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Anonymous Hacktivist 'Barrett Brown' Released From Prison

Anonymous Hacktivist 'Barrett Brown' Released From Prison
Nov 30, 2016
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 Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison just for 'Re-Sharing Link to Hacked Material'

Barrett Brown Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison just for 'Re-Sharing Link to Hacked Material'
Jan 23, 2015
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

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

US Prosecutor drops Criminal charges against Barrett Brown

US Prosecutor drops Criminal charges against Barrett Brown
Mar 07, 2014
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

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Anonymous hacktivist Barrett Brown's Mother faces Prison for hiding Evidences

Anonymous hacktivist Barrett Brown's Mother faces Prison for hiding Evidences
Mar 27, 2013
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
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