MI6 spy who was found dead in locked bag had 'hacked secrets files about US president'

A British MI6 spy who was found dead inside a bag in 2010 had hacked into restricted information about the US president, it has been claimed. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old employee of GCHQ who was seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was found dead inside a padlocked bag at a safe house in London.

The Sun on Sunday newspaper quotes an intelligence source as saying Mr Williams had obtained sensitive documents regarding former US president Bill Clinton. “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature,” the source is reported to have told the newspaper.

“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.” A coroner had previously ruled that Mr Williams was probably unlawfully killed and that his death was likely to have been the result of criminal actions.

More at  The Independent

Sony Cancels Release Of "The Interview" After Hacking

We Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists

Take a journey into the movement that is Anonymous..

Anonymous trolls NSA with ‘keywords of terror’

Anonymous disables the National Security Agency’s website and trolls their “impressive surveillance apparatus” with “keywords of terror” as part of Operation Troll the NSA (#OpTrollTheNSA).

Hacktivists associated with the international internet collective Anonymous initiated Operation Troll the USA on June 12, in response to bombshell revelations made by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former federal government contract worker who revealed details of a vast secret surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Softpedia reports hackers from WikiCrew disrupted the official NSA website, nsa.gov, via a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack on June 12. At time of publication the site had been inaccessible for over 13 hours. Softpedia also reports “hackers of the St0rmyw0rm group have leaked a file which they claim contains the email addresses of over 400 individuals that work for the NSA.”

More on Examiner.com - Operation Troll the NSA

NATO-Commissioned Report Says Killing Hackers Is Basically OK

Cyber-warfare is all well and civilized when it's confined to a tit-for-tat hacking of banks, but it's got the potential to spiral out of control real fast. To try and prevent that, and save the world from a hacked-WoW-account-induced apocalypse, NATO's comissioned a set of international laws to try and make cyber-warfare more…civilized.

Despite how it might seem, war's actually relatively civilized. Agreements like the Geneva Conventions and Ottowa Treaty lay down laws as to how warfare should be conducted - be nice to your prisoners and no blowing people up with landmines, for example - and the UN charter explains when war might be justified, say for self-defence. But none of those were written with cyber-warfare in mind, which is difficult when the Americans are going round hacking the Iranians, the Koreans are hacking each other and China's just hacking everyone.

In an attempt to make some sense of the mess, NATO (basically the Western powers-that-be) commissioned a report from a bunch of legal experts at the ‘NATO Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence' to suggest some rules for cyber-warfare. Well, the report's in, and the suggestions are kinda surprising.

Basically, cyber attacks which cause "physical damage, injury or death" constitute a ‘use of force', and thus can be retaliated to with real physical weapons. Equally surprising is the classification of civilian hacktivists as legitimate targets during war.

More on gizmodo.com

Bradley Manning 1000 Days in Jail

World wide support for Manning as trial of alleged Stratfor hacker Jeremy Hammond takes bizarre twist.

The Real News

China aiding hacker attacks on west

The Chinese army has launched hundreds of cyber-attacks against western companies and defence groups from a nondescript office building in Shanghai, according to a report that warns hackers have stolen vast amounts of data from their targets.

Mandiant, a security company that has been investigating attacks against western organisations for over six years, said in a report (PDF) the attacks came from a 12-storey building belonging to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) general staff's department, also known as Unit 61398.

Mandiant said it believed a hacking network named the Comment Crew or the Shanghai Group was based inside the compound, in a rundown residential neighbourhood. Although the report fails directly to place the hackers inside the building, it argues there is no other logical reason why so many attacks have emanated from such a small area.

"It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat that threat effectively," said the report.

More on The Guardian

Israel Recruits Teenagers to Fight Cyber Warfare

Israel is poised to launch a fresh national programme aimed at training young people in cyber defence in response to growing concern about online attacks from Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the programme, named Magshimim Le'umit, will provide a three-year course and targets students aged 16-18.

During an address at the Ashkelon Academic College, the Jerusalem Post claims Netanyahu said Israel's systems are under attack from Iran, adding: "We are bolstering our ability to deal with these threats via the Israel National Cyber Bureau (INCB) that we established." The prime minister continued by saying that children are the "future interceptors" for the state of Israel, and that: "We are one of the world's

International Business Times

The Other Bradley Manning: Jeremy Hammond Faces Life Term for WikiLeaks and Hacked Stratfor Emails

A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an alleged member of the group "Anonymous" charged with hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over some five million emails to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Hammond’s lawyers had asked Federal Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband worked for a client of Stratfor, and himself had his email hacked. Hammond’s supporters say the Stratfor documents shed light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. He has been held without bail or trial for more than nine months.

Democracy Now!

Alan Turing: Inquest's suicide verdict 'not supportable'

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed. At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest. He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict.

Indeed, he argues, Turing's death may equally probably have been an accident. What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning. His housekeeper famously found the 41-year-old mathematician dead in his bed, with a half-eaten apple on his bedside table.

It is widely said that Turing had been haunted by the story of the poisoned apple in the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and had resorted to the same desperate measure to end the persecution he was suffering as a result of his homosexuality. But according to Prof Copeland, it was Turing's habit to take an apple at bedtime, and that it was quite usual for him not to finish it; the half-eaten remains found near his body cannot be seen as an indication of a deliberate act. Indeed, the police never tested the apple for the presence of cyanide.

BBC News - PM's apology to codebreaker Alan Turing: we were inhumane (The Guardian 2009)

Anonymous takes down UK Home Office website

Notorious hacktivist group Anonymous has taken down the UK Home Office website. The group owned up to the attack via Twitter, saying it was launched over “draconian surveillance proposals.”

­The Home Office, whose website returned to normal around midnight GMT, confirmed the attack.The group also claims it had launched a cyberattack on the websites of the British Prime Minister and the UK Ministry of Justice “for continued derogation of civil liberties." However, both websites seem to be operating normally at the moment.

British security agencies are pushing for a law which would allow police to monitor text messages, phone calls and emails of their citizens, as well as websites visited, Facebook and Twitter exchanges, and even online game chats. More than $3 billion over the first decade alone is the extraordinary sum the British taxpayer may have to pay to be legally spied upon should the bill be passed.

More on RT

Chinese websites 'defaced in Anonymous attack'

The Anonymous hacking group claims to have defaced almost 500 websites in China. Targets hit in the mass defacement included government sites, its official agencies, trade groups and many others. A message put on the hacked sites said the attack was carried out to protest against the Chinese government's strict control of its citizens. It urged Chinese people to join Anonymous and stage their own protests against the regime.

The announcement about the defacements was made via an Anonymous China account that was established in March. A list of the 485 sites affected was put on the Pastebin website. Separate Pastebin messages posted email addresses and other personal details stolen when sites were penetrated. Sites defaced had the same message posted to them that chided the nation's government for its repressive policies.

It read: "Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall."

BBC News

LulzSec leader Sabu was working for us, says FBI

tRUTH OR dISINFORMATION?

The world's most notorious computer hacker has been working as an informer for the FBI for at least the last six months, it emerged on Tuesday, providing information that has helped contribute to the charging of five others, including two Britons, for computer hacking offences.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, an unemployed 28-year-old Puerto Rican living in New York, was unmasked as "Sabu", the leader of the LulzSec hacking group that has been behind a wave of cyber raids against American corporations including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the intelligence consultancy Stratfor, British and American law enforcement bodies, and the Irish political party Fine Gael.

It was revealed that he had been charged with 12 criminal counts of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking and other crimes last summer, crimes which carry a maximum sentence of 124 years and six months in prison. According to indictments filed in a Manhattan federal court, he secretly pleaded guilty on 15 August last year.

Despite that, Sabu carried on with his aggressive online persona as the LulzSec "leader", with the father of two going so far as to deny online – the day after his secret guilty plea – that he had "snitched" on his friends.

The Guardian

WikiLeaks 2.0

Yesterday was a very big day for WikiLeaks. It just released 500 million internal documents stolen from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, allegedly obtained by hacktivist collective Anonymous in December. This is huge; it’s the first time Anonymous has ever cooperated with an aboveground entity, lending an unprecedented amount of political legitimacy to the often inscrutable group.

But why? What do these strange bedfellows have to gain from collaboration? With this new collaboration, Anonymous has obtained new credibility, and WikiLeaks has obtained a hugely valuable new source. This potentially powerful alliance could point to the future of the leak economy, and this awkward symbiosis provides each party with exactly what they need to move forward. A new age of transparency activism may have just begun.

WikiLeaks 2.0: How Julian Assange's Partnership with Anonymous Could Change the Landscape of Hacktivism on AlterNet

The Latest Attacks Launched By Anonymous

Mox News

Anonymous Responds To Megaupload Takedown and Claims Credit For DOJ, RIAA, MPAA, Universal Music Outages

The hacktivist group Anonymous launched its "largest attack ever" Thursday, claiming credit for a coordinated takedown of websites managed by the Department of Justice and organizations supporting controversial antipiracy legislation.

The attack, dubbed “Operation Payback,” came in response to Thursday's news that the Justice Department had shut down massive file-sharing site Megaupload. The attack also temporarily brought down the websites of the Recording Industry of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and Universal Music, among others, in retaliation for their support of antipiracy legislation in Congress, known as SOPA and PIPA.

Huffington Post

Former CIA official sees terrorism-cyber parallels

Different wars for different times. Cofer Black, a former top CIA counterterrorism official, said on Wednesday he sees parallels between the terrorism threat that emerged before the September 11 attacks a decade ago and the emerging cyber threat now.

The question of validation -- judging the severity of the threat and who is behind it -- is just as much an issue now as it was in the lead-up to the September 11 attacks, he told an audience of information security experts at the annual Black Hat conference. Black said he became very familiar with al Qaeda during his 28 years at CIA, including one assassination attempt against himself.

More on Reuters

Biggest-ever series of cyber attacks uncovered

Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.

Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.

The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.

More on Reuters

Teenager Arrested Over Probe Into Hacking Collective Anonymous and LulzSec

A teenager has been arrested in the Shetland Islands as part of the Metropolitan police's probe into the online groups who hacked into the Sun and the Times websites. 'Hacktivist' collectives Anonymous and LulzSec have previously taken credit for online attacks on the FBI, Nato, and the websites of credit companies MasterCard and Visa.

The 19-year-old is said to use the online nom de plume "Topiary" and was arrested in what police said was a "a pre-planned intelligence-led operation".

In a statement officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Police Central e-Crime Unit said: "The man arrested is believed to be linked to an ongoing international investigation into the criminal activity of the so-called 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and uses the online nickname 'Topiary' which is presented as the spokesperson for the groups."

huffingtonpost.co.uk

FBI targets Anonymous hacking group in series of raids on homes

16-year-old boy was arrested in London Tuesday night while the FBI detained at least 14 people after raiding homes across the US as part of an international operation targeting the hacking activist groups Anonymous and LulzSec.

Arrests and raids took place in Florida, California, and New Jersey and were aimed at targets suspected to be members of the hacking collective which has hit the headlines in recent months for a series of high-profile attacks. Computers and other equipment were also seized at several addresses in New York as local agents executed search warrants in New York city and Long Island, but – no arrests were made.

"These search warrants are being executed in connection with an ongoing FBI investigation," a New York FBI spokesman said. More arrests may follow, legal sources said.

More on The Guardian