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The FBI teaches teens about extremism with a game that defies logic
The FBI recently fired up a new site urging teens and other young internet people not to "be a puppet," which in this extremely specific case requires recognizing and understanding violent extremism. Fine! Great! As incidents of extremism continue to tear lives apart lives the world over, young people deserve to understand the mindset that leads some to make tragic decisions. Then the FBI tried to make a Flash game starring a goat avoiding blocks and all logic just flew out the window.
Chris Velazco02.13.2016
Hacker posts info on thousands of Homeland Security employees
The US government has yet another security breach on its hands. Late yesterday, a Twitter account posted a Department of Homeland Security staff directory containing names, titles, email addresses, phone numbers and more for over 9,000 employees. "This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza, This is for the child that is searching for an answer," the post read. What's more, the hacker claims they have details on 20,000 FBI employees and plan to leak those next.
Billy Steele02.08.2016
Zero-day exploits aren't as important to the NSA as you think
The head of the National Security Agency's elite hacking arm, Tailored Access Operations, downplayed the importance of zero-day exploits during a talk at USENIX Enigma 2016 in San Francisco this week, as spotted by Vice. Zero-day security holes are secret (and usually short-lived) software vulnerabilities -- the vendor doesn't know about them (until it does). According to TAO chief Rob Joyce, zero-day exploits are a small part of the NSA's hacking agenda.
Jessica Conditt01.29.2016
FBI Dark Web hacks were a part of a global child porn bust
That FBI hacking initiative that caught 1,500 pedophiles on the Dark Web? It was just the tip of the iceberg. Motherboard has discovered that the operation was just one part of Operation Pacifier, a global campaign to fight child porn hidden through anonymity networks like Tor. The effort had the FBI hacking systems as far afield as Chile, Denmark and Greece -- there are also hints of possible operations in Colombia and Turkey. The US agency wasn't working alone, either, as it teamed up with Europol to collect information and pass it along to local law enforcement.
Jon Fingas01.23.2016
Ex-con posts gun photo to Facebook, gets another 15 years
There is so such a thing as oversharing -- just ask Malik First Born Allah Farrad (formerly Marvin Buckles). He was convicted of federal gun and drug charges in 2000. In 2013, the FBI began investigating him over suspicions of "illicit conduct" and subsequently began looking through his social media accounts. That's when the feds found a picture of three handguns arrayed upon his apartment's toilet, and discovered the selfie above. Farrad had unfortunately forgotten that felons are not allowed to possess firearms of any kind.
Andrew Tarantola01.15.2016
FBI broadens investigation into Clinton emails
A few months ago, presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed over her email servers to the FBI. Since then, the federal agency found out that at least a couple of her own personal correspondence could have been classified as "top secret," which isn't the sort of thing that should've been sent with an unsecured private account. Now it seems Clinton could be in hot water again. According to Fox News, the FBI is now looking into her emails to see if Clinton had violated public corruption laws.
Nicole Lee01.11.2016
US leaders meet with tech CEOs to fight terrorism online
The US is determined to knock terrorists offline whenever it can, and it's about to go to great lengths to make sure that happens. Business Insider, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal understand that some of the country's highest-ranking officials are meeting with the CEOs of internet giants like Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo to ask for stronger efforts to fight online terrorist activity. And we do mean high-ranking -- the directors of the FBI, National Intelligence and the NSA will be involved, as will the Attorney General and the White House's chief of staff.
Jon Fingas01.07.2016
FBI hacked the Dark Web to bust 1,500 pedophiles
The Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltrated and shut down what it called "the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world" this summer, using a hacking method to track IP addresses on the Dark Web, Vice Motherboard reported. The Dark Web bulletin board site, named "Playpen," launched in August 2014 and within one year had garnered 215,000 accounts with 11,000 unique visitors each week.
Jessica Conditt01.07.2016
CNN: FBI is investigating the Juniper Networks security hole
Yesterday's news of "unauthorized code" that could enable untraceable backdoor access to VPN traffic on certain Juniper Networks firewalls is now being investigated by the FBI. That news comes from CNN, which said that a US government official described the vulnerability as "stealing a master key to get into any government building." There's no word yet on which government agencies or private companies may have been using the specific ScreenOS-powered devices affected, but that's what the Department of Homeland Security is now trying to find out.
Richard Lawler12.18.2015
Hillary Clinton's private server had two 'top secret' emails
Those concerns that Hillary Clinton's private email server had classified intel? They're apparently well-founded. Sources for Fox News and Politico maintain that two of the messages sent to Clinton were labeled as "top secret" when fresh. One of them was eventually reduced to "secret," but critics say that's beside the point: they're worried that the email wasn't subject to tougher government security standards, and could have been compromised.
Jon Fingas12.16.2015
FBI: Yes, we exploit unpatched security holes
It's no secret that the FBI uses tech tools like Stingray phone trackers to investigate suspects, but it's now clear that the bureau is willing to go even further than that. Operational Technology Division lead Amy Hess (above) tells the Washington Post that the FBI uses zero-day (that is, unknown by vendors) security software exploits for investigations -- the first time any official has admitted this on the record. The outfit doesn't prefer to use these hacks given how short-lived they are, Hess says, but they're still on the table.
Jon Fingas12.08.2015
FBI, Microsoft help take down massive global botnet
At long last, a global task force consisting of the FBI, Microsoft and various law enforcement agencies, have finally cracked down on a botnet with a ring of over 100,000 computers worldwide. Known as Dorkbot (not to be confused with the electronic art collective of the same name), the botnet is created by infecting computers with malware which then lets hackers use them for a variety of nefarious activities like sending spam or stealing personal info -- login info for sites like Facebook, Netflix, Gmail, Paypal and Twitter were particularly targeted. Researchers discovered that the Dorkbot botnet, which has eluded enforcement since April 2011, has affected well over a million Windows PCs in around 190 countries in the last year alone.[Image credit: Getty Images]
Nicole Lee12.04.2015
Officials link hacker to theft of 1.2 billion log-in credentials
The FBI is linking a hacker only known by the moniker "mr. grey" to a whopping 1.2 billion stolen internet credentials after finding his Russian email address in the evidence it gathered. It's unclear if he obtained all those by himself, though, or if he's even just a single person or a group of people operating under one name. Either way, if there were a contest for hackers, mr. grey would've won it by now, as this is apparently the biggest collection of stolen log-in details the FBI has investigated thus far. Reuters says that info came from the court documents the feds submitted to support its search warrant request in 2014. The authorities got their tip from cybersecurity firm Hold Security, which found out that a Russian hacking group called CyberVor has stolen 1.2 billion log-in details and over 500 million email addresses.
Mariella Moon11.25.2015
Carnegie Mellon may have ratted out Tor users to the FBI
In a story that may become an acid test for internet privacy, the operators of the Tor network have accused Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of taking up to $1 million to help the FBI bust illegal sites. If the allegations are true, the defendants in question certainly had it coming -- they include the drug market Silk Road 2.0 and a child pornographer. However, Tor director Roger Dingledine questions the university's ethics in the attack. "We think it's unlikely they could have gotten a valid warrant ... [since it] appears to have indiscriminately targeted many users at once," he said.
Steve Dent11.12.2015
Hackers have infiltrated the US arrest records database
Earlier this year, a hacking group broke into the personal email account of CIA director John Brenner and published a host of sensitive attachments that it got its hands on (yes, Brenner should not have been using his AOL email address for CIA business). Now, Wired reports the group has hit a much more sensitive and presumably secure target: a law enforcement portal that contains arrest records as well as tools for sharing info around terrorist events and active shooters. There's even a real-time chat system built in for the FBI to communicate with other law enforcement groups around the US.
Nathan Ingraham11.06.2015
New DHS policy demands warrants before deploying Stingrays
The Department of Homeland Security announced a substantial policy change Wednesday regarding how it employs cellphone-tracking tools like the Stingray system. These cell-site simulators have been in use for more than a decade. They allow law enforcement to find cell phones either by directly searching for a known device or find an unknown device by sniffing for signaling information from the simulator's immediate vicinity and triangulating that data. The new policy explicitly demands that DHS personnel acquire a warrant before deploying the devices unless an exception, such as the imminent loss of human life, destruction of evidence, or to prevent the escape of a fugitive felon. Wednesday's announcement follows a similar decision by the Department of Justice last month. [Image Credit: Getty]
Andrew Tarantola10.21.2015
America's drone strike program needs a low-tech fix
Last week, The Intercept released a trove of classified documents (provided by an unnamed source) relating to America's use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as weapons of assassination. These activities took place between 2011 and 2013, throughout both active combat areas in Iraq and Afghanistan and nations like Yemen and Pakistan. And while plenty of people are discussing the shortcomings of human-controlled UAVs, nobody's talking about how to fix them. Could the answer be more technology like the fully autonomous weapon and surveillance platforms that the Department of Defense (DoD) is developing? Or, when it comes to aerial assassinations, is less more?
Andrew Tarantola10.21.2015
Feds launch fantasy sports probe due to insider trading scandal
In addition to fighting a class-action lawsuit accusing them of fraud, fantasy sports websites DraftKings and FanDuel now have to face scrutiny from the FBI. According to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, feds have been getting in touch with prominent fantasy sports players to ask about their experiences playing on either website. If you recall, both companies are currently embroiled in a scandal after a DraftKings employee leaked data not typically available before the games begin. The same employee was discovered to have won $350,000 within the same week playing on rival website FanDuel. NYT found out soon after that it's not an isolated case: both companies' employees have been raking in big money playing on each other's websites. That gave rise to allegations that they win big by taking advantage of insider info they have access to.
Mariella Moon10.15.2015
ISP wins 11-year battle to reveal warrantless FBI spying
A US district court has struck down an 11-year-old gag order imposed by the FBI on Nicolas Merrill, the former head of a small internet service provider. Originally issued in 2004, it forbade Merrill from revealing that he'd received a so-called national security letter (NSL), a warrantless demand for customer data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes about 300,000 such letters have been sent since the Patriot Act was enacted in 2001, but the decision signals the first time that a gag order has been lifted. "Courts cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, simply cannot accept the Government's assertions that disclosure would... create a (public) risk," said Judge Victor Marrero.
Steve Dent09.15.2015
Virginia teen gets 11 years for ISIS support on Twitter
17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin from Virginia will spend the next 11 years and 4 months in a federal penitentiary for his role in running the powerful pro-ISIS Twitter account, @Amreekiwitness. This account collected and disseminated ISIS propaganda to more than 4,000 followers and shared instructions for using Bitcoin to secretly fund the terrorist organization. Amin also admitted to helping one of the account's followers to travel to Syria and join the group. That follower has since been arrested and is facing federal prosecution as well on a conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism charge.
Andrew Tarantola08.28.2015