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Ex-CIA employee charged with leaking 'Vault 7' hacking tools to Wikileaks

Ex-CIA employee charged with leaking 'Vault 7' hacking tools to Wikileaks

Jun 19, 2018
A 29-year-old former CIA computer programmer who was charged with possession of child pornography last year has now been charged with masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the agency's history. Joshua Adam Schulte , who once created malware for both the CIA and NSA to break into adversaries computers, was indicted Monday by the Department of Justice on 13 charges of allegedly stealing and transmitting thousands of classified CIA documents , software projects , and hacking utilities . Schulte has also been suspected of leaking the stolen archive of documents to anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, who then began publishing the classified information in March 2017 in a series of leaks under the name " Vault 7 ." It is yet unconfirmed whether Schulte leaked documents to WikiLeaks and if yes, then when, but he had already been a suspect since January 2017 of stealing classified national defense information from the CIA in 2016. According to ...
FBI Used Firefox Exploit to Shutdown Illegal Site Running on Tor Network

FBI Used Firefox Exploit to Shutdown Illegal Site Running on Tor Network

Aug 05, 2013
TOR is the dark side of the Internet, the so-called dark web, which provides a safe haven to privacy advocates but is also where drugs, assassins for hire and other weird and illegal activities can allegedly be traded. A claimed zero-day vulnerability in Firefox 17 was used by the FBI to identify some users of the privacy-protecting Tor anonymity network. The FBI did not compromise the TOR network itself and The complex multi-layers of encryption still stand. Instead the FBI compromised the TOR browser only using a zero-day JavaScript exploit and used this to implant a cookie which fingerprinted users through a specific external server. Eric Eoin Marques , 28 year-old man in Ireland believed to be behind Freedom Hosting , the biggest service provider for sites on the encrypted Tor network , is awaiting extradition on p*rno charges. It is understood the FBI had spent a year trying to locate Mr Marques. Marques was arrested on a Maryland warrant that in...
Paris Attacks — NO! We Can't Blame Edward Snowden and Encryption for Terror Attacks

Paris Attacks — NO! We Can't Blame Edward Snowden and Encryption for Terror Attacks

Nov 17, 2015
Terrorist groups are increasingly using high-grade, advanced end-to-end encryption technologies so that no law enforcement can catch them. The deadliest terror attacks in Paris that killed 129 people were the latest example of it. How did the Terrorists Communicate and Organize the Plot? The Paris terrorists almost certainly used difficult-to-crack encryption technologies to organize the plot – locking law enforcement out, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress Wednesday. Also Read:   ISIS Calls Anonymous "IDIOTS" in response to their "Total war" Cyber Threat . The ISIS mastermind behind the Friday's Paris massacre is identified to be Abdelhamid Abaaoud , who is based in Syria. So to transmit his plans to the suicide bombers and gunmen, he would have made use of secure communication to keep law enforcement out. FBI's Comey believes ISIS is making use of popular social media platforms to reach out to potential recruits and smartphone messaging app...
cyber security

The Breach You Didn't Expect: Your AppSec Stack

websiteJFrogAppSec / DevSecOps
In a market undergoing mergers and acquisitions, vendor instability can put you in serious risk.
cyber security

How AI and Zero Trust Work Together to Catch Attacks With No Files or Indicators

websiteTHN WebinarZero Trust / Cloud Security
Modern cyberattacks hide in trusted tools and workflows, evading traditional defenses. Zero Trust and AI-powered cloud security give you the visibility and control to stop these invisible threats early.
90,000 Military Email Accounts Leaked in Latest #AntiSec Attack

90,000 Military Email Accounts Leaked in Latest #AntiSec Attack

Jul 11, 2011
90,000 Military Email Accounts Leaked in Latest #AntiSec Attack In latest tweet by AnonymousIRC , Hackers leaks  90,000 Military Email Accounts from Booz Allen Hamilton is a massive American consulting firm for #AntiSec. Anonymous call it " Military Meltdown Monday: Mangling Booz Allen Hamilton " . The Leak include 90,000 logins of military personnel—including personnel from US CENTCOM, SOCOM, the Marine Corps, various Air Force facilities, Homeland Security, State Department staff, and what looks like private sector contractors. They Release it via Torrent of 130.5 MB archive file. Press Release by Anonymous is : Hello Thar! Today we want to turn our attention to Booz Allen Hamilton, whose core business  is contractual work completed on behalf of the US federal government, foremost  on defense and homeland security matters, and limited engagements of foreign  governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs. So in this li...
Accused CIA Leaker Faces New Charges of Leaking Information From Prison

Accused CIA Leaker Faces New Charges of Leaking Information From Prison

Nov 02, 2018
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 ...
OPSEC Failure Exposes Coquettte’s Malware Campaigns on Bulletproof Hosting Servers

OPSEC Failure Exposes Coquettte's Malware Campaigns on Bulletproof Hosting Servers

Apr 04, 2025 Threat Intelligence / Malware
A novice cybercrime actor has been observed leveraging the services of a Russian bulletproof hosting ( BPH ) provider called Proton66 to facilitate their operations. The findings come from DomainTools, which detected the activity after it discovered a phony website named cybersecureprotect[.]com hosted on Proton66 that masqueraded as an antivirus service. The threat intelligence firm said it identified an operational security (OPSEC) failure in the domain that left its malicious infrastructure exposed, thereby revealing the malicious payloads staged on the server.  "This revelation led us down a rabbit hole into the operations of an emerging threat actor known as Coquettte – an amateur cybercriminal leveraging Proton66's bulletproof hosting to distribute malware and engage in other illicit activities," it said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Proton66, also linked to another BPH service known as PROSPERO, has been attributed to several campaigns distribut...
Operation Satiagraha - Brazil Corruption Scandal exposed, #Antisec provide 5GB of evidence

Operation Satiagraha - Brazil Corruption Scandal exposed, #Antisec provide 5GB of evidence

Aug 12, 2011
Operation Satiagraha - Brazil Corruption Scandal exposed , #Antisec provide 5GB of evidence Once Again Pandora's box is open. In a joint move between LulzSec and Anonymous, as part of Operation Antisec, were released documents, photos, audio files and videos, exposing that wich was one of the greatest corruption scandals in the recent history of Brazil. In 2008, after four years of investigations, the Operation Satiagraha resulted in the arrest of several bankers, CFOs and investors, accused of corruption, misuse of public money, as well as money laundering. Antisec Hackers released a cache of evidence revealing government cover up of a corruption investigation involving the CIA, theBrazilian telecom industry, and multiple US corporations. The fact is that exposing so many powerful people, in both political and financial areas, Operation Satiagraha was eventually manipulated. Those who conducted the investigations were removed and habeas corpus were granted to the accu...
ICREACH — NSA's Secret Google-Like Search Engine for Metadata Analysis

ICREACH — NSA's Secret Google-Like Search Engine for Metadata Analysis

Aug 26, 2014
The United States National Security Agency ( NSA ) is using a massive information sharing platform that allows multiple law enforcement agencies to infiltrate more than 850 billion communications records detailing e-mails, phone calls, instant messages, and phone geolocation, according to the classified documents disclosed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA has built ICREACH, a Google-like search engine that secretly provides data — metadata of both foreigners and citizens on US soil — to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and CIA, The Intercept reported . Many of those surveilled data had not been accused of any illegal activity as well. But until now, it is unclear that exact what mechanism was used by the US intelligence agency to share the massive amounts of surveillance data, as well as number of government agencies it was sharing information with. Although, the classified documents show that the FBI and the D...
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