Skynet Botnet Controlled Over Tor

A botnet has been discovered that uses a hidden Tor IRC service for command and control. Although Tor tends to be on the slow side, the extra layers of anonymity make it significantly difficult and maybe even impossible to locate either the C&C servers, or the people running them.

All kinds of direct hack attacks probably occur over the Tor network. This use however, is interesting in that there currently is no known method for shutting them down. I expect that once a compromised server is found, researchers will begin looking for vulnerabilities on the hidden Tor services in the hopes of finding a vulnerability that exposes the actual IP information.

The article discusses how the bots are being used to mine bitcoins.

Either way, this is interesting, and probably will soon be the de facto way to run botnets.

Ransom hackers encrypt medical centre's entire database

An Australian medical centre is reported to be considering paying a ransom demand of $4,000 AUD (US$4215) after blackmailers broke into the organisation’s servers and encrypted its entire patient database.

 If crime doesn't pay, why is this clinic considering making it profitable? Paying ransom only perpetuates the problem. Instead they should be spending the money on securing their systems. The clinic should be asking themselves:

1. Why should I make this crime profitable for the attacker? 
2. How do I know they will provide the password and instructions for decrypting the data? 
3. How do I know that if I decrypt the database, the data hasn't been tampered with? 
4.  If I pay the ransom, what is to stop them from increasing the demand lest they publish the data online?
5. What is a better plan for securing the systems and moving on? 

They already lost once. If they don't bite the bullet and move on, they risk losing again and again. They would also be giving the attackers valuable incentives for attacking more sites.

Will Mossad Hunt Down Anonymous?

... if Israel does respond, they may find that it’s much easier to hunt Hamas missile launchers than a loosely organized group of hackers. But where the U.S. treats hacking as a law enforcement issue, if Anonymous crosses a red line (there are lots of those in the Middle East), then Israel may treat this as a national security issue. And the rules and the methods of that game are a lot tougher.

John McAfee Wanted For Murder

Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run for murder, according to Belizean police. This story is about to go viral.

Microsoft Causes OSX Vulnerability, Then Gloats

Microsoft discovered a vulnerability in Word that could allow an attacker to execute code on any system using Microsoft Word to read a specially malformed document, then spins it to say it is proof that Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows to document-based attacks.

Communication costs in Canada about to skyrocket

Warrantless spying is about to cause Canada's already too high price of communications to skyrocket. Thanks Stephen Harper. Now even the police are getting greedy.

The Pwn Plug is a little white box that can hack your network

Built by a startup company called Pwnie Express, the Pwn Plug is pretty much the last thing you ever want to find on your network—unless you've hired somebody to put it there. It's a tiny computer that comes preloaded with an arsenal of hacking tools. It can be quickly plugged into any computer network and then used to access it remotely from afar. And it comes with "stealthy decal stickers"—including a little green flowerbud with the word "fresh" underneath it, that makes the device look like an air freshener—so that people won't get suspicious.

Anyone can say they are part of Anonymous... unless it makes them look bad

Anonymous likes to say that anyone can be a member just by saying they are. But apparently anyone creating malware while claiming to be part of Anonymous are officially *not* part of Anonymous. Unless of course it is malware written by other members of Anonymous. This is bizarre circular thinking for folks who have been known to be far more clever in the past. What gives?

Anonymous, joining Wikileaks, hacks into the big time

Anonymous, a hacker collective that stays true to its name, appears to be entering the big time.

After hacking the emails of Stratfor, the global intelligence firm, and on Monday cooperating with Wikileaks — already world famous for exposing classified US military documents and diplomatic cables — to publish those emails, Anonymous has gained a new level of notoriety among the public, and attention from authorities.

On Monday morning, twitter account @AnonymousIRC published a series of tweets revealing the hacker group as the source of the Stratfor emails and linking it to Wikileaks. Anonymous first accessed Stratfor's emails in December.

"We promised you those mails and now they'll finally be delivered. Five million (that's 5,000,000) emails at your pleasure," the tweet read.


Anonymous has long defended Wikileaks, most notably in its attacks against Visa, Mastercard and Paypal after those companies blocked customers from using their services to donate money to the secret-sharing site last year. But this appears to be the first time the two organizations have cooperated so directly.

Analysts say that Anonymous' collaboration with Wikileaks, along with recent hacks against the FBI and its release of a video Monday declaring "war" on the US government, has elevated the hacker group in the eyes of US security agencies from its previous status as a petty annoyance to a real threat.

FBI turns off 3,000 GPS trackers after Supreme Court ruling

Andrew Weissmann, general counsel for the FBI, has announced that his agency is switching off thousands of Global Positioning System-based tracking devices used for surveillance after a Supreme Court decision last month. Weissmann made the statement during a University of San Francisco School of Law symposium on communications privacy this past Friday.

Lack of a Backup Could Free a Killer

In a criminal case in Miami in 2009, a man named Randy Chaviano was convicted of second-degree murder committed in 2005 and sentenced to life in prison. As usual, a court stenographer was taking notes at the trial. But then there was a string of coincidences worthy of a Law & Order script.

• The stenographer didn’t have enough paper for her machine — a mistake she’d apparently made before
• Consequently, the notes she took were recorded only in the machine’s internal memory
• She transferred the stenography machine’s records to her own PC
• She deleted the records from the stenography machine
• She didn’t do a backup of the PC
• A virus hit the PC and deleted what was by then the only record of the trial, leaving only a pretrial hearing and closing arguments; it wasn’t clear when this happened

Rock Solid: Will Digital Forensics Crack SSD’s?

Journalists always formulate their headlines by stating predictions they know will happen, or asking questions that they know are unlikely to happen. Whenever a headline asks a question, they are really saying 'No'

This article goes into detail about why it is nearly impossible to derive usable forensic data from an SSD drive or memory chip.