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WikiLeaks Exposed CIA's Hacking Tools And Capabilities Details

WikiLeaks Exposed CIA's Hacking Tools And Capabilities Details

Mar 07, 2017
WikiLeaks has published a massive trove of confidential documents in what appear to be the biggest ever leak involving the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). WikiLeaks announced series Year Zero , under which the whistleblower organization will reveal details of the CIA's global covert hacking program. As part of Year Zero, Wikileaks published its first archive, dubbed Vault 7 , which includes a total of 8,761 documents of 513 MB ( torrent  | password ) on Tuesday, exposing information about numerous zero-day exploits developed for iOS, Android, and Microsoft's Windows operating system. WikiLeaks claims that these leaks came from a secure network within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence headquarters at Langley, Virginia. The authenticity of such dumps can not be verified immediately, but since WikiLeaks has long track record of releasing such top secret government documents, the community and governments should take it very seriously. CIA's Zero-D
Wikileaks Gets DDoSed after Leaking 8,200 DNC Emails One Day before U.S. Election

Wikileaks Gets DDoSed after Leaking 8,200 DNC Emails One Day before U.S. Election

Nov 07, 2016
With just two days before the presidential election, WikiLeaks late Sunday night published a new trove of emails apparently hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The most recent dump of more than 8,000 emails came after the whistleblowing site, on a daily basis over last four weeks, has already leaked over 50,000 emails stolen from the key figure in the DNC – Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. However, this time, not everything went as planned by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks early Monday morning announced on Twitter that shortly after the release of hacked DNC emails the organization was the target of a major Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. What's more?  Soon after WikiLeaks reported the DDoS attack on its email publication servers, Twitter also went down, and the outage lasts for at least 30 minutes. According to a status monitor, the Twitter outage began at around 6.45am GMT and continued for nearly half an hour, though report
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
Donald Trump's Email Servers are Horribly Insecure — Researcher Reveals

Donald Trump's Email Servers are Horribly Insecure — Researcher Reveals

Oct 18, 2016
When Hillary Clinton's private email server was hacked earlier this year, she was criticized for her bad security practices that exposed top secret documents stored in emails on that private server. The FBI called her behavior 'extremely careless.' Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are continuously criticizing Clinton's use of a private email server. And here's what Trump lectured in a debate about cybersecurity: "The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly, cyber is one of them." Forget Clinton; Trump has so worryingly insecure internet setup that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont,
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WikiLeaks Confirms Ecuador Cut Julian Assange's Internet Access After Clinton Leak

WikiLeaks Confirms Ecuador Cut Julian Assange's Internet Access After Clinton Leak

Oct 18, 2016
Early Monday, Whistleblowing site WikiLeaks tweeted that the internet connection of its co-founder, Julian Assange, was intentionally cut down , for which it blamed an unidentified " state party ." But most surprisingly, it was Ecuador who was behind the act. WikiLeaks has confirmed that its founder Julian Assange 's Internet access was cut down in its London embassy by the government of Ecuador on Saturday. The move was in response to the organization's publication of another batch of leaked emails related to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5 pm GMT, shortly after [the] publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs [speeches]," WikiLeaks tweeted . Assange has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning on a rape allegation.
Julian Assange is not Dead, but his Internet Connection is Cut by 'State Party'

Julian Assange is not Dead, but his Internet Connection is Cut by 'State Party'

Oct 17, 2016
Don't worry — Julian Assange is alive and kicking! But his Internet connection is dead. Earlier today, Wikileaks tweeted that its co-founder, Julian Assange, had his internet connection intentionally cut by an unidentified " state party ." The non-profit organization said it had " activated appropriate contingency plans ," giving no further explanation. The tweet came after Wikileaks posted a series of three cryptic tweets , each containing a 64-character code. In no time, the tweets sparked bizarre rumors that Julian Assange has died. The tweets referenced Ecuador, Secretary of State John Kerry and the United Kingdom's Foreign Commonwealth Office. What exactly are those Mysterious Wikileaks Tweets? Some users on Twitter, Reddit, and various discussion forums speculated that the tweets in question were the result of a " dead man's switch " that has been triggered in the event of Julian Assange's untimely death. Users on Twitter a
Classified U.S. Defense Network Outage Hits Air Force’s Secret Drone Operations

Classified U.S. Defense Network Outage Hits Air Force's Secret Drone Operations

Oct 13, 2016
U.S. drones are again in news for killing innocent people. The Air Force is investigating the connection between the failure of its classified network, dubbed SIPRNet, at Creech Air Force Base and a series of high-profile airstrikes that went terribly wrong in September this year. Creech Air Force Base is a secret facility outside Las Vegas, where military and Air Force pilots sitting in dark and air-conditioned rooms, 7100 miles from Syria and Afghanistan, remotely control their " targeted killing " drone campaign in a video-game-style warfare. From this ground zero, Air Force pilots fire missiles just by triggering a joystick on a targeted areas half a world away, as well as operate drones for surveillance and intelligence gathering. Drone operation facility at Creech Air Force Base -- a key base for worldwide drone and targeted killing operations -- has been assigned as ' Special Access Programs ', to access SIPRnet. What is SIPRnet? SIPRNet, or Secret Int
WikiLeaks Promises to Publish Leaks on US Election, Arms Trade and Google

WikiLeaks Promises to Publish Leaks on US Election, Arms Trade and Google

Oct 04, 2016
Wikileaks completed its 10 years today, and within this timespan, the whistleblower site has published over 10 million documents, and there's more to come. In the name of celebration of its 10th Anniversary, Wikileaks promises to leak documents pertaining to Google, United States presidential election and more over the next ten weeks. Speaking by video link to an anniversary news conference at the Volksbuhne Theater in Berlin on Tuesday morning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange eagerly announced his plans to release a series of publications every week for the next 10 weeks. The upcoming leaks will include "significant material" related to Google, the US presidential election, military operations, arms trading and, the hot topic of past few years, mass surveillance. Assange also promised to publish all documents related to the US presidential race before the election day on November 8. "There is an enormous expectation in the United States," Assange said f
Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign also Hacked in Attack on Democratic Party

Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign also Hacked in Attack on Democratic Party

Jul 30, 2016
There's a lot more to come from the DNC Hack. The Associated Press confirmed yesterday that the computer systems used by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign were hacked as part of the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) hack. Last week's email dump containing almost 20,000 emails from top DNC officials was just the beginning, which led DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign as the group's leader, as WikiLeaks announced that it was part one of its new Hillary Leaks series. This suggests WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has had his hands on more data from the DNC hack that, according to him, could eventually result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton. Assange — Wikileaks' Next Leak will lead to Arrest of Hillary Clinton In an interview with Robert Preston of ITV last month, Assange made it clear that he hopes to harm Hillary Clinton's chances from becoming president of the United States, opposing her candidacy on both policies as well
Is Russia Behind the DNC Hack to Help Donald Trump? FBI Initiate an Investigation

Is Russia Behind the DNC Hack to Help Donald Trump? FBI Initiate an Investigation

Jul 26, 2016
On Friday, just three days prior to the start of the party's national convention, WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 e-mails with more than 8,000 stolen from the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) following a cyber attack in June. Two days later, on Sunday, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation and now had no major role on the party's convention stage. Many of the leaked emails indicted that the top DNC officials were actively working against the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and strongly favoring Hillary Clinton over Sanders during the primaries, when they were supposed to be neutral. The controversy ruined the start of the DNC's national convention in Philadelphia and forced the Wasserman Schultz to resign. The leak, from January 2015 to May 2016, is believed to be an attempt by the Russian government to influence the presidential election, some U.S. lawmakers and cybersecurity experts say. The leak features DNC staffers debat
Hillary Leaks Series: Wikileaks releases 20,000 DNC Emails

Hillary Leaks Series: Wikileaks releases 20,000 DNC Emails

Jul 22, 2016
Today, whistleblowing website Wikileaks has finally published more than 19,000 e-mails, which contains more than 8,000 attachments from the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) . The new trove of documents apparently pilfered from the DMC released after Wikileaks yesterday announced via its official Twitter account that a "series" about Hillary Clinton is coming soon. The published documents are part one of Wikileaks' new Hillary Leaks series, Wikileaks said in a press release. The emails released by Wikileaks were handed over to the whistleblower organization by the DNC hacker using handle " Guccifer 2.0 ," who hacked DNC's computer systems in a such a way that the hacker was able to read all email and chat traffic. The leaked 19,252 emails cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016 and allegedly come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda — 10770 emails. National Finance Director Jordon Kapl
United Nations Rules in Favor of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

United Nations Rules in Favor of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

Feb 05, 2016
VICTORY! As a result of the legal action against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by both British and Swedish Governments, he has been arbitrarily detained by the United Kingdom and Sweden since his arrest in London over five years ago. However, Assange filed a complaint against both the governments in September 2014 that has been considered by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Last week, Assange gave a statement that if the ruling comes against him, then he will surrender himself to Britain . But, Victory! The decision is in favor of Assange. The UN group has ruled that the UK and Swedish authorities had illegally detained Assange in violation of their international human rights obligations. Julian Assange should be released immediately and allowed to leave the embassy as well as both the UK and Sweden should compensate him for his "deprivation of liberty", the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in a statement
Wikileak's Julian Assange Could Be Set Free On Friday by United Nation

Wikileak's Julian Assange Could Be Set Free On Friday by United Nation

Feb 02, 2016
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
WikiLeaks obtains CIA Director's Hacked Emails and Plans to Publish them Shortly

WikiLeaks obtains CIA Director's Hacked Emails and Plans to Publish them Shortly

Oct 21, 2015
Breaking.... WikiLeaks, The Anti-secrecy and transparency organization, claims to have obtained the contents of CIA Director John Brennan 's personal AOL email account. Also, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks , has promised to publish them soon on their website. Earlier this week, Brennan's personal email account was hacked by an anonymous self-described high school student, who swiped sensitive top-secret data from it. The teenager also posted a partial Spreadsheet filled with the supposed names, email addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers (SSNs) of 2,611 former and current government intelligence officials. Also Read:   High school Student Hacked Into CIA Director's Personal Email Account Anonymous Teenage Hacker is motivated by opposition to American foreign policy, particularly in respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to an interview. The Central Intelligence Agency did not confirm whether the hack happened
France May Offer Asylum to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange

France May Offer Asylum to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange

Jun 26, 2015
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
Wikileaks Publishes 30,000 Searchable Documents from the Sony Hack

Wikileaks Publishes 30,000 Searchable Documents from the Sony Hack

Apr 17, 2015
Remember the largest hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment late last year? Well, nobody can forget it. But let me remind you once again: Sony Picture Entertainment hack was one of the most devastating hacks in the history that leaked several hundred gigabytes of sensitive data, including high-quality versions of five unreleased movies , celebrity phone numbers and their travel aliases, private information of its employees, upcoming film scripts, film budgets and many more. Now, these large troves of hacked Sony data have been republished by Wikileaks. THE SONY ARCHIVES WikiLeaks on Thursday released " The Sony Archives ," a fully searchable online database containing more than 30,000 documents and 173,132 emails that, it claims, were stolen from last year's Sony Pictures hack , proving a devastating and embarrassing security failure for the studio. It is like, Whistleblower Julian Assange has hit the nerve: The massive hack has already cost the e
Snowden used web crawler tool to access and download 1.7 million Secret NSA Files

Snowden used web crawler tool to access and download 1.7 million Secret NSA Files

Feb 10, 2014
National Security Agency (NSA) – the one that had ruled over the privacy of the entire world from countries to individuals, the one with master access to read anyone's data, intruded into large fiber networks, and can target anyone, at any time, at any place; but lapsed somewhere in protecting its own privacy and security of the confidential data. If I am wrong, then from where did Snowden gets hold over roughly 1.7 million NSA's confidential files in sequence? According to the Intelligence officials who has investigated the insider theft by Snowden, noticed that he had accessed all these documents using some ' web crawler ', a freely available automated tool also known as spiders, which used to search, index and backup a website, " scraped data out of our systems " he said. " We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence ," he added. He used the web crawler tool against NSA 's internal network and 'probably
13 Anonymous Members indicted and accused of participating in 'Operation Payback'

13 Anonymous Members indicted and accused of participating in 'Operation Payback'

Oct 04, 2013
A U.S. Grand jury indicted and accused 13 members of the hacking group Anonymous for allegedly participating in the cyber attacks against a number of websites as an  anti-copyright campaign called " Operation Payback " Hackers took down the sites by inflicting a denial of service, or DDoS, attack , including those belonging to the Recording Industry Association of America, Visa and MasterCard. The attacks were in retaliation for the shutdown of " The Pirate Bay ," a Sweden-based file-sharing website used to illegally download copyrighted material. The DDoS Campaign was later extended to Bank of America and credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard after they refused to process payments for WikiLeaks . According to the indictment, the suspects are charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to protected computers. Suspects downloaded and used software known as Low Orbit Ion Cannon , or LOIC, to launch distributed denial-of-service
Russia grants one year asylum to Edward Snowden, The Most wanted man on Earth

Russia grants one year asylum to Edward Snowden, The Most wanted man on Earth

Aug 01, 2013
Edward Snowden , the former U.S. The intelligence contractor wanted for revealing the National Security Agency 's secret program to collect American phone and internet records, left at Moscow airport after Russian authorities granted him temporary asylum for one year. Mr Snowden's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, " Snowden has left the Sheremetyevo airport. He has just been given a certificate that he has been awarded temporary asylum in Russia for one year ," " Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia for a year and has now left Moscow airport under the care of Wikileaks' Sarah Harrison ," Wikileaks tweeted. He had gone to a secure location which would remain secret. " His location is not being made public for security reasons since he is the most pursued man on the planet. He himself will decide where he will go ," In a statement released by WikiLeaks , Snowden thanked Russia for giving him asylum and critici
Edward Snowden nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Edward Snowden nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Jul 15, 2013
Edward Snowden has helped to make the world a little bit better and safer. A Swedish professor of sociology has nominated NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, sociology professor Stefan Svallfors recommended the Snowden be a candidate, for his " heroic effort at a great personal cost " shedding light on the expansive cyber-spying conducted by the NSA . A nomination for Snowden would be symbolic because it shows ' that individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms .' he said. But it may be too late for Snowden to receive the award this year, so he will not be eligible for this year's prize, which will be awarded in December, but could be considered for 2014. The head of the International Committee of the Russian State Duma Aleksey Pushkov tweeted, " Not in a million years will the United States allow Snowden to get the Peace Prize. But h
Hidden microphone found in Ecuador's embassy in UK

Hidden microphone found in Ecuador's embassy in UK

Jul 05, 2013
A hidden microphone was found in Ecuador's embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is sheltering from extradition to Sweden, The Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino claimed. The microphone was found in the office of the ambassador Ana Alban and was discovered last month during his visit to Britain to discuss issues surrounding Julian Assange. At a press conference in Quito, the foreign minister of Ecuador, held up a photo of a " spy microphone " that was found on June 14 inside a small white box that was placed in an electrical outlet behind a bookshelf. However, the purpose of the bug, according to Patino, was not to track the WikiLeaks founder directly, but rather listen to the conversations of ambassador Ana Alban. He told reporters: " We have reason to believe that the bugging was carried out by The Surveillance Group Limited, one of the largest private investigation and covert surveillance companies in the United Kin
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