as "ASTRA" was never publicly identified, but is said to have been a 58-year-old mathematician when he was arrested in 2008. Greek authorities said that he hacked into the systems of the aviation company, Dassault Group, for about half a decade. In that time, he stole weapons technology information about the company's jet fighters and other military aircraft, and sold it to different countries. It's said that he sold this data to nearly 250 people in the Middle East, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and South Africa, all for $1,000 a pop. The damages to Dassault amounted to more than $360 million.


Owen Thor Walker

Alias: AKILL Age: 25 In 2008, 18-year-old Owen Thor Walker pleaded guilty to six charges of cyber crime. He led an international hacker network that broke into 1.3 million computers, and infiltrated bank accounts to take more than $20 million. He was only 17 when the thefts began, but because he was homeschooled starting at 13, this left him time to learn programming and encryption. Overall he only made $32,000 from his hacking efforts, since he only wrote the code that the other members in the network used to steal the money. He pleaded guilty, wasn't convicted, and only had to payback $11,000. He's now advising companies on online security.


Kevin Poulsen

Alias: Dark Dante Age: 49 Kevin Poulsen was the first American to be banned from the Internet and computers after being released from prison. In the late '80s and early '90s, Poulsen hacked into phone lines. He became famous when he hacked into the lines of L.A. radio station KIIS FM so that he would be the 102nd caller—winning him a Porsche. When the FBI went looking for him, he went on the run (and when he appeared on the show Unsolved Mysteries, the phone lines for the television station crashed by, you know, coincidence). When he was caught, he served five years in prison and was banned for three years from using the Internet or computers. He's now a writer for Wired, and wrote an article about sex offenders on MySpace that got one person arrested. Tweet him here.


Albert Gonzalez

Alias: CumbaJohnny, Segvec, SoupNazi, KingChilli Age: 33 Albert Gonzalez founded Shadowcrew.com, which amassed some 4,000 members. Members of the site could buy or sell stolen bank account numbers or fake passports, drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards, debit cards, birth certificates, college student identification cards, and health insurance cards. It's said that more than 170 million credit and debit cards were swapped on the site from 2005 to 2007. Gonzalez, from Florida, wasn't low-key about spending his money; he was known for booking stays in high-class hotels for days and once throwing a $75,000 party. He was charged with having 15 fake bank cards while in New Jersey, but avoided serving time when he gave evidence to the Secret Service about 19 other ShadowCrew members. He then returned to Miami and, with a team of 10 others, hacked TJX Companies (which own T.J. Maxx and a bunch of other stores), and stole 45 million credit and debit card numbers over 18 months until 2007. He was arrested in May 2008 and won't be out of prison until 2025. There's a great The New York Times Magazine profile of him here.


Kevin Mitnick

Alias: The Condor, The Darkside Hacker Age: 51 Kevin Mitnick didn't refer to what he was doing as hacking—instead, he liked to call it "social engineering." He started "social engineering" when he was 15, when he learned how to bypass the punch card system for Los Angeles city buses by finding tickets in a dumpster and getting a bus driver to tell him where he could buy his own ticket punch. Later he graduated to the big time by breaking into the networks of Pacific Bell, Nokia, IBM, Motorola, and a few other companies. When he was arrested in 1995, his skills were so threatening to the judge ruling over his case that he was placed in solitary confinement because it was thought he could start a nuclear war by whistling codes into a payphone. After serving 12 months in prison and going on three years of supervised release, he continued hacking, and went on the run for almost three years using cloned cell phones to hide his location. He was sentenced to prison for four years in 1999, and was the most-wanted computer criminal in the country at the time. Now he's a security consultant (aka: White hat) and is the author of two books. You can tweet him here.


Jonathan James

Alias: c0mrade Age: 24 (at the time of his death) Jonathan James was the first juvenile to be convicted and jailed for hacking in the United States. Starting at 15, he hacked into Bell South, the Miami-Dade school system, NASA, and the Department of Defense, and stole software said to have been worth $1.7 million from the government. He intercepted the source code of the International Space Station, which, when discovered, caused NASA to shut down its computers for three weeks, costing $41,000. He was sentenced to six months of house arrest and probation until he turned 18. Even worse? The court required him to write letters of apology to NASA and the Department of Defense. After Albert Gonzalez's hacker team stole credit and debit card information from TJX in 2007, the Secret Service investigated James, who claimed he had nothing to do with the thefts. Out of fear of being prosecuted for crimes he didn't commit, James killed himself in his shower in May 2008. “I have no faith in the ‘justice’ system," his suicide note said. "Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control."


Vladimir Levin

Alias: Unknown Age: Unknown Levin's story is like Casino Royale in real life; working with three others, the hacker transferred a portion of $10.7M to his bank account from a handful of large Citibank accounts from all over the world—all while sitting in his apartment in St. Petersburg. Yet, he didn't use the Internet; instead he used telecommunications systems, and listened to customers phone calls to get their account numbers and PINs. Authorities were able to recover only $400,000 from Levin's theft after his accomplices gave him up when they were arrested. In 1998 he was ordered to pay back $240,000 to Citibank and sentenced to three years in jail. His whereabouts are unknown today.


Gary McKinnon

Alias: Solo Age: 46 Gary McKinnon hacked nearly 100 American military and NASA servers from February 2001 to March 2002. What's even crazier is he did it all from his girlfriend’s aunt’s house in London. He managed to delete sensitive data, software, and files, and the U.S. government spent over $700,000 to recover from the damage. He taunted the military while he was at it, posting this message to their website: “Your security system is crap. I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.” McKinnon is an interesting guy. He's said his main inspiration for the attack was The Hacker's Handbook by Hugo Cornwall. While hacking NASA, he purposely looked for files that contained evidence of extraterrestrials. He told Wired in 2006 that he found them, too. "A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging," he said. "I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files." He currently still lives in Britain.


Michael Calce

Alias: Mafiaboy Age: 30 To ring in the new millennium, Michael Calce launched denial-of-services attacks against Amazon, CNN, eBay, Yahoo!, and Dell. Back then, Yahoo! was the world's leading search engine before Google, and Calce's attack—which he dubbed Project Rivolta—caused it to go down for about an hour. President Bill Clinton convened a cybersecurity task force and the country was on the hunt for "Mafiaboy." He was caught a short time later after he bragged about the attacks in a chat room. In 2001, he was sentenced to eight months of open custody, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine. A little lenient for such a big attack, no? Well, yeah it was, because Calce was still in high school at the time. "The sense of power I felt was overwhelming," he wrote. "It was also addictive."


Matthew Bevan and Richard Pryce

Alias: Kuji (Bevan) and Datastream Cowboy (Pryce) Age: 41 (Bevan) and 35 (Pryce) This British hacking duo took the U.S. government for a ride when they attacked the Pentagon's network for several weeks in 1994. They copied battlefield simulations from Griffiss Air Force Base in New York, intercepted messages from U.S. agents in North Korea, and got access into a Korean nuclear facility. Pryce was a 16-year-old then, and Bevan was 21 (he's thought to have been tutoring Pryce). The hacking attacks were especially troublesome for the U.S. government because they couldn't tell if the duo was using their system to hack into a South or North Korea—if it were North Korea, the attacks could've been seen as an act of war. Luckily, South Korea was the hackers' target, and after an international investigation, they were arrested in the following year.


Syrian Electronic Army

The Syrian Electronic Army is a unique group. They sprung up in 2011, and backed the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (it's thought they could be supported by the Syrian government). While the group isn't very sophisticated, they've attacked a large number of high-profile organizations and hundreds of websites. They primarily use spamming, malware, phishing, and denial of service attacks. Their first two years of existence saw just a handful of attacks, but in 2013 and 2014 the group launched dozens each year. Highlights include their hacking of President Barack Obama's Twitter account:


Lizard Squad

If you're a gamer, you're likely familiar with Lizard Squad. The Black hat group took down both the PlayStation and Xbox gaming networks on Christmas Day last year. The crew formed in August 2014, and claimed to be behind outages of gaming networks that support League of Legends and Destiny, by using denial-of-service attacks (if you can't tell, this happens to be most hacker groups' favorite kind of attack.) In fact, they're currently selling the DDoS attack on their website for use by anyone willing to shell out the money. Lizard Squad is as well known for making false hacking claims as they are for taking down video game networks. They've claimed to have taken down Tinder, Facebook, and Instagram, and have said they would release nude pictures of Taylor Swift. Two people have been arrested as alleged members of the group, Vinnie Omari, a 22-year-old from Britain, and a 17-year-old known as "Ryan."


Anonymous

By far the best hacking group to have gotten its style cues from a comic book character, Anonymous is comprised of "hacktivists" who get involved in political and international events. The group originated on 4chan around 2003, when members posting under the alias "anonymous" started the joke that there was a single person with the name Anonymous who's been talking to himself the whole time. The collective was associated with pranks and trolling until 2008, when they launched a coordinated attack on the Church of Scientology under the name "Project Chanology." They've since gotten involved with the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Charlie Hebdo, by leaking documents or taking down the websites. They launched an attack on the KKK in November, which saw them releasing identities and taking down their social media accounts. Members of Anonymous have fractured off from the main group, forming other collectives like LulzSec. In 2008 Anonymous and LulzSec teamed together for AntiSec, after Arizona passed the immigration enforcement bill SB 1070. (LulzSec disbanded after its leader, Hector Mansegur, ratted out on other members when he was arrested by the FBI.

10-Year-Old Kid Wins $10,000 for Successfully Hacking Instagram


There are a bunch of ways to make money through Instagram: you can sell prints, attract potential clients, you can even set up an account for your pooch. But one 10-year-old in Finnish kid squeezed $10K out of Instagram without having to post a single photo… he hacked the platform instead. The prize was awarded to “Jani” (no last name given), a 10-year-old Finn, as part of Facebook’s bug bounty program. Facebook offers payouts to anybody who can uncover serious security vulnerabilities in their apps, and Jani recently became the youngest person to ever win this bounty after uncovering a bug that let him delete any message on Instagram. “I would have been able to eliminate anyone, even Justin Bieber,” he told Finnish publication Iltalehti.

Facebook didn’t take Jani at his word. Once he reported the hack, the social network challenged him to delete something on a test account back in February… which he promptly did. By March, a $10,000 check was in his hands. A pretty auspicious start for a 10-year-old who learned his hacking skills from YouTube. The irony is that Jani isn’t even old enough to have his own Instagram account… but maybe that’s not a bad thing. He told that same Finnish publication that he would be spending the money on football and a new bike. (via Forbes)

Maisie Williams Manages to Crash a Game of Thrones Viewing Party Without Going Blind or Killing Anyone


Although Arya Stark spent the sixth season premiere of Game of Thrones blind, begging for money, and getting beaten with a stick, her real-life counterpart, Maisie Williams, had a considerably better time. On Sunday night, the actress tweeted out a call for any UCLA students throwing a GOT viewing party, saying that HBO was going to award the biggest fans with some swag-filled goodie bags. After picking a party thrown by film students Mark and Kate, Maisie revealed the real prize: herself. She showed up to their apartment with a load of snacks, got Mark in on the plan, and gave the rest of the superfans the surprise of a lifetime when she walked in. Maisie is no stranger to pranking her biggest fans, but this has to be her most adorable moment yet. See how she documented the entire night ahead!

Climategate detective: 'I'm deeply disappointed' we didn't catch hacker | Leo Hickman


Climategate detective: 'I'm deeply disappointed' we didn't catch hacker | Leo Hickman:


Norfolk police's Julian Gregory explains why investigation into the University of East Anglia's hacked emails was so complex
On Wednesday, Norfolk Police announced that it was formally ending its two-and-a-half-year investigation into the theft of thousands of private emails stored on servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – an event that has commonly come to be known as "Climategate".
Detective chief superintendent Julian Gregory, the senior investigating officer, said that due to the three-year statutory limitation placed on the investigation by the Computer Misuse Act 1990, he was closing the case now because there was no realistic chance of bringing a prosecution ahead of the third anniversary of the theft in November. He did say, though, that the "the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack" and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with UEA was involved in the crime".
Norfolk Police gave a press conference yesterday in which it revealed some more details about the investigation. For example, DCS Gregory said that the hacker(s) had, whilst accessing the university's servers remotely via the internet, breached several passwords in order to gain access to the emails and other documents. He also said that officers had examined CCTV footage at CRU to investigate the possibility – subsequently ruled out - that a member of staff might have been involved.
DCS Gregory confirmed, too, that it was highly unlikely to have been a chance discovery by a hacker. It was a targeted attack. No other university in the UK experienced a similar attack over that same time period, he confirmed. (The hackers breached CRU's servers "certainly more than three times" between September and November 2009.) There was no evidence, he said, that the hack was committed, or commissioned, by a government or an individual/organisation with commercial interests.
He added: "This appears to have been done with the intention of influencing the global debate on climate change and ultimately that affects us all. To not have done the best we could on this investigation would have been neglect."
I was unable to attend the press conference in person. (Norfolk Police has produced a transcript of the press conference as a PDF, as well as broader background information here.) But yesterday afternoon I was able to put some further questions to DCS Gregory over the telephone...
Was the level of expertise required to pull of this kind of hack way beyond the kind of knowledge of, say, someone working in an IT department, or very familiar with computers, might have?
Yes, absolutely.
What is the hard evidence that you actually recovered?
Our technical investigation focused on CRUWEB8 [the web server that was first accessed by the hacker] and CRUBACK3 [a back-up server containing the emails which was accessed via CRUWEB8]. We identified the attacks that came in and their methodologies and some of the activities they undertook. The proxy servers they used either don't have the log switched on, or if they do they are overwritten within 24-48 hours. Hackers tend to choose proxy servers in countries where law enforcement agencies might find it challenging to get co-operation, or to get information. From the outset, you're almost on a hiding to nothing, to be perfectly frank.
So all that early speculation that a Russian server was involved so it must be a Russian, etc, was meaningless speculation?
Absolutely. We're not getting into naming countries, but I think it's fair to say that most continents were involved. As you know, you can be sitting on your computer, and causing something to happen on the other side of the world with a few clicks of the mouse.
Did the hackers try to manipulate the back-up server in anyway – delete any information, change timecodes etc? Or did they just go in, copy what they wanted, and leave?
They certainly tried to alter the web server – the web logs – and try to leave a false trail. They got into certain elements of the log-in system and deleted and created certain commands. That kind of activity.
Did they try to make it look like someone internal had accessed the server?
I'm speculating now, but I don't think they thought we'd get as far as we did in terms of finding out some of the things they'd done. But I think they tried to leave some things that they thought would mislead us or point us in the wrong direction.

In the second release of emails in November 2011, they left a message. Did you interrogate that document?
We did have some conversations with one or two specialists, but, to be honest, we didn't think it was going to take us anywhere productive, partly because if we took it at face value, say, linguistically, it could have been falsified. And even it was accurate, where does that take us? Because in the context of the investigation it wouldn't have helped. We did start to look at the trail in terms of the publishing, but again, you get into jurisdictional issues , different legal systems etc.
Late last year, you seized the computers of Roger Tattersall (aka "Tallbloke"), after a link to the second tranche of emails was posted on his blog. Were you just looking for an IP address?
Yes. Initially, we wanted to make sure he wasn't involved in way, but we wanted to see if we could get anything from his computers which might help.
Was there anything else other than the link being left on his blog that made him a suspect?
No. We were just following that trail. [The police later confirmed that Tattersall was not a suspect and returned his computers following a forensic inspection.]
Was there anything forensically similar between the release in 2009 and 2011?
A similar MO [modus operandi] was employed – hosted then linked to from other places – but in terms of the data it all came from CRUBACK3 and we were satisfied it had all come from the original attack, or same series of attacks.
Is there any advance in knowledge on the encrypted file said to contain the rest of the emails?
No.

Did you ever draw on international expertise, say, a US law enforcement agency?

We used UK-based assets, both police and private sector.
Is there an on-going investigation in the US, say, by the Department of Justice?
I'm a little unclear on that, to be honest.
If a third release occurred, would you reopen the investigation?
No, very unlikely. Not least because, come the autumn, the time limit will have passed for any prosecution. The crime committed was obtaining the data in the first place.
So they have got away with it, haven't they?
Essentially, yes. Much to our disappointment, of course.
It sounds as if much of the activity occurred within the first weeks and months of the investigation. What has happened over the last couple of years in terms of staffing etc? Have you been waiting for a new lead?
The investigation has been active, but in a way when we do some activity we are in the hands of people in other jurisdictions. So there have been some considerable delays. You go through the process and accepted method internationally of getting support for an investigation, but depending on the country in question, it depends upon the speed with which that happens, and effectiveness with which it happens.
Would that process basically involve asking to get hold of an IP address held on a server?
It would include that. But we also took the step where we openly engaged with talking to people in a structured way and see if they had anything to tell us. [It is known that the police interviewed by phone and email a range of people based abroad, such as climate sceptic bloggers and climate scientists.] At the end of the day, we didn't have any clear suspects so we were seeking information.
So, there was never a shortlist of suspects?
No.
So, you never targeted any, say, climate sceptics who were closely involved with the freedom of information requests submitted to CRU and, therefore, might know what was likely to be held on those servers and, therefore, have a possible motivation to get hold of it?
No. The focus of the investigation was let's start where the crime is and work out from there. Ultimately, unless you find that breadcrumb trail that takes you to somebody, you're never going to get a prosecution off the ground in reality. If you're dealing with a property crime and someone had got the stolen property on their premises, then you've got something to go on. But just because someone has a copy of "FOIA2009" or "FOIA2011" [the file names given by the hacker to the email releases in 2009 and 2011] on their computer, it means nothing because it's been mirrored all over the world.
Did you quickly rule out anyone from the university being involved?
It was the focus of the first few months to go through that option. But our primary line of inquiry was always the technology. We did work through everyone at UEA looking for the obvious, but once we'd achieved that that was mothballed.
Did the e-crimes unit say this was routine, run-of-the-mill hacking, or something more specialised or skilled?
Some things you might describe as standard. Using proxy servers, trying to change records on the systems to conceal your tracks – they might be called standard. But because of the varying nature of ICT infrastructure I think it's quite difficult to say that a particular MO stands out, or is distinctly similar to another attack. Most hackers will use the standard techniques we've discussed. I don't think there's anything which would make it similar to anything else. What they did conclude was that the activities that had been carried out indicated a high level of expertise and competence.
Did you interview any students, as opposed to just staff at UEA?
No. As you can imagine, the university is quite significant in size. It goes back to this being a proportionate investigation and finding a line of enquiry most likely to take us somewhere. We didn't engage on that kind of speculation. We dealt with some students within CRU, but we limited it to that.

Have you kept on top of all the internet speculation and commentary surrounding this case?

Firstly, you can't investigate what's said online. Secondly, you look at those blogs and most of it is speculative, uninformed and, occasionally, ridiculous.
But did you keep an eye on it in case someone came up with a possible lead or sensible theory, or did you see it as nonsense and a distraction?
The latter. I think it was Steven Mosher who said he knew who it was, or had a theory, at least. Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. Where does that take you? And is he likely to tell the police? The difference between the police and, say, journalists, is that we won't embark on a number of lines of enquiry because, ultimately, you can see that in terms of getting to where we need to get to - which is beyond reasonable doubt - it's not going to get you there. The fact that things are "interesting" is not always enough.
Did you and UEA collaborate in terms of announcing the end of the investigation? [Both put out press statements at the same time which linked to each other.]
We've always had a working relationship, as you would expect because they were the victims of the crime. But we obviously have different perspectives. What we said in our statement was what we wanted to say. The coordination part was along the lines of "you may want to say something and it would be sensible to coordinate that". That's not to say we wouldn't be mindful of their perspective on things, in the same way they'd be mindful of ours, if that makes sense.
Why did you feel that you had to add the statement about it not being the work of a whistleblower, knowing that this was a big question mark hanging over all this?
I always find some of the conspiracy theories mildly amusing, because anyone who knows anything about British policing knows that sort of level of collusion just doesn't happen. The reality is we knew it would be the first question asked. When you put together a press release you try to address the issues that people are going to ask you about so, given that was at the forefront of a number of people's minds, we thought we'd address that. All I can do is say how it is. We've found no evidence to implicate anyone from UEA and the nature of the attack – the level of sophistication – leads me to a hypothesis that it was very unlikely to be someone from UEA. I can't say 100% it wasn't. Of course, I can't. Unless you find the person responsible, and have clear evidence to implicate them, then you can't 100% eliminate other people.
Has it been a deeply frustrating case to work on?
Most investigations I work on are difficult as that's the nature of my business. But this one has been unique, certainly for Norfolk Constabulary, but probably nationally, possibly even internationally. It's been very interesting, but also challenging. And at a personal level I'm deeply disappointed we haven't reached a successful conclusion. The only thing I can say on behalf of myself and the team is that I'm very comfortable that we did everything we reasonably could have done to try and find out who was responsible.
Where you working under a particular budgetary constraint? If you'd thrown, say, 50 officers at this, would it have made much difference?
There are always budgetary considerations in any investigation. It's public money, after all. But were there any unnecessary restrictions that hindered the investigation? Then, no. In fact, quite the contrary. When we started the investigation, it was escalated to the highest level. We deemed it a "Category A" investigation, which is the highest in terms of public-interest resources. It was well supported by our Gold Group, which is strategic oversight and support to an investigation that you don't typically instigate for every case. Their role is to make sure I've got what I need. Throughout, I've felt well-supported. I've not been able to not do something because of money.




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Aaron Swartz's life when interviewed


Aaron Swartz started computer programming at a very young age. First it was a Star Wars trivia game he made with his brother, but soon it was more than just kid stuff. At 12 years old, he created the Info Network, a website where people could share information – think Wikipedia before there was Wikipedia. By 13, Swartz was part of a committee that drafted the RSS web feed format, he was one of the early authors of Creative Commons and was a co-founder of Reddit. But he was a computer whiz kid whose goals were loftier than conquering Silicon Valley - he wanted to make the world a better place. Fourteen-

Swartz turned his computer genius to political organizing and he became a champion of information sharing and online freedoms. But his activism didn't come without a cost: he faced 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for downloading scholarly articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leading to a two-year legal battle with the federal government that ended when Swartz took his own life on January 11, 2013. Soon after Swartz's death, director Brian Knappenberger, whose previous film was We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, began filming a documentary about his life. Although Knappenberger didn’t know Swartz personally, he was “inspired, infuriated and frustrated” by his suicide, and saw his life not only as a compelling film, but a call to action to continue the work Swartz had started. Bio talked to Knappenberger as he prepared for today's nationwide release of The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. Do you think Aaron was largely a victim of circumstance? Or would the crack down on "computer crime" have inevitably snared him at some point, given his determination to push the envelope on matters of open access? I think you can’t separate Aaron’s story from the climate or the landscape in which it happened. Within a couple of weeks of Aaron’s arrest, WikiLeaks had released the diplomatic cables and the Afghan War logs and the PayPal 14 had conducted denial of service attacks against MasterCard, Visa and PayPal when those companies cut off financial services to WikiLeaks. It was also the beginning of the Arab Spring, and that year saw unprecedented hacker and hacktivist activity that ended with the Occupy movement. Time magazine’s Person of the Year was “The Protestor.” The year after that was the year of the crackdown and I do think Aaron got caught up in that. There was a kind of storm that happened with prosecutors being overzealous and a broken criminal justice system. He walked into that system where once that machinery got moving, it could never turn back. In the film, Aaron’s lawyer is confident he would have won the criminal case. Do you think he's right? I think he genuinely had reasons to believe that they were going to win, and that a lot of the main evidence that they were going to use against Aaron was going to be thrown out. Obviously this was very tough for Aaron because there was never going to be another plea deal. He had turned down all of the pleas, the trial was looming and the pressure was on. Aaron ended up committing suicide within a few days of the two-year anniversary of his first arrest, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. He was only 26 when he died, but he accomplished so much in his brief life. What do you feel were Aaron’s greatest contributions? I think a lot of people are inspired by his early years when he was in his mid to late teens and was such a substantive contributor to the early Internet. That legacy will live on. But then he made a turn from a very rich, post-Reddit sale 19-year-old who was in this build-to-flip, money machine start-up culture to being a crusader for social justice. He started using Internet tools to build grassroots political movements that really put his skills toward the public good. And I think ultimately that is what a lot of people will take away from his story. Certainly, there are bigger problems to focus on too, problems with our criminal justice system, problems with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, outdated computer laws. Why isn't there more of a push to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the 1986 law the feds used to prosecute him? Who benefits from keeping the law in its current form? Specifically, who in the technology industry benefits? There was big movement to change the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after Aaron died. One effort was called Aaron’s Law and honestly back at that point it looked like it was going to be pretty easy. Anybody who looks at this law can see that it’s nonsense. You don’t have to be technically inclined to know that we live in a different world now than we did in the 80s. The problem is that it is being stalled and a lot of tech companies have put up these hurdles that were unexpected. One of the [companies] that argued in those committees against changing the law were the representatives from Oracle. They liked that the law is kind of broad and vague and can be used for almost anything. You’d expect a little more support from the tech community, but in fact it’s quite the opposite. You're releasing your film under a Creative Commons license. What kind of free distribution, copying, and remixing will that allow? How will that affect your ability to recoup the investment in your film? The way were going to do this is the movie is going to be in theaters in 25 cities nationwide on June 27th. It’s also going to be on video on demand and there is going to be a Vimeo version that is Creative Commons that can be shared, but it can’t be shared commercially. We’ll see how it affects our ability to recoup. It was important to do for a lot of reasons, but principally for Aaron. I had a lot of offers at Sundance, but they had to comport to this or else I wasn’t going to take them even though they were, let’s just say, distracting. What issue or issues do you think Aaron might be focused on these days, were he alive? Well, who knows? You can look at Demand Progress [the Internet activist organization Aaron founded] to get a clue about that. But there are two issues where I wish we had his energy. The NSA overreach and these revelations of mass suspicion-less surveillance of American citizens. A lot of people see it as a huge overreach and encroachment on constitutional rights and civil liberties. I have a feeling that Aaron would have been a warrior in that battle. The other area is net neutrality – it is clear he would have been involved with that. It really looks like net neutrality might be going the way of the Atari system. What suggestions might you have for people who would like to honor and help further his legacy? I think you can get up to speed about Internet issues and why it’s important. The Internet isn’t just a realm of geeks and hackers. It’s the place where we live now, and so we have to import into this world all of the things that we think are important from traditional notions of civil liberties, freedom of speech and protection from being searched by our government without due process. I think people can get informed about that and take their Congress folk to task to learn about these issues before they legislate these issues. But in a broader personal sense think of what you can do for the public good. We all have skills. You don’t have to be a genius hacker. What can you do for public service and how can you make things better?

Police close ‘Climategate’ investigation


Police close ‘Climategate’ investigation:
The Norfolk Constabulary has closed its investigation into the November 2009 release of private emails between researchers at the Climatic Research Centre (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich after failing to identify those responsible. Despite not being able to prosecute any offenders, the police have confirmed that the data breach “was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet”. The investigation has also cleared anyone working at or associated with UEA from involvement in the crime.
“Despite detailed and comprehensive enquiries, supported by experts in this field, the complex nature of this investigation means that we do not have a realistic prospect of identifying the offender or offenders and launching criminal proceedings within the time constraints imposed by law,” said Julian Gregory, the senior investigating officer on the case, which had been code-named Operation Cabin. “The international dimension of investigating the World Wide Web especially has proved extremely challenging.”
The hacking resulted in the release of more than 1,000 emails and shook the public’s trust in climate science, though independent investigations after the breach cleared the scientists of wrongdoing (see Nature‘s collected coverage of Climategate).
“We are naturally disappointed that those responsible for this crime have not been caught and brought to justice,” said Edward Acton, UEA’s vice chancellor, in a statement.  “The misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating following the publication of the stolen emails – including the theory that the hacker was a disgruntled UEA employee — did real harm to public perceptions about the dangers of climate change.”
Phil Jones, research director of CRU, who spoke to Nature in February 2010 about the affair (see ‘Climategate’ scientist speaks out), said he hoped the end of the case would “draw a line under the stressful events of the last two and half years”.
“My colleagues and I remain committed to the research CRU undertakes to illuminate the globally important issue of climate change,” said Jones.

Phone hacking: former Sarah Ferguson aide sues News International


Phone hacking: former Sarah Ferguson aide sues News International:


Kate Waddington, duchess's PR adviser for 20 years, among 50 people who have lodged claims against NoW publisher
A former aide to Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is suing News International over allegations her phone was hacked by the News of the World.
Kate Waddington is a close confidante of Ferguson and acted as her public relations adviser and spokeswoman for 20 years.
She is among 50 individuals including Cherie Blair and Wayne Rooney who have lodged high court claims against the publisher.
Waddington, like all those suing News International over alleged hacking, has been shown notes kept on her by the private investigator at the centre of the scandal, Glenn Mulcaire.
The notes were made available under legal disclosure by the Metropolitan police and it is understood they show that her voicemail was frequently hacked into between 2004 and 2006.
Ferguson has been the target of countless News of the World exposés over the years, most recently the subject of an undercover operation mounted by Mazher Mahmood, who in 2010 filmed her offering access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, for £500,000.
Waddington knew nothing of the meeting and resigned after the News of the World published the story, but remains close to Ferguson and her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
Earlier this week, the high court heard that 417 people had now been given disclosure from the police in relation to Mulcaire.
About 100 of those are expected to go ahead with full legal action against News International by the August deadline set by Mr Justice Vos for the second tranche of civil suits against the publisher.
Vos made it clear at a case management hearing on Wednesday that he did not want to have a third tranche of civil proceedings against the publisher and has asked solicitors on both side to take an advert out in legal magazines instructing lawyers acting for potential victims to get their claims in on time.
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Vehicular Hacking, From Art Cars to JEEPuters


Vehicular Hacking, From Art Cars to JEEPuters:

While DIY automotive projects are nothing new, the options for modifying your vehicle are becoming increasingly diverse and accessible. From Backyard Biodiesel production and vegetable-oil-powered motorcycles to solar panel augmented chassis and homemade RFID keyless entry, as the Owner’s Manifesto states, “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it,” and this should apply to your manufactured automobile as much as any commercial object. Continue reading for a few examples of vehicular hacking, from art cars to an Arduino-controlled Jeep!


This post is brought to you by the new OE Fine Wire Spark Plug line from Bosch.







An art car gone mad, the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir has long been a staple of Maker Faires from Austin to Detroit to New York. And with each appearance it might be different than the last, as this project undergoes “continuous modification and reprogramming.” For example, the control system, once ran with BASIC Stamp, now uses a Linux netbook’s web browser, giving the makers a visual GUI for choosing songs and animation sequences.



Wanting a truck with more power options, Mechanical Mashup maker Dave re-wires and hacks a Black & Decker power inverter to reside in the panel between his truck’s driver and passenger seats. As they say in their video podcast, “cars aren’t keeping up with technology,” and it’s up to makers to hack their vehicles to suit their needs. And sometimes all you need is a lot more power!



Hamburg-based maker Alexander Weber detailed his Race Car POV at his tinkerlog blog. After experimenting for a year with a couple prototypes, the drive-by results are pretty fantastic!







Here is my Jeep wrangler that I outfitted with a couple Arduinos, a bunch of relays and some swtiches. Basically a computerized power box for the jeep. It runs all of my accessories along with lights and even starts the jeep with only a code! Has light sensors to automatically turn on the lights and can tell the time and temp.

Ed’s Arduino-powered Jeep Wrangler shows what is possible when a maker wants to extensively modify their vehicle’s interior and functions with an Arduino! His first experiment with that microcontroller platform, this 11-minute video walkthrough shows everything from temperature display to controlling his garage’s lights and door from inside his vehicle. He even modded his ignition to the push of a button!



Instead of a car with mods, this car is the mod. Vehicular hacking taken to its logical conclusion, this car is part of an emerging trend of homemade diesel and electric motor vehicles. Best of all, the Roopod is also completely street legal! This auto has managed to squeeze out an incredible 78 miles per gallon, and the maker suspects that number could be improved upon.








Operation Tuleta: Sun journalist arrested in hacking investigation


Operation Tuleta: Sun journalist arrested in hacking investigation:


News reporter Rhodri Phillips arrested at 6.30am by Scotland Yard detectives at his home in north London
A journalist at the Sun has been arrested in north London by police from Scotland Yard's Operation Tuleta, which is investigating breaches of privacy including computer hacking.
He is understood to be Rhodri Phillips, a news reporter at the paper.
The Metropolitan police said the man was held at his home at 6.30am on Thursday, but did not give his age or any detail of offences the man is suspected of committing.
News International chief executive Tom Mockridge confirmed in an email to staff that he was "afraid that another of our journalists from the Sun has been arrested this morning".
Scotland Yard is expected to provide further detail of the arrest later on Thursday.
The force said in a statement: "For operational reasons we are not providing further details of this arrest at this time but will release more information in due course."
Sources at News International said the arrest may have been linked to an incident last year when Philips worked as night reporter when a reader phoned in claiming to have found a mobile phone on a train they believed belonged to an MP.
Scotland Yard said in a statement officers from Operation Tuleta were investigating criminal breaches of privacy alongside their phone-hacking inquiries.
The Met police refused to elaborate on the actual offence the individual was arrested on suspicion of or give further details.
Colleagues on the paper are furious about the arrest and say the paper has been handed information and lost items "since 1969" when Murdoch bought the title.
"If we have to stop taking calls like this and checking out the information that is being put to us, we might as well pack up and go home," said one journalist on the paper. "This is just getting ridiculous."
The move has reawakened the anger in the Sun newsroom felt in February when Trevor Kavanagh, the paper's associate editor, said there was "a feeling of being under siege" after five Sun journalists were arrested – and bailed – in relation to Scotland Yard's Operation Elveden investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to public officials for stories. "The witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on free press," he said.
Phillips is the seventh person to be held by the Metropolitan police under Operation Tuleta, which was launched in July last year as a splinter investigation to the probe into phone hacking.
The Met has 19 officers working on Operation Tuleta, compared with 96 officers officers and civilian personnel on Operation Weeting and 70 on Operation Elveden, the investigation into payments by journalists to police and public officials.
Scotland Yard described the Tuleta probe as "an investigation into a number of allegations referring to breaches of privacy which fall outside the remit of Operation Weeting. This includes computer hacking."
Operation Tuleta is investigating the use of so-called "trojan" emails which allow a hacker to take over a target's computer.
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