The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Whistleblower

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

Joshua Adam Schulte , a 30-year-old former CIA computer programmer who was indicted over four months ago  for masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the agency's history, has now been issued three new charges. The news comes just hours after Schulte wrote a letter to the federal judge presiding over his case, accusing officials at Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center of interfering with his case pleading and subjecting him to "cruel and unusual punishment" in pre-trial detention. "The shit-filled showers where you leave dirtier than when you entered; the flooding of the tiers and cages with ice-cold water; the constant blast of cold air as we are exposed to extreme cold without blankets or long-sleeve shirts; the uncontrollable lights that are always on as we are sleep deprived...No human being should ever have to experience this torture," Schulte wrote. Schulte, who once designed hacking tools and malware for both the CIA and

Julian Assange, the founder of popular whistleblower website WikiLeaks, is stepping down from the position of editor-in-chief of the organisation under "extraordinary circumstances." Assange, the 47-year-old Australian hacker, founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and has since made many high-profile leaks, exposing 'dirty' secrets of several individuals, political parties as well as government organisations across the world. Assange has been forced to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012, after he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government when a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning sexual assault and rape. Ecuador has cut Assange off the Internet and any communication with the outside world except for his lawyers since late March this year, making it difficult for him to do his job of editor-in-chief to run WikiLeaks. Wikileaks Appoints Its New Editor-in-Chief According to a recent tweet from Wikileaks, those

After protecting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for almost six years, Ecuador is now planning to withdraw its political asylum, probably next week, and eject him from its London embassy—eventually would turn him over to the British authorities. Lenín Moreno, the newly-elected President of Ecuador, has arrived in London this Friday to give a speech at Global Disability Summit on 24 July 2018. However, media reports suggest the actual purpose of the President's visit is to finalize a deal with UK government to withdraw its asylum protection of Assange. According to RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and the Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald, multiple sources close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President's office have confirmed that Julian Assange will be handed over to Britain in the coming weeks or even days. Julian Assange, 47, has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a B

Wikileaks has just published a new batch of the Vault 7 leak, exposing the documentation and source code for a CIA project known as "Scribbles." Scribbles, a.k.a. the "Snowden Stopper," is a piece of software allegedly designed to embed 'web beacon' tags into confidential documents, allowing the spying agency to track whistleblowers and foreign spies. Since March, as part of its "Vault 7" series, the Whistleblowing website has published thousands of documents and other confidential information that the whistleblower group claims came from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA itself described Scribbles as a "batch processing tool for pre-generating watermarks and inserting those watermarks into documents that are apparently being stolen by FIO (foreign intelligence officers) actors." Here's How Scribbles Tool Works: Scribbles is coded in C# programming language and generates a random watermark for each docu

Whistleblower Edward Snowden just joined Twitter, and his first tweet seems to be directed at the US National Security Agency (NSA) . Yes, the world's most popular whistleblower and data privacy advocate has finally joined Twitter just two hours ago, and his first tweet came, " Can you hear me now? " Snowden has gained more than 260,000 followers in just less than two hours, but he is currently following only one account: @NSAGov , the official Twitter account for the National Security Agency. Twitter has verified Snowden's Twitter account ( @Snowden ), and his Twitter bio provides a short summary of his prolonged situation. Snowden's Twitter bio reads, "I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public. Director at @FreedomofPress." Snowden is listed as director of Freedom of the Press, a foundation dedicated to ensuring transparency in journalism in adverse situations. The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sought asylum in

In wake of the latest revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) global spying on country's leaders, France may decide to offer political asylum to whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange , as a " symbolic gesture ." Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , who is facing criminal espionage charges in the U.S., has remained in Russia for almost two years after exposing the United States government's worldwide surveillance programs and he awaits responses from two dozen countries where he'd like to live. WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has remained in the Ecuadorian embassy for three years in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where Assange is facing sex crime allegations. French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told French news channel BFMTV on Thursday that if France decides to offer both of them asylum, she would "absolutely not be surprised." Recent WikiLeaks report claimed that the United States had been spying on

An Arkansas lawyer representing three police whistleblowers has claimed that the law enforcement officials at the Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) tried to infect his computer with Trojan viruses in order to spy on their legal opponents. What's the issue? A lawyer Matthew Campbell of the Pinnacle Law Firm in North Little Rock is representing Don Paul Bales, Rick Entmeier, and Wendall Sampson, current and former officers of the Fort Smith Police Department in the lawsuit since January 2014. The three whistleblowers exposed some frauds within the corrupt department, and, therefore, the police have illegally investigated them. " Since July 2013, the plaintiffs have been the target of nearly two dozen various investigations , Campbell told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. " [This range] from accusations that they misspent FSPD funds to allegations that they were impugning the FSPD on Facebook. " What happened? Campbell provided a blank ha

Members of Iceland's Pirate Party  have introduced a proposal in Parliament that would grant immediate citizenship to National Security Agency Whistleblower Edward Snowden . The government is however not keen on helping Snowden. The bill to grant Snowden citizenship received limited support Thursday. Six members of minority parties were in favor out of Parliament's 63 members . Ogmundur Jonasson, Icelandic MP for the Left-Green Movement, said at parliament this morning that US authorities violated the Icelandic constitution when they spied on Icelandic citizens.  He referred to the 71st article of the constitution which states: " It is not allowed to search a person, his house or personal effects, unless according to a court order or a special legal basis. The same thing applies to research on documents and mail deliveries, phone calls and other telecommunications.. ." Snowden is believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport transit area, seeking asylum

Edward Snowden , a former NSA systems analyst, have revealed the NSA's sweeping data collection of U.S. phone records and some Internet traffic and the programs target foreigners and terrorist suspects mostly overseas. According to the Constitution of all countries, capturing and reading emails or text messages without privileges is illegal . Several Asian and European countries is worried about the US spying. Today a Germany's top security official has warned, " If you are worried about the US spying on you, you need to stop using Google and Facebook. " Internet users who fear their data is being intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency's should stay away from American websites run through American servers, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said. " If these reports are true, it's disgusting. The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies. " Head of t

A Russian immigration source informed that the US intelligence agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia. Few days back, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said Russia would never hand over Mr Snowden over to the United States but that if Snowden wants to stay in Russia he " must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners. " He initially fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong and then to Russia . The US has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he had hoped to get asylum, has been coy over offering him shelter. Sarah Harrison is an employee of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks , who accompanied Mr Snowden on his trip from Hong Kong. " Snowden is not a Russian agent ", Putin said on Monday, and that Russian intelligence services were not working with the fugitive American, who is believed to remain in the transit area at a Moscow airport eight days after arriving from Hong Kong. Speaking at a news confe

Once again NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the truth, that the NSA hacks into China's mobile operators to steal millions of text messages.  Every month Washington come up with new reports  and accuse other nations, particularly China, for cyber hacking , but the biggest culprit of such crime is in fact the United States. All of this appeared to go relatively well for Washington until revelations emerged of the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program . According to Snowden, U.S. spies had hacked 3 major mobile phone companies in China and a core network to steal text messages of millions of Chinese citizens. Fang Binxing, a President at Beijing University who is considered the chief pioneer of China's Great Firewall Internet filtering system, has warned in the past that telecom equipment from international companies like Cisco is a threat to China's national security. As such, it could have allowed NSA operatives to access int

Edward Snowden , The Whistleblower who revealed the existence of a secret US online surveillance program left Hong Kong and has landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport with help of Wikileaks . WikiLeaks said in a statement that its legal adviser Sarah Harrison was on the plane with Mr Snowden and they would help 'secure is safety' at his 'final destination'. Snowden will go down in history as one of the most prolific whistleblowers . Snowden left Hong Kong after The White House asked the autonomous Chinese territory to extradite him. A senior administration official warned that if Hong Kong did not act quickly it would complicate relations. He had earlier been charged in the US with espionage. Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks since he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs, has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland. He got an on SU 213 Aeroflot flight from Chep Lap Kok airport at 11.04am today (Hong K

According to the court records released this week on web, The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteers in Iceland. Smari McCarthy and Herbert Snorrason , are the two Icelandic freedom of information activists, who managed the secure chat rooms of WikiLeaks in 2010, and that is the reason the government demanded his records from Google. According to the documents, Google was told by the Justice Department that they were prohibited from disclosing to either Snorrason or McCarthy any information about the investigation until indicated. But later last week, US. District Court Judge issued an order allowing Google to notify Snorrason about the warrant and to provided a redacted copy of the warrant.  The search warrant was issued under seal on October 14, 2011 by the Alexandria, Virginia federal judge overseeing the WikiLeaks grand jury investigation there. Snorrason says he rece

Edward Snowden , an American former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), came forward as the whistle-blower in one of the biggest internal leaks in U.S. intelligence history now seeking asylum According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Snowden would not be given preferential treatment if he were to apply for asylum in Hong Kong .  He seems to have complete and total trust in the Hong Kong political and judiciary system:  "Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech. People think China, Great Firewall … but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting on the streets, making their views known … and I believe the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments. " Snowden is currently hiding out in Hong Kong as the U.S. government pursues a criminal investigation into his actions. Because Hong Kong 's currently flawed system had no asylum screen

Edward Snowden, the self confessed NSA Whistleblower of secret surveillance documents, claimed Wednesday that the United States intelligence agents have been hacking computer networks around the world, specially Chinese targets since 2009. Snowden alleged that the Prism program , which collects information on users of numerous technological services such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, targeted universities, businesses and public officials throughout mainland China and Hong Kong. Out of More than 61,000 targets of the National Security Agency , there are thousands of computers in China which U.S. officials have increasingly criticized as the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. China has denied such attacks. " We hack network backbones like huge Internet routers, basically that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one ," he revealed. But why Snowden leaking all this infor