Barrett Brown | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Barrett Brown , a journalist, formerly served as an unofficial spokesman for the hacktivist collective Anonymous, finally walked free from prison on Tuesday morning after serving more than four years behind bars. The Dallas-born investigative journalist was arrested in 2012 from his home while he was in the middle of an online chat after posting tweets and YouTube video threatening revenge against an FBI agent. Brown, 35, initially attracted the law enforcement attention in 2011 when he shared a hyperlink to an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel where Anonymous members were distributing stolen information from the hack at security think tank Strategic Forecasting or Stratfor. The hack allegedly exposed 200 gigabytes of data, which included email addresses and credit card information from Stratfor clients, including the US Army, US Air Force, and Miami Police Department. Originally facing sentence to more than 100 years in prison, Brown was convicted in January 2015 under ...

Barrett Brown , a journalist formerly served as an unofficial spokesman for the hacktivist collective Anonymous , was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, after pleading guilty to federal charges of  " transmitting a threat in interstate commerce ,"   " for interfering with the execution of a search warrant ," and to being " accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer ." After already having served over 2 years ( 31 months ) in detention, Texas court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison and also ordered him to pay a little more than $890,000 in restitution and fines related to the 2011 hack of Stratfor Global Intelligence . Over a year ago, another federal judge sentenced Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for making millions of emails from the servers of security firm Stratfor public. It's Hammond who said that Brown simply linked to the hacked ...

As SaaS providers race to integrate AI into their product offerings to stay competitive and relevant, a new challenge has emerged in the world of AI: shadow AI.  Shadow AI refers to the unauthorized use of AI tools and copilots at organizations. For example, a developer using ChatGPT to assist with writing code, a salesperson downloading an AI-powered meeting transcription tool, or a customer support person using Agentic AI to automate tasks – without going through the proper channels. When these tools are used without IT or the Security team's knowledge, they often lack sufficient security controls, putting company data at risk. Shadow AI Detection Challenges Because shadow AI tools often embed themselves in approved business applications via AI assistants, copilots, and agents they are even more tricky to discover than traditional shadow IT. While traditional shadow apps can be identified through network monitoring methodologies that scan for unauthorized connections based on...

U.S. Prosecutors decided not to pursue crucial criminal charges against journalist and activist Barrett Brown , and dismiss a majority of charges related to sharing a link to a dump of credit card numbers connected to the breach of intelligence firm Stratfor. Supporters say Brown just copied the hyperlink from an the Internet chat room and then reposted the link on his own internet chat room, Project PM , that linked to stolen documents from the US government contractor, Stratfor Global Intelligence , included 860,000 e-mail addresses for Stratfor subscribers and 60,000 credit card details. Just hours after Brown's lawyers filed their comprehensive argument, the DOJ has filed a motion to dismiss all 11 charges, on Thursday.  Apart from computer fraud charges, Brown is also facing prosecution for allegedly threatening an FBI agent and for alleged obstruction of justice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , a non-profit organization defending civil libertie...

The mother of alleged Anonymous hacktivist Barrett Brown has pleaded guilty to helping her son hide two laptop computers from federal investigators. Brown's mother, Karen McCutchin , pleaded guilty last week to a charge of obstructing the execution of a search warrant. She faces a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison and a $100,000 fine. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled. On March 6, 2012, officers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Brown's Dallas, Texas apartment in an attempt to execute a search warrant for computers that could contain information involving hacktivist group Anonymous and LulzSec. The feds hadn't found all the computers they were looking for during a search of Brown's apartment that morning and Brown, located at his mother's house, refused to volunteer them. Karen McCutchin Plea Agreement Barrett Brown is expected to stand trial in September, at which point he will have spent an entire year behind bars witho...