Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans Sextants have been off the curriculum for naval officers in the US for over a decade, but now the swabbies have reinstituted celestial navigation classes over hacking fears. The US Navy discontinued celestial navigation courses in 1998 because GPS made the…
Most nuclear plants not prepared for cyber attack, says Chatham House
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans Most nuclear power plants around the world are not well prepared for cyber attacks, according to a report by international affairs think tank Chatham House. Many of the control systems used for nuclear plants, including those in the UK, are not well protected…
UPDATE 1-U.S. SEC fines advisory firm for shoddy controls after cyber attack traced to China
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans A St. Louis-based investment advisory firm will pay $75,000 to settle civil charges alleging it failed “entirely” to protect its clients from a July 2013 cyber attack that was later traced to China, U.S. regulators said on Tuesday. The Securities and…
Palo Alto Weekly website back online after cyber attack
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans The five online news sites of Embarcadero Media, including PaloAltoOnline.com, were hacked Thursday night at about 10:30 p.m. but are now back online. The sites, which provide online content for the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac and Mountain View Voice in…
Greater Manchester Police website brought down by cyber attack from Lithuanian hacker
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans A Lithuanian hacker has claimed responsibility for a cyber hack which brought a UK police force website down. The Greater Manchester Police site crashed last night but officers believed it was a minor technical issue and got it back up-and-running. But…
ISIS social media accounts are buzzing with a spreadsheet of personal data on employees of the American, British, and Australian governments, including military personnel. The Islamic State claims this list was compiled using data stolen from government systems by its “hacking division,” although some experts who have reviewed the list say most of it was more likely created using simple Google searches of publicly available data. There are about 1,400 individuals included on the list. The list was accompanied by a message from the “Islamic State Hacking Division,” transcribed by Sky News: O Crusaders, as you continue your aggression towards the Islamic State and your bombing campaign against the Muslims, know that we are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move. We have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands. So wait, we too are waiting. The Sydney Morning Herald criticizes Australian officials for being “caught on their heels” by the hit list, which includes Defense Force employees and a Victorian MP. Even though “Australia’s most senior Islamic State militant, former Melbourne man and terror recruiter Neil Prakash” was posting links to the hit list early Wednesday morning, at least half of the Australians targeted by ISIS said they were unaware of the threat until they were informed by the media… which contacted them using the phone numbers published by the Islamic State. “I’m completely at a loss,” said the aforementioned MP, who at least has access to a security detail assigned to protect elected officials. “What do I do? The police probably know less than you and I.” Defense Force employees on the list said they were in shock no one from the government had warned them. Various agencies of the Australian government declined to discuss the matter. In addition to Prakash – who crowed “Cyber war got em shook!” and “Kill them where you find them and enslave their women” on Twitter – the Herald reports “other prominent militants, including British man Junaid Hussain, who is third on a CIA kill list of Islamic State operatives, also used social media to promote the leak and encourage attacks.” Sky News reports the hit list includes British Foreign Office employees, plus a “local council employee.” Most of the names on the list are American, including personnel from the Air Force, Marines, NASA, FBI, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Russian state outlet RT.com says the list also includes “a worker in an Israeli magistrate’s court” and “someone in a college in Mississippi.” The RT.com article mentions some reasons for skepticism about the Islamic State’s claim that this list includes confidential information obtained by hackers: some of the phone numbers appear to be disconnected, while the purportedly stolen U.S. military passwords appearing on the list are “too weak to pass the guidelines of an official computer system operated by the Pentagon.” The Sydney Morning Herald also found some of the information published on the list to be outdated. “This is the second or third time they’ve claimed that and the first two times I’ll tell you, whatever lists they got were not taken by any cyber attack,” said Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno, as quoted by the UK Guardian. The Guardian also cites the opinion of computer security expert Troy Hunt, who said the of the supposedly hacked data: “It’s pretty clear that it’s been aggregated from different sources. It’s been put together on the basis of a .gov or .mil address. Even the passwords, they’re not strong enough to have come from a corporate or government. They’re not even strong enough to have come from an online service – you can’t create a Gmail account, for example, with a password of less than eight characters, and here we’re seeing some passwords of three letters.” The UK Daily Mail notes that Twitter administrators appear to have shut down the Islamic State Hacking Division’s account three times on Wednesday while it attempted to spread its hit list around, leading to the creation of a fourth terrorist account with the message, “Kuffar seem to be raging.”
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans ISIS social media accounts are buzzing with a spreadsheet of personal data on employees of the American, British, and Australian governments, including military personnel. The Islamic State claims this list was compiled using data stolen from government systems by its “hacking…
Isis hacking division’ publishes personal details of US targets online urging supporters to attack those listed
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans A list of American “targets” – including the FBI and Nasa – has been listed online by a group calling itself the Islamic State hacking division. Details of 1,400 mostly US military and government personnel were published in a spreadsheet online…
Patients Sue UCLA Hospitals for Hack Attack
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans UCLA Health Systems’ failure to encrypt patients’ medical and financial information exposed 4.5 million of them to a hacker attack, which UCLA knew six months before it told them, a patient claims in a federal class action. Michael Allen claims UCLA…
Hacker: ‘Hundreds of thousands’ of vehicles are at risk of attack
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans A security expert who recently demonstrated he could hack into a Jeep and control its most vital functions said the same could be done with hundreds of thousands of other vehicles on the road today. Security experts Charlie Miller and Chris…
Hackers attack online dating site Ashley Madison
Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans Online dating site Ashley Madison, which specialises in adultery and has the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair”, has been the victim of a cyber attack. A group calling themselves The Impact Team claims it has complete access to Ashley…