Archive for the 'Covert Operations' Category
Anonymous Claims FBI Hack Yielded 12 Million iPhone and iPad IDs
September 4th, 2012Update: Florida Firm Is Source of Apple Data in Breach Via: AP: A Florida company said Monday that the database of Apple device information that hackers stole and posted on the Internet last week came from a file the firm had in its computer system. The disclosure comes nearly a week after a hacker group, […]
FinFisher Spyware for Smartphones
September 3rd, 2012Via: Bloomberg: FinFisher spyware made by U.K.-based Gamma Group can take control of a range of mobile devices, including Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM)’s BlackBerry, an analysis of presumed samples of the software shows. The program can secretly turn on a device’s microphone, track its location and monitor e-mails, text […]
William Binney Talks About NSA Creating Dossiers on All Americans
September 2nd, 2012Via: New York Times / YouTube: The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data. Related: The Program Research Credit: alvinroasting
Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents
August 31st, 2012Via: New York Times: Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Google engineer and Bill Marczak is earning a Ph.D. in computer science. But this summer, the two men have been moonlighting as detectives, chasing an elusive surveillance tool from Bahrain across five continents. What they found was the widespread use of sophisticated, off-the-shelf computer espionage software […]
‘Americans Shot in Mexico Were CIA Operatives Aiding in Drug War’
August 30th, 2012Aiding in drug war… *cough* *wink* Via: New York Times: The two Americans who were wounded when gunmen fired on an American Embassy vehicle last week were Central Intelligence Agency employees sent as part of a multiagency effort to bolster Mexican efforts to fight drug traffickers, officials said on Tuesday. The two operatives, who were […]
Did Gwenyth Todd Delay Start of U.S.-Iran War?
August 29th, 2012Via: Washington Post: Todd feared that the Iranians would respond, possibly by launching fast-attack missile boats into the gulf or unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. Then anything could happen: a collision, a jittery exchange of gunfire — bad enough on its own, but also an incident that Washington hawks could seize on to justify an all-out […]
New AIDS-Like Disease Found in U.S., Asia
August 29th, 2012Via: AP: Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV. The patients’ immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn’t […]
‘Activist’ Richard Aoki: FBI Informant
August 21st, 2012Via: San Francisco Chronicle: The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report. One of the Bay Area’s most prominent […]
Facebook Now Actually Deleting Photos After Users Delete Them?
August 17th, 2012Breaking URLs is not “confirmation” that Facebook is deleting the data. It’s confirmation that the data isn’t accessible from the Internet. This says zippo about what they’re actually doing with the data. I suppose it’s possible that Facebook is deleting the data, but claiming that the data was deleted because it’s not accessible is a […]
Saudi Arabia’s National Oil Company Kills Network After Cyber Attack
August 16th, 2012Via: Security Week: Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and the largest in the world, has confirmed that is has been hit by a cyber attack that resulted in malware infecting user workstations, but did not affect other parts of its network. “On Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012, an official at Saudi Aramco confirmed that […]
