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Two former Federal investigators who helped to shut down the infamous black-market website ' Silk Road ' accused of fraud and stealing more than a Million dollars in Bitcoins during their investigation. Silk Road, an infamous online drug market that hosted more than $200 Million in transactions, was seized by the FBI in 2013, but during that period two of FBI agents took advantage of their position. CHARGES AGAINST FEDS The US Department of Justice indictment charges 46-year-old former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) special agent Carl Force , and 32-year-old former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges , with the following charges: Theft of government property Wire fraud Money laundering Conflict of interest MILLION DOLLAR EXTORTION Both Force and Bridges were part of Baltimore's Silk Road Task Force to investigate illegal activity in the black marketplace. The creator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested and found guilty of running the Tor-h...

For the first time in history, Indian Law Enforcement Agency 'Central Bureau of Investigation' (CBI) has arrested a Cyber criminal after getting a tip-off from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 33-Year-old Amit Vikram Tiwari , son of an Indian Army colonel and an engineering dropout, who allegedly ran two websites offering services for hacking into email accounts was arrested on Friday from Pune city. According to the details submitted by FBI, he had compromised more than 1,000 Accounts around the world and offering illegal services for cracking email account login for $250 - $500 via two websites www.hirehacker.net and www.anonymiti.com hosted on U.S. Based servers. Amit received most of the payments from his Clients via Western Union Money Transfer or PayPal. During the investigation, police found several fictitious names of clients and bank account numbers in his computer. Initial investigation clarifies that he has clients in China, Romania, an...

In cybersecurity, confidence is a double-edged sword. Organizations often operate under a false sense of security , believing that patched vulnerabilities, up-to-date tools, polished dashboards, and glowing risk scores guarantee safety. The reality is a bit of a different story. In the real world, checking the right boxes doesn't equal being secure. As Sun Tzu warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Two and a half millennia later, the concept still holds: your organization's cybersecurity defenses must be strategically validated under real-world conditions to ensure your business's very survival. Today, more than ever, you need Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) , the essential strategy that's still missing from most security frameworks. The Danger of False Confidence Conventional wisdom suggests that if you've patched known bugs, deployed a stack of well-regarded security tools, and passed the nec...

The legal battle between Apple and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) over a locked iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters may be over, but the Department of Justice (DoJ) are back in front of a judge with a similar request. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has discovered publicly available court documents that revealed the government has asked Google's assistance to help the Feds hack into at least nine locked Android smartphones citing the All Writs Act . Yes, Apple is not the only company facing government requests over privacy and security — Google is also in the list. The Google court documents released by the ACLU show that many federal agencies have been using the All Writs Act – the same ancient law the DoJ was invoking in the San Bernardino case to compel Apple to help the FBI in the terrorist investigation. Additionally, the ACLU also released 54 court cases in which the federal authorities asked Apple for assistance to help t...

The Dutch police arrested four suspects on Tuesday on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in selling custom encrypted BlackBerry and Android smartphones to criminals. The Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), dedicated team within the Dutch National Police Agency aims to investigate advanced forms of cyber crimes, carried out investigation and found that the phone brand "PGPsafe" was selling customized BlackBerry and Android smartphones with the secure PGP-encrypted network to the "possible criminal end users." PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is an open source end-to-end encryption standard that can be used to cryptographically sign emails, documents, files, or entire disk partitions in order to protect them from being spied on. Selling custom security-focused encrypted phones does not involve any crime itself, but Dutch police have discovered evidence, which indicates over the years such phones had been sold to organized criminals involved in ...

Authorities in the U.S. and Germany have raided Internet Service Providers in hopes of tracking down the hackers who launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Web sites such as Visa.com, PayPal.com, and Mastercard.com earlier this month. In documents posted Wednesday to the Smoking Gun Web site, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation describes the complex path its investigation has taken as it has searched for the computers that served as a central meeting point for the attacks. After Germany's Federal Criminal Police raided service provider Host Europe, they linked one of he IRC servers to Dallas's Tailor Made Services, the documents state. Two hard drives were seized from Dallas's Tailor Made Services on Dec. 16, the Smoking Gun reports. Another IRC server has been traced to Fremont, California's Hurricane Electric. Neither Hurricane Electric nor Tailor Made Services could be reached immediately for comment Thursday. The early-December at...

Facebook has a lot of problems, then there are a lot of problems for Facebook—and both are not going to end anytime sooner. Though Facebook has already set aside $5 billion from its revenue to cover a possible fine the company is expecting as a result of an FTC investigation over privacy violations, it seems to be just first installment of what Facebook has to pay for continuously ignoring users' privacy. This week, Facebook has been hit with three new separate investigations from various governmental authorities—both in the United States and abroad—over the company's mishandling of its users' data . New York Attorney General to Investigate Facebook Email Collection Scandal New York Attorney General is opening an investigation into Facebook's unauthorized collection of the email contacts of more than 1.5 million users during site registration without their permission. Earlier this month, Facebook was caught practicing the worst ever user-verification mechanism...

Indonesian and Australian police launched Cyber Crime Investigation Center Indonesian and Australian police officially launched a joint project called the Cyber Crime Investigation Center. The center was officiated by Indonesian National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo and Australian Federal Police chief Comr. Tony Negus at the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta on Thursday. Timur said the center had been planned since six months ago. " Today, we launch the center, which will be equipped with tools needed to carry out cyber crime investigation ," Timur said, adding that its communication technology equipment was being provided by the Australian government." Of course, this [center] will improve our capacity to detect and [investigate cyber] crimes, particularly transnational crimes ," he said. Negus said the center would allow the Indonesian National Police to deal with technology and IT-related crimes. He added that the Australian police force was looki...

Organizations today face relentless cyber attacks, with high-profile breaches hitting the headlines almost daily. Reflecting on a long journey in the security field, it's clear this isn't just a human problem—it's a math problem. There are simply too many threats and security tasks for any SOC to manually handle in a reasonable timeframe. Yet, there is a solution. Many refer to it as SOC 3.0—an AI-augmented environment that finally lets analysts do more with less and shifts security operations from a reactive posture to a proactive force. The transformative power of SOC 3.0 will be detailed later in this article, showcasing how artificial intelligence can dramatically reduce workload and risk, delivering world-class security operations that every CISO dreams of. However, to appreciate this leap forward, it's important to understand how the SOC evolved over time and why the steps leading up to 3.0 set the stage for a new era of security operations. A brief history of the SOC For deca...

Stratfor Back Online After Hack with message for Anonymous Hacker Security analysis firm Stratfor has relaunched its website after Anonymous hackers brought down its servers and stole thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to its clients. Hacking collective Anonymous admitted the cyber attack on Christmas Eve and went on to claim that it used the stolen details to make $500,000 in charitable donations to The American Red Cross and Save the Children, as well as other charities.Anonymous eventually released the stolen data to the world, including 75,000 credit card numbers and 860,000 usernames and passwords. Approximately 50,000 of those belong to .mil or .gov email accounts used by the US government. " This was our failure ," Chief Executive George Friedman said in a message to Stratfor's subscribers. " I take responsibility. I deeply regret that this occurred and created hardship for our customers and friends. " Friedma...

Anonymous Vs Sony : Word By Word Q/A b/w Reporters and Sony during Conference ! Q. The accuracy of approximately 10 million credit flow A. There is no firm evidence of leakage. Cannot say wether a leak or not. There is no report so far. Q. prospect of resuming services. A. We want to restart the service country/region base. Basically approx within a week schedule. (a week from today?.. previously we heard about same "a week matter..) Q. How was it the effect to the business so far? A. Cannot tell it yet, many things to handle one at the time. Q. What was the condition when you firstly sense the trouble? A. Hacking with the high skill technique was undergoing, was confirmed. But we still dont know data was stolen / taken Q. Why did you announce privacy data was stolen then? A. The possibility existed, what/when/how was it still under investigation. account numbers is between 7700000 to 7800000 accounts plus there are double accounts. Q. What was your...

Modern security tools continue to improve in their ability to defend organizations' networks and endpoints against cybercriminals. But the bad actors still occasionally find a way in. Security teams must be able to stop threats and restore normal operations as quickly as possible. That's why it's essential that these teams not only have the right tools but also understand how to effectively respond to an incident. Resources like an  incident response template  can be customized to define a plan with roles and responsibilities, processes and an action item checklist. But preparations can't stop there. Teams must continuously train to adapt as threats rapidly evolve. Every security incident must be harnessed as an educational opportunity to help the organization better prepare for — or even prevent — future incidents. SANS Institute defines a framework with six steps to a successful IR. Preparation Identification Containment Eradication Recovery Lessons learned Whil...

A former software professional on Saturday was arrested for allegedly hacking the server of a city-based BPO company, where he previously worked, police said. The hacker identified as Shaik Mahammad Ghouse Bhasa allegedly secured unauthorised access to the computer systems of M/s IVOICE Network Private Limited in Hyderabad, which provides BPO services to Singapore-based Networks Pte Ltd for VoIP services and caused Rs6 lakh loss to the BPO firm, they said. He was arrested by the cyber crimes cell of Andhra Pradesh crime investigation department (CID), CID's additional superintendent (cyber crimes) U Ram Mohan said. On a complaint filed by the BPO's managing director Balu Visveswar that their server was hacked and several PINs, which are used for making VoIP calls were created by unknown persons, the cyber crime police station of CID registered a case under relevant sections of Information Technology besides for cheating and took up investigations, he said. During the co...

After months of negotiations, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved a record $5 billion settlement with Facebook over its privacy investigation into the Cambridge Analytica scandal . The settlement will put an end to a wide-ranging probe that began more than a year ago and centers around the violation of a 2011 agreement Facebook made with the FTC that required Facebook to gain explicit consent from users to share their personal data. The FTC launched an investigation into the social media giant last year after it was revealed that the company allowed Cambridge Analytica access to the personal data of around  87 million Facebook users without their explicit consent. Now, according to a new report published by the Wall Street Journal, the FTC commissioners this week finally voted to approve a $5 billion settlement, with three Republicans voting to approve the deal and two Democrats against it. Facebook anticipated the fine to between $3 billion...