United States | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday indicted two hackers for their alleged involvement in defacing several websites in the country following the assassination of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani earlier this January. Behzad Mohammadzadeh (aka Mrb3hz4d), 19, and Marwan Abusrour (aka Mrwn007), 25, have been charged with conspiracy to commit intentional damage to a protected computer for a widespread "cyber-assault" that affected over 1,400 websites with pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian messages. "The hackers victimized innocent third parties in a campaign to retaliate for the military action that killed Soleimani, a man behind countless acts of terror against Americans and others that the Iranian regime opposed," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers in a statement. The defendants, from Iran and Palestine, respectively, are now wanted by the US authorities and are no longer free to travel outside their countries wi...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) yesterday revealed charges against two Chinese nationals for their alleged involvement in a decade-long hacking spree targeting dissidents, government agencies, and hundreds of organizations in as many as 11 countries. The 11-count indictment , which was unsealed on Tuesday, alleges LI Xiaoyu (李啸宇) and DONG Jiazhi (董家志) stole terabytes of sensitive data, including from companies developing COVID-19 vaccines, testing technology, and treatments while operating both for private financial gain and behalf of China's Ministry of State Security. "China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being 'on call' to work for the benefit of the state, [and] to feed the Chinese Communist party's insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies' hard-earned intellectual property, includ...

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I have really bad news for Adobe customers in Venezuela… California-based software company Adobe on Monday announced to soon ban accounts and cancel the subscriptions for all of its customers in Venezuela in order to comply with economic sanctions that the United States imposed on the Latin American country. The Trump administration issued an executive order on 5th August 2019, targeting the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro for allegedly usurping the presidency and violating the human rights of the country's citizens. The Presidential Executive Order 13884 has been designed to block American companies and individuals from conducting virtually all trade with Venezuela. As a result, Adobe has now decided to deactivate all accounts in the country, leaving thousands of users and companies without access to the company's graphics and multimedia software, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Reader, Adobe After Effects, Lightroom, and Flash Player. "The ...

The United States Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against three state-sponsored North Korean hacking groups for conducting several destructive cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure. Besides this, the hacking groups have also been accused of stealing possibly hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions around the world to ultimately fund the North Korean government's illicit weapons and missile programs. The three North Korean hacking groups in question are the well-known Lazarus Group , and its two sub-groups, Bluenoroff and Andariel . The sanctions announced by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) claim that all the three groups are "agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities of the Government of North Korea" based on their relationship with Pyongyang's central intelligence bureau called the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). Specifically, the sanctions aim to lock any fore...

The United States Justice Department has unveiled charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 new counts on the alleged violation of the Espionage Act by publishing classified information through WikiLeaks website. If convicted for all counts, Assange could face a maximum sentence of 175 years in U.S. prison for his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States." Assange was arrested last month in London after Ecuador abruptly withdrew his asylum and later sentenced to 50 weeks in U.K. prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012. The 47-year-old is currently facing extradition to the United States for his role in publishing thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents on WikiLeaks in 2010 that embarrassed the U.S. governments across the world. Though the previous indictment charged Assange with just one count of helping former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning c...

Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia. Assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who made this disclosure on August 22, urged the judge to keep the indictment [ pdf ] prepared against Assange sealed (secret) "due to the sophistication of the defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case." Dwyer is assigned to the WikiLeaks case. Dwyer also said the charges would "need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges" in the indictment and can, therefore "no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter." WikiLeaks, the website that published thousands of classified U.S. government do...

Since the foundation of the Internet, a contract has been handed over to the United States Commerce Department under which the department had given authority to regulate the Internet. After 47 years, this contract ends tonight at midnight EDT i.e. Saturday, October 1st, 2016. If you think that the United States owns the Internet, then you're wrong. It doesn't. Founded in 1998, non-profit organization ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees the Internet's "address book" (or root zone) — the process of assigning domain names and the underlying IP addresses to keep the Internet running smoothly. But according to the contract, ICANN and its IANA department (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was set to work under the supervision of National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. That contract is ending today, and the US Commerce Department is schedule...

What would it take for hackers to significantly disrupt the US' 911 emergency call system? It only takes 6,000 Smartphones. Yes, you heard it right! According to new research published last week, a malicious attacker can leverage a botnet of infected smartphone devices located throughout the country to knock the 911 service offline in an entire state, and possibly the whole United States, for days. The attacker would only need 6,000 infected smartphones to launch automated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against 911 service in an entire state by placing simultaneous calls from the botnet devices to the emergency numbers. However, as little as 200,000 infected mobile phones could knock the 911 emergency call system offline across the entire US. Where does the Problem Lies? Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Cyber-Security Research Center say the problem is in the fact that current US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regula...

US authorities have arrested two North Carolina men on charges that they were part of the notorious hacking group " Crackas With Attitude ." Crackas with Attitude is the group of hackers who allegedly was behind a series of audacious and embarrassing hacks that targeted personal email accounts of senior officials at the CIA, FBI, the White House, Homeland Security Department, and other US federal agencies. Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, N.C., who allegedly used the handle " INCURSIO ," and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, who known online as " D3F4ULT ," were arrested on Thursday morning on charges related to their alleged roles in the computer hacking, according to a press release by Department of Justice. A 16-year-old British teenager suspected of being part of the group was arrested in February by the FBI and British police. Although court documents did not name the victims, the hacking group had allegedly: Hacked...

Especially after the Snowden revelations of global  mass surveillance by US intelligence agencies at home and abroad, various countries demanded tech companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft to set-up and maintain their servers in respective countries in order to keep their citizen data within boundaries. The US government has powers to comply US-based tech companies with the court orders to hand over their customers' data stored on servers, even if the data centers are beyond US borders. Now, the recent court decision has proven that the data centers and servers located outside the US boundaries are safe haven. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled Thursday that the United States government cannot force tech companies to give the FBI or other federal authorities access to their non-US customers' data stored on servers located in other countries. US Government Can't go Beyond its Boundaries to Collect Data Yes, the Stored Communicatio...

The " Hack the Pentagon " bug bounty program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has been successful with more than 100 vulnerabilities uncovered by white hat hackers in Pentagon infrastructure. In March, the Defense Department launched what it calls " the first cyber Bug Bounty Program in the history of the federal government, " inviting hackers to take up the challenge of finding bugs in its networks and public faced websites that are registered under DoD. Around 1,400 whitehat (ethical) hackers participated in the Hack the Pentagon program and were awarded up to $15,000 for disclosures of the most destructive vulnerabilities in DoDs networks, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at a technology forum on Friday. "They are helping us to be more secure at a fraction of the cost," Carter said . "And in a way that enlists the brilliance of the white hatters, rather than waits to learn the lessons of the black hatters." ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has lengthened its Most Wanted List by adding seven Iranian hackers who are accused of attacking a range of US banks and a New York dam. On Thursday, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) charged seven Iranian hackers with a slew of computer hacking offences for breaking into computer systems of dozens of US banks, causing Millions of dollars in damages, and tried to shut down a New York dam. The individual hackers, who allegedly worked for computer security companies linked to the Iranian government, were indicted for an " extensive campaign " of cyber attacks against the US financial sector. All the seven hackers have been added to the FBI's Most Wanted list, and their names are: Ahmad Fathi , 37 Hamid Firoozi , 34 Amin Shokohi , 25 Sadegh Ahmadzadegan (aka Nitr0jen26), 23 Omid Ghaffarinia (aka PLuS), 25 Sina Keissar , 25 Nader Saedi (aka Turk Server), 26 All the hackers have been charg...

Update: ' Hack The Pentagon ' has opened registration for its pilot bug bounty program of $150,000 for hackers in return for the vulnerabilities they find in its public facing websites. The Defense Department has enlisted the bug bounty startup HackerOne to manage the pilot program. Interested hackers can Register Now to participate in the Bug Bounty program. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has the plan to boost their internal and network security by announcing what it calls "the first cyber Bug Bounty Program in the history of the federal government," officially inviting hackers to take up the challenge. Dubbed " Hack the Pentagon ," the bug bounty program invites the hackers and security researchers only from the United States to target its networks as well as the public faced websites which are registered under DoD. The bug bounty program will begin in April 2016, and the participants could win money (cash rewards) ...

The decision of the United Nations investigation into the Julian Assange case is set to be revealed and could order the release of Wikileaks founder on February 5 . " BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday, "BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday," Wikileaks has tweeted . Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over 3 years, after being granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government of the South American country. Assange has been residing in the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition: First to Sweden where he is facing sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied. Ultimately to the United States where he could face cyber espionage charges for publishing classified US military and diplomat documents via his website Wikileaks. The leak of publishing secret documents has amounted to the largest information leak in United States history ...

BREAKING: A misconfigured database has resulted in the exposure of around 191 Million voter records including voters' full names, their home addresses, unique voter IDs, date of births and phone numbers. The database was discovered on December 20th by Chris Vickery , a white hat hacker, who was able to access over 191 Million Americans' personal identifying information (PII) that are just sitting in the public to be found by anyone looking for it. Vickery is the same security researcher who uncovered personal details of 13 Million MacKeeper users two weeks ago, which included names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, IP addresses, phone numbers, and system information. However, the recent discovery made him shocked when he saw his own information in the database, according to DataBreaches.net, whom the researcher contacted and provided all the details about his finding. 300GB Trove of Voters' Information Leaked Vickery has his hands on all ...

The US federal agency has notified its 4 Million current and former government employees that their private data has been compromised in a massive data breach. Hackers managed to break into US government computer systems in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and steal records of Millions of employees, making it one of the largest known breaches of information ever on federal workers. The stolen information includes birth dates, credit card data, banking records, security clearance information, and background checks dating back three decades, potentially affecting people across the spectrum of the federal agency. The massive breach is believed to be carried out by the hackers based in China, the Obama administration announced on Thursday. The breach is believed to be an "attack against the (American) nation." Biggest Data Breach in US History However, China has denied any involvement in what could be the largest cyber-attack in US history by c...

The hacktivist group Anonymous says it's planning to block all live streams of President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, in an operation entitled " Operation SOTU ". " We reject the State of the Union. We reject the authority of the President to sign arbitrary orders and bring irresponsible and damaging controls to the Internet, " the statement reads. " The President of the United States of America, and the Joint Session of Congress will face an Army tonight. " Anonymous group is upset with a pending Internet security bill. According to Anonymous and other Internet freedom activists, if the CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Information Act) is passed it will infringe on online privacy and freedom. A Twitter account associated with Anonymous also hinted by tweeting ," ADVANCED WARNING: This year's State of the Union Address WILL be cancelled if internet regulation is passed by executive order #opLastResort " ...