Monthly Archives: April 2017

BBC News

Microsoft patched 'NSA hack' Windows flaws before leak BBC News On Friday, a group called the Shadow Brokers published details of several hacking tools, indicating they had been used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on money transfers. Reports suggested Microsoft's Windows operating system remained ... Microsoft: Past patches address leaked NSA exploitsInfoWorld Hacking Group Claims NSA Infiltrated Mideast Banking SystemNew York Times What you need to know about that latest NSA data dumpRecode Fortune -Washington Post -Springfield Business Journal -Blogs TechNet - Microsoft all 344 news articles »

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Microsoft patched 'NSA hack' Windows flaws before leak - BBC News

A new cybersecurity summer camp is giving middle and high school girls a head start at a career intech.

The program, called GenCyber, will be entirely free thanks to theNational Security Agency (NSA), which is footing the bill fortuition, boarding andregistration fees for all participants. The NSAs goal forthe campis to inspire young people to direct their talents toward cybersecurity careers they believe are critical to national and economic security.

Another goal is to increase diversity in tech. Currently, women earn only 28 percent of computer science degrees, own only fivepercent of startups and hold only 11 percent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies.

With the shortage of women in technology fields, anything we can do to encourage young women to explore STEM careers can only be good, said Jose-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University, which will beone of the camps two locations.The other host campus isSouth Dakota School of Mines & Technology. Both were launched inSouth Dakota as an effort by the universities, because itsbeen identified as one of the industry sectors with the highest potential inthe state.

Core sessions at the camps will focus on cybersecurity, programming, networking and robotics. Students also have a choice of electives including multimedia forensics, socket programming, password cracking, iRobot create, network forensics, web hacking and 3-D printing.

At the DSU camp, an FBI Computer Analysis Response Team (CART) will present ondigital forensics, and twospeakers from Google will discuss security and privacy.There will also be a cyber sleuth escape room, and Access Data, a leading forensics company, will be hostinghands-on labs with social media and web traffic.

The SD Mines camp features a collaboration with Black Hills Information Security (BHIS), a company focused on customized security solutions for their clients. Officials from BHIS will be involved in enhancing the curriculum alongside professors in Mines Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. There will be some fun opportunities to get off campus as wellfield trips toMt. Rushmore and the South Dakota Air and Space Museum

You can find out more about attending theMines and Dakota States GenCyber here and here.

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NSA Is Hosting a Free Cybersecurity Summer Camp for Teen Girls ... - Observer

Exorcists wearing tinfoil hats and burning sage staged a faux purification ritual in Manhattans TriBeCa neighborhood Saturday outside a building that they said was an outpost used by the U.S. government to surveil everyday Americans phone calls, texts and internet usage.

About 50 chanters and passers-by who joined in wailed mock prayers in the direction of the 550-foot-tall windowless monolith at 33 Thomas St., an AT&T-owned building that reportedly has space for surveillance operations by the National Security Agency.

The Intercept, one of the main online news sites publishing leaks by government whistleblower Edward Snowden, has reported that the granite and concrete building appears to have long served as a surveillance site for the agency. The NSA has not confirmed the claims.

This building has eyes, and it is watching you! performer and activist Joe Therrien, 35, of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, shouted from inside a pen that the NYPD set up on Church Street for protesters.

The harvested data is then made accessible, added his girlfriend, Sam Wilson, 37, a puppeteer and bartender, in a Google-like mass-surveillance system that the NSA employees use to search through huge quantities of data!

The couple took turns listing the kinds: internet browsing history, chats, passwords, and phone calls.

The NSA could not be reached for comment Saturday, but agency officials have defended bulk surveillance as the only way to thwart terrorist attacks like 9/11.

An AT&T building security guard, speaking through an intercom, told a reporter seeking comment, today being Saturday, we dont have anyone.

An AT&T spokesman didnt immediately return a message seeking comment Saturday, but told The Intercept in November: NSA representatives do not have access to any secure room or space within our owned portion of the 33 Thomas St. building.

Protest organizer Noah Harley, 33, of Ridgewood, Queens, a translator and musician, said the exorcism was designed to be presented in a playful way, in contrast with other protests.

Kill em with kindness, he said.

The spectacle drew tourists, some of TriBeCas midday brunch crowd and other passers-by, including Virginia Mott of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and her sister, Tiffiney Biorn, who was visiting from Minneapolis.

When asked about the exorcism event, the sisters began a discussing the surveillance program.

You dont care if the NSA listens to your phone calls? Mott, 29, asked Biorn, 25.

Biorn answered: If they want but I dont do anything.

Mott said she could see both sides of the debate there could be good, there could be bad.

Regardless, she said, the government should be as transparent as possible about its surveillance practices. I mean, if theyre listening to everybody, they can say that, and then we dont know who theyre listening to.

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NSA surveillance protested with mock prayers, chants | Newsday - Newsday

NEW YORK: Pakistan should use diplomacy and not "proxies" that engage in violence to pursue its interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere, US National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster has said as he criticised the Pakistani leadership for selectively targeting terror groups.

McMaster in an interview to Afghan television channel ToloNews appeared to take a "tougher line" on Pakistan, which has been accused of using the Taliban as a proxy force and giving its leaders sanctuary.

"As all of us have hoped for many, many years -- we have hoped that Pakistani leaders will understand that it is in their interest to go after these groups less selectively than they have in the past," McMaster said during his latest visit to the war-torn country, according to a report in The New York Times.

"The best way to pursue their interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere is through the use of diplomacy, and not through the use of proxies that engage in violence," it quoted him as saying.

The report added that Afghan officials aware of the discussions with McMaster said there was a common understanding of the threat of terrorist groups emerging from Pakistan.

"And there are other indications that the United States may be weighing a tougher stance on Pakistan, among them General McMaster's reported pick of a point person on the country who has strongly advocated that the United States stop treating Pakistan as an ally and condition any future military aid on fighting terrorist groups," the report added.

It said many analysts, as well as some coalition partners, have been critical of the United States' uphill struggle to persuade Pakistan to crack down on the Afghan Taliban leadership, which has used Pakistan as a base for its battles in Afghanistan.

"Many people in Afghanistan are wondering about the nature of relations between the United States and Pakistan, particularly the fact that everyone recognisers the principal role of Pakistan in supporting Taliban and other terrorist groups," said Davood Moradian, the director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies.

Moradian said the new administration realised that the prior "appeasement policy" with Pakistan had not worked and needed to be reconsidered.

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Use diplomacy, not proxies: US NSA to Pakistan - Economic Times

Alleged NSA cyber-infiltration tools empower criminals and intelligence agencies to develop more in this direction, and could be used by anyone able to reproduce and modify the code, software developer and co-founder of Dyne.org Denis Roio says.

A hacking group named Shadow Brokers has published what it claims are some of the cyber-infiltration tools used by the NSA, alleging that the American spy agency used them to break into banking systems.

The leaked NSA malware is said to be capable of breaking into more than half of computers using a Microsoft Windows operating system.

The hacking group behind the revelation also says the NSA may have penetrated several banking services, including SWIFT.

RT:It is quite a staggering thought that 65 percent of Windows users could now be at risk. Is this as big a deal as it seems?

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Denis Roio: The last release that was indeed published to the world is a big deal. It is one of the biggest leaks of actual malware, source code, and documentation on how to do this sort of malware. So, basically, it empowers even more criminals and intelligence agencies to develop more in this direction. Most of the news is reporting that Windows is affected, but unfortunately it is not the only operating system affected. The malware that the National Security Agency of the US has been using to intrude in other organizations also includes EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) which is a BIOS extension, includes instructions and examples on how to actually build software that will reside on any computer, and not only on computers running on certain version of Windows. The EFI extension is a BIOS extension, it is in every PC, laptop, and desktop computer. And it is basically the small code that runs the operating system. Sometimes you can see on some computers the screen that says BIOS and make some checks of the computer and of the peripherals connected to it. Actually, it includes even code that can run in that phase of the booting and that can address all memory of the computers. So, I would say that the amount of people that are affected is huge, pretty massive.

RT:In what ways has peoples security been compromised exactly?

DR: The way in which the security is compromised is very fussy, is very hard to define. Obviously, this is something that runs attacks on several targets around the world. What is clear is that there is a network, almost like a botnet that is run to control the quantity of computers that are affected by this sort of malware. It resulted from this leak really that there is a fairly sophisticated network of computers that can connect to all the victims and that can report and act on their computers. So, how this is being used there is not only one way. Nowadays, a lot of very delicate operations in different states and organizations around the world are run on top of computers. I would say that most operating systems and computers that are being produced in the last ten years are basically affected. On this leak, there are less details about objects, as of Internet of Things objects, that connect to the network. But the result is that specifically, desktop usage is being addressed, is being targeted and can be manipulated. And you can imagine how many things we keep on our desktop, how much information on our hard disks that we access every day. This information can be changed, can be retrieved by these third party users of the malware, in this case the NSA, but not only. Of course, now that the software is out there, it can be used by anyone that can be able to study, reproduce, and even modify this sort of code.

When we speak about intelligence agencies we have to consider that these guys have huge cyber capabilities, so they are able to hit systems that are not updated. In many cases, these systems have not been designed to be resilient to cyber-attacks They [NSA] are trying to hit systems worldwide probably in order to get information. We have to consider that today almost every intelligence agency may get sensitive information trying to hack computers worldwide. Pierluigi Paganini, head of Cybersecurity Services at Grant Thornton Consultants

RT:What was the NSA doing with this malware, do you think?

DR: Clearly, the malware was developed to intrude in desktop computers and servers, control them and basically counterfeit the information that is on them. There are different users that can be applied to this. And I hear the news that most targets were in the eastern part of the world It is pretty bad that they targeted SWIFT, because financial networks should be neutral. And now it is clear they are not.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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'Released docs on alleged NSA malware provide instructions for criminals' - RT

This is CNET, and here are the stories that matter right now. The TheShadowBrokers hacking group has released new information. They say that the NSA used Windows hacking tools to target several banks. The hacking tools were stolen last year, and allowed the NSA to break into a range of systems Microsoft says that it has already patched the holes that took advantage of these exploits. iPad 4 users, you might be in line for an upgrade. According to a number of reports, iPad 4 users who have had issues with their tablets might be able to take those machines to Apple to get another tablet. According to 9to5Mac, Apple may replace the faulty iPad 4 tablets with iPad Air 2 models. And finally, images of the Moto C may have leaked online. The images show a large rear camera and a texture power button. The images also show a standard headphone jack along with a micro USB port instead of the newer USB-C standard, and a removable back. [MUSIC] Stay up to date with the latest by downloading the CNET Tech Today app available for Android and iOS.

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NSA all up in banks? video - CNET - CNET