China’s Massive Hack of U.S. Employees an Inside Job

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Security Expert: Likelihood of Future Cyberattacks From Cuba is '100 Percent'

capitolhillcubans

From The Washington Times:

Expert’s warning: Likelihood of future cyberattacks on U.S. emanating from Cuba is ‘100 percent’

The U.S. and Cuba are enjoying a nice honeymoon following the recent reconciliation between the two nations after five decades of acrimony. But don’t get too chummy, warns one information security expert.

“Apparently the United States has not yet learned its lesson of the downside of giving away communication technology to Communist regimes, and will once again pay the price. In a year or two when Cuba gets advanced broadband circuits promised by President Obama, the likelihood that we will see attacks on U.S. public and private networks emanating from Cuba is 100 percent,” predicts James W. Gabberty, professor of information systems at Pace University in New York City and an alumnus of both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University Polytechnic Institute.

“To Cuba, the internet is a veritable lifeline through which it will be able to concomitantly make accommodation bookings for the myriad future American hotels that will one day dot its coastline while simultaneously siphon intellectual property from U.S. industries, perhaps even our Hollywood movies that hopefully won’t offend Cuba’s communist regime,” Mr. Gabberty continues.

“When the day comes that Cuban-based cyberattacks penetrate U.S. networks, Cuba can simply follow China’s typical repudiation posture, and challenge the U.S. administration to prove it. That has worked for Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, and there is no reason to think it won’t work for Cuba,” he observes.

Smart refrigerators and TVs hacked to send out spam, according to a new report

NBC News.com

A LG representative shows a smartphone with Home Chat in front of a LG smart refrigerator on the final day of the 2014 International CES, January 10, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The LG Smart Home system with the Home Chat smart platform allows users to communicate with home appliances via text message. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECKROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Julianne Pepitone

Et tu, refrigerator?

A new report shows cyberattacks aren’t relegated to laptops anymore: Now, even a fridge or a TV can send malicious emails.

Security firm Proofpoint has uncovered a cyberattack that involved the hacking of “smart” home appliances connected to the Internet. Hackers broke into more than 100,000 gadgets -- including TVs, multimedia centers, routers, and at least one fridge – and used the appliances to send out more than 750,000 malicious emails between December 23 and January 6.

The attack also included compromised laptops and tablets, but Proofpoint said about 25% of the emails were sent from appliances beyond the traditional Internet-connected gadgets.

According to Proofpoint, the cyberattack could be the first proven breach of the so-called “Internet of Things”: an exciting tech trend that promises a Jetsons-like future, with all of our home appliances and other gadgets connected to one another.

But as smart home devices – like Nest, the thermostat and smoke detector company Google bought for $3.2 billion this week – continue to grow more popular, Proofpoint’s report is a sobering reminder that anything connected to the Internet can potentially be hacked.

“The ‘Internet of Things’ holds great promise for enabling control of all of the gadgets that we use on a daily basis,” said Michael Osterman, principal analyst at messaging-focused research firm Osterman Research, wrote in Proofpoint’s report. “It also holds great promise for cybercriminals … to launch large and distributed attacks.”

To launch those types of large-scale attacks, hackers link up compromised devices to create what’s called a botnet: an army of “zombie” devices that attack other computers through tasks like overloading a website with traffic or, in this case, sending hundreds of thousands of spam emails.

These attacks can be more difficult to track as the world of Internet-connected devices expands far past laptops and tablets. In the attack Proofpoint detailed, no more than 10 emails were sent from any single IP address, making it tough to block based on location.

Perhaps worse: In “many cases,” the smart devices weren’t difficult to hack, according to Proofpoint. Instead, the appliances either were not set up correctly, or they used default passwords that were easy to find on public networks.

Proofpoint does have a vested interest in this issue, as a security firm that sells solutions to protect gadgets from such attacks.

But by 2020, research firm Gartner expects more than 30 billion Internet-connected devices will be in use worldwide – up exponentially from 2.5 billion in 2009.

As the Internet-connected world expands to thermostats, refrigerators and even window shades, so too grows the threat of potential cyberattacks -- even in the frozen foods aisle.

Ex-Pentagon general target of leak investigation, sources say

 

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Is Privacy Overrated? Cyberattack in the New Digital Age

ForaTv

Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, authors of the book "The New Digital Age," explain why it might be time to have  "the talk" about cyber security, at home, at work, all over the country. 

China labels US the ’real hacking empire’ after Pentagon report

behindthewall

chinhdangvu.blogspot.com

By Sui-Lee Wee, Reuters

BEIJING -- China on Wednesday accused the United States of sowing discord between it and its neighbors after the Pentagon said Beijing is using espionage to fuel its military modernization, branding Washington the "real hacking empire.”

The latest salvo came a day after China's foreign ministry dismissed as groundless a Pentagon report that accused China for the first time of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks.

The Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and to build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The People's Liberation Army Daily called the report a "gross interference in China's internal affairs.”

"Promoting the ‘China military threat theory’ can sow discord between China and other countries, especially its relationship with its neighboring countries, to contain China and profit from it," the newspaper said in a commentary that was carried on China's Defense Ministry website.

The United States is "trumpeting China's military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers,” the newspaper said, adding that it expects "U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money.”

The remarks in the newspaper underscore the escalating mistrust between China and the United States over hacking, now a top point of contention between Washington and Beijing.

A U.S. computer security company, Mandiant, said in February a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks that targeted the United States and stole data from more than 100 companies.

That set off a war of words between Washington and Beijing.

China has said repeatedly that it does not condone hacking and is the victim of hacking attacks -- most of which it says come from the United States.

"As we all know, the United States is the real 'hacking empire' and has an extensive espionage network," the People's Daily, a newspaper regarded as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, said in a commentary.

"In recent years, the United States has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries,” the article said.

"Cyber weapons are more frightening than nuclear weapons," the People's Daily said. "To establish military hegemony on the Internet by repeatedly smearing other countries is a dangerous and wrong path to take and will ultimately end up in shooting themselves in the foot."

'Frightening': US banks hit by relentless cyber-attacks

redtape

Keynote Systems

The chart above shows the availability of major U.S. bank websites during the past year. Data points below the top indicated less than 100 percent availability. Descending fever lines indicate severe outages; many are blamed on denial of service attacks.

By Bob Sullivan, Columnist, NBC News

Major U.S. bank websites have been offline a total of 249 hours in the past six weeks, perhaps the clearest indication yet that American companies are prime targets in an unrelenting, global cyber conflict. The heavier-than-usual outages are the result of a remarkable, sustained attack that began seven months ago and repeatedly knocks banks offline for hours at a time, frustrating consumers and bank security professionals alike.

"Literally, these banks are just in war rooms, sitting at controls trying to stop (the attacks)," said Avivah Litan, a bank security analyst with Gartner Group, a consulting firm. “The frightening thing is (the attackers) are not using as much resources as they have on call. The attacks could be bigger."

The denial of service reports were hardly noteworthy at first, hidden in the wake of news that U.S. embassies were under siege during the week of September 11, 2012. But in short order, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC and a number of other banks suffered hours-long website outages. A group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters released an anonymous statement saying it was attacking banks in sympathy with real-world protestors who were reacting to an anti-Islam film that had been posted online.

Seven months later, the group is still taunting the U.S. financial system, with notice almost daily from another bank that had to apologize for letting down its customers. American Express and Wells Fargo issued statements last week saying they suffered outages. Even with advance notice, the biggest financial institutions in the world can’t seem to stop them.

No one interviewed for this story believes that a perceived insult over a Web movie is the attackers' motivation, as the al Qassam messaging has stated. Though some considered that it might be the work of attention-seeking teen-aged hackers, they would likely have grown bored, or run out of resources, long ago.

In the fall, national security officials speaking on background told several media outlets, including NBC News, that they suspected the Iranian government was behind the attacks. It seems certain that an organized group, with both a political motive and the ability to fund the operation, is to blame.

Keynote Systems, which provided the compilation of bank outages exclusively to NBC News, measures website availability by checking sites every five minutes and logging the results. It works with major banks to set up "dummy" accounts so its computers can log in and make sure online banking services are available, and constantly checks the largest 15 U.S. banks. Websites go offline for a variety of reasons — late-night software upgrades, for example — and some outages are to be expected, said Aaron Rudger, a Keynote spokesman.

Still, 249 hours during a six-week period (ending March 31) is significant, indicating those bank websites were unavailable for about 2 percent of the time during that stretch. For comparison, during the same six weeks a year ago, the same bank websites were down 140 hours. Keynote has no way of knowing why a site is unavailable, but Rudger was comfortable inferring that the so-called al-Qassam attacks were responsible for most of the increase.

Rodney Joffe issued chilling advice to banks preparing for an al Qassam-style attack last fall: Prepare a sincere-sounding apology, he said at the time. Given the volume of apologies since then, he turned out to be right.

"It goes on and on and on ... It's like they are kicking sand in someone's face, reminding people that they are there," said Joffe, who is senior technologist at Internet infrastructure company Neustar, which helps companies fight denial of service attacks. "You just have to ask yourself, 'Why?' (The attackers) just seem to enjoy being able to say 'On an ongoing basis, we can make life uncomfortable for your banking industry.'"

Not everyone thinks the bank site outages are such a big deal.

Michael Smith, director of the customer security incident response team at Akamai Technologies Inc., which provides website performance optimization and security for some of the companies targeted in the attacks, points out that customers have plenty of other ways to manage their money, and the outages haven't amounted to much more than an irritant.

More importantly, he says al Qassam has begun targeting smaller banks and other kinds of websites as larger banks become more successful at fending off their attacks or shortening the outages. The attackers also took a hiatus for part of February — Smith says to invent new attack techniques, probably — and have ceased tipping off targets ahead of time with weekly press releases.

"We aren't seeing as many notifications that sites are down as we were. The impact just is not as dramatic as it was," Smith said. "They are changing tactics and trying to generate more attention, more press."

Joffe says this is part of their strategy.

"The bad guys here are using just enough of their firepower to achieve their objectives and not more," Joffe says. "They are creating a disruption to the banking industry. ... We already know if they wanted to make it bigger attack, they could, but it seems pretty clear that's not their intention."

South Korea on alert after hackers strike banks, broadcasters

worldnews

By Ju-min Park and Joyce Lee, Reuters

SEOUL -- South Korean police were investigating a hacking attack on an Internet provider that brought down the servers of three broadcasters and two major banks on Wednesday, and the army raised its alert level due to concerns of North Korean involvement.

The network provided by LG UPlus Corp. showed a page that said it had been hacked by a group calling itself the "Whois Team," an unknown group. It featured three skulls and a warning that this was the beginning of "Our Movement."

Servers at television networks YTN, MBC and KBS were affected as well as Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank, both major financial institutions, police and government officials said.

"We sent down teams to all affected sites. We are now assessing the situation. This incident is pretty massive, and it will take a few days to collect evidence," a police official said.

Police and government officials declined to speculate on whether North Korea, which has threatened to attack both South Korea and the United States after it was hit with United Nations sanctions for its February nuclear test, was behind the cyberattack.

North Korea has in the past staged cyberattacks on the world's most wired country, targeting conservative newspapers, banks and government institutions.

South Korea's military said it was not affected but raised its state of readiness in response.

None of South Korea's oil refineries, power stations, ports or airports was affected.

The biggest attack by Pyongyang was a 10-day denial of service attack in 2011 that antivirus firm McAfee, part of Intel Corp, dubbed "Ten Days of Rain" and which it said was a bid to probe the South's computer defenses in the event of a real conflict.

Shinhan Bank, one of the financial institutions affected, said its servers were back up by 4 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).

Cyberattack on Florida election is first known case in US, experts say

Tim Chapman / Miami Herald

About 2,000 rejected absentee ballots at Miami-Dade Elections Department, mostly for lack of signatures or review of signatures from the last election.

By Gil Aegerter
Staff Writer, NBC News

An attempt to illegally obtain absentee ballots in Florida last year is the first known case in the U.S. of a cyberattack against an online election system, according to computer scientists and lawyers working to safeguard voting security.

The case involved more than 2,500 “phantom requests” for absentee ballots, apparently sent to the Miami-Dade County elections website using a computer program, according to a grand jury report on problems in the Aug. 14 primary election. It is not clear whether the bogus requests were an attempt to influence a specific race, test the system or simply interfere with the voting. Because of the enormous number of requests – and the fact that most were sent from a small number of computer IP addresses in Ireland, England, India and other overseas locations – software used by the county flagged them and elections workers rejected them.

Computer experts say the case exposes the danger of putting states’ voting systems online – whether that’s allowing voters to register or actually vote.

“It’s the first documented attack I know of on an online U.S. election-related system that’s not (involving) a mock election,” said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who is on the board of directors of the Verified Voting Foundation and the California Voter Foundation.

Other experts contacted by NBC News agreed that the attempt to obtain the ballots is the first known case of a cyberattack on voting, though they noted that there are so many local elections systems in use that it's possible that a similar attempt has gone unnoticed.

There have been allegations of election system hacking before in the U.S., but investigations of irregularities have found only software glitches, voting machine failures, voter error or inconclusive evidence. Where there has been evidence of a computer security breach -- such as a 2006 incident in Sarasota, Fla., in which  a computer worm that had been around for years raised havoc with the county elections voter database -- it was unclear whether the worm's appearance was timed to interfere with the election.

In any case, experts say they’ve been warning about this sort of attack for years.

“This has been in the cards, it’s been foreseeable,” said law Professor Candice Hoke, founding director of the Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University.

The primary election in Miami-Dade County in August 2012 involved state and local races along with U.S. Senate and congressional contests (see a sample ballot here). The Miami Herald, which first reported the irregularities, said the fraudulent requests for ballots targeted Democratic voters in the 26th Congressional District and Republicans in Florida House districts 103 and 112. None of the races’ outcomes could have been altered by that number of phantom ballots, the Herald said.

Overseas “anonymizers” -- proxy servers that make Internet activity untraceable -- kept the originating computers’ location secret and prevented law enforcement from figuring out who was responsible, according to the grand jury report, issued in December. The state attorney’s office closed the case in January without identifying a suspect.

Read the Miami-Dade County grand jury report (PDF) >>

Keep reading on openchannel >>

Cybersecurity threatens US-China relationship, White House official says

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Growing Chinese Telecoms Threaten

By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News

Chinese leaders must address cybersecurity threats emanating from their country on “an unprecedented scale” or risk weakening the economic relationship between Beijing and the United States, White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said Monday.

“U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” said Donilon.  “The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country.”

The remarks, delivered to The Asia Society in New York, are the first by a White House official to specifically name China as a threat to U.S. cybersecurity.

Though Donilon focused mainly on the danger to U.S. businesses, he did acknowledge the risk such an attack could pose to U.S. national security.  He said that the issue has become “a key point of concern and discussion with China at all levels of our governments” and that President Barack Obama has vowed to do what is necessary to protect America’s interests against cyberattacks.  

During last month’s State of the Union address, Obama highlighted how vulnerable America’s financial institutions, power grid and air traffic control systems could be to an attack.  The president, who has signed an executive order to help address those concerns, called on Congress to pass comprehensive legislation that would better secure online networks to help protect against attacks.

The president never mentioned China during his high-profile address.

But on Monday, Donilon was much more direct, detailing three requests for Beijing, including recognition of the severity of the problem, “serious steps” to address it and establishing guidelines of acceptable norms in the digital realm.   

“Both countries face risks when it comes to protecting personal data and communications, financial transactions, critical infrastructure, or the intellectual property and trade secrets that are so vital to innovation and economic growth,” said Donilon.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Donilon’s remarks indicate an aggressive shift in how the administration deals with China. It is a pivot, Lewis said, that comes as more and more data pours in pointing to China as the biggest culprit behind cyberattacks.

“The atmosphere has just changed; the data is overwhelming,” he said.

Lewis said protecting digital institutions is more diplomatically framed as an economic issue instead of a security one to avoid stirring threats of military action. Still it is significant the debut of the administration’s sterner policy came from the president’s top security adviser, he said.   

A report released in February by a private security firm found a Chinese military unit hacked more than 140 businesses, mostly inside the United States.  It’s a claim the Chinese government denies.

Media giants The New York Times and Wall Street Journal say they had been hacked for months and through an investigation with the FBI, traced the intrusions back to China.  The Wall Street Journal said the hacking was aimed at monitoring the newspaper’s China reporting, a claim that the spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry called “irresponsible.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney said cybersecurity will be one of the priorities the president addresses with congressional leaders when he visits Capitol Hill this week.

And the United States is not alone. European countries have suspected China has infiltrated their computer systems as well.  Nations could retaliate with sanctions against Beijing.

“It’s become a problem that China can’t ignore without harming their economy,” said Lewis.

Hundreds of companies at risk of cyber hacking: Mandiant

ReutersVideo

Is this China's hacker headquarters?

ReutersVideo

U.S. security firm Mandiant has pinpointed a nondescript building in Shanghai as the site of a rash of hacking attacks against U.S. targets - a claim China has dismissed.

America vulnerable to a cyber attack?

Cyber Attack Hits Energy Department

foxnews

The Energy Department has been hit by a major cyber-attack which resulted in the personal information of several hundred employees being compromised and could have been aimed at obtaining other sensitive information, The Washington Free Beacon reports. 

FBI agents are investigating the attacks two weeks ago at the Washington-based headquarters. Fourteen computer servers and 20 workstations reportedly were penetrated during the attack. 

The Energy Department is in the process of notifying employees whose information was stolen. While no classified information was compromised, the Free Beacon reports there are indications the hackers could have been seeking access to such data. Chinese hackers may be suspects, as the department is a known target of Beijing -- according to the Free Beacon, the sophistication of the attack indicates the involvement of a foreign government. 

The department includes the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains nuclear weapons. 

"It's a continuing story of negligence," former Energy Department security official Ed McCallum told the Free Beacon, explaining that the department continues to have security problems despite controlling some of the most "sophisticated military and intelligence technology the country owns." 

He said China, as well as Iran, have been after Energy Department secrets. Several groups and agencies have warned about stepped-up cyber activities out of China. 

"China continues to develop its capabilities in the cyber arena," the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a November 2012 report to Congress. "U.S. industry and a range of government and military targets face repeated exploitation attempts by Chinese hackers as do international organizations and nongovernmental groups including Chinese dissident groups, activists, religious organizations, rights groups, and media institutions." 

Officials tell the Beacon they're working to plug security holes in the system and are developing ways to prevent a similar cyber attack in the future. 

Confirmation of the attack comes only days after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal announced that Chinese hackers had infiltrated its computers and stolen passwords for its employees. In a written statement, News Corporation, parent company of FoxNews.com, described the attack as an "ongoing issue." China's Ministry of National Defense has denied accusations they were behind the cyber attacks. 

Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/04/sophisticated-cyber-attack-hits-energy-department-china-possible-suspect/#ixzz2JwdJTdFv

U.S. officials: Iran is behind recent cyberattacks

Security Clearance

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#Venezuela sacan a #Globovision del aire

en el momento mas apropiado

y esto es lo que dice el codigo fuente

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New malware is 20 times size of Stuxnet

WP/ By Ellen Nakashima

HOW THE STUXNET VIRUS WORKS

Researchers have identified a sophisticated new computer virus 20 times the size of Stuxnet, the malicious software that disabled centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear plant. But unlike Stuxnet, the new malware appears to be used solely for espionage.

Variously dubbed Flame, Skywiper and Flamer, the new virus is the largest and possibly most complex piece of malware ever discovered, which suggests it is state-sponsored, researchers said.

It is loaded with functions, but so far none appear to be destructive, they said.

As with Stuxnet, the creator of Flame remains a mystery, though some analysts say they suspect Israel and the United States, given the virus’s sophistication, among other things.

Some researchers say that certain characteristics common to Stuxnet and Flame suggest that whoever ordered up Stuxnet is also behind Flame.

“It’s very likely it’s two teams working effectively on the same program but using two very different approaches,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher with Kaspersky Labs, a Russian cybersecurity firm, which announced its analysis of Flame on Monday.

Still, much research remains to be done on the new virus, which has also been analyzed by CrySys, a cryptography and system security lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. More >>

Anonymous attacks 'alarming,' says security adviser

Michael Isikoff , NBC News/

The  vigilante group known as  Anonymous has claimed credit for yet another of its weekly cyber  attacks, fueling high level concerns among U.S. national security officials that the so-called “hackivists” are posing an increasing threat to government and private sector websites and computer systems.

“What we’ve seen from Anonymous is alarming,” Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center and a member of a US. Government advisory board on cybersecurity, said in an interview. “Their  ability to repeatedly take down government websites and potentially penetrate those websites shows that the group is quite committed — and growing in its ability to perpetrate cyber attacks.”

In keeping with its pledge to launch cyber attacks every Friday, hackers associated with Anonymous today took credit for defacing a website associated with InfraGard, an organization that partners with the FBI to share information about potential cybersecurity threats.

“We broke into their webserver, perused their assorted presentation materials, and finally deleted everything and vandalized their website,” according to a statement posted on the Ohio chapter of InfraGard. The group describes itself as an association of businesses, academic institutions and law enforcement agencies that shares intelligence “to prevent hostile acts against the United States.” The hackers in their statement called InfraGard  a “sinister alliance between law enforcement, corporations, and white hat wannabees.” (InfraGard did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.)

The attack is the latest in a series of weekly strikes  that appear to have confounded U.S.  cyber security officials and prompted an ever expanding probe by the FBI. These have included temporarily shutting down the CIA’s public web site, penetrating a transatlantic FBI conference call with Scotland Yard about ongoing  investigations into hackers, taking down  the Federal Trade Commission’s website and penetrating the computers of a Washingto area law firm and dumping thousands of its private emails — including some with members of Congress onto the Internet.

In a statement last week, hackers calling themselves AntiSec — an Anonymous affiliate — vowed to  keep up the strikes. “Yes, each and every Friday, we will be launching attacks ... with the specific purpose of wiping as many corrupt corporate and government systems off our Internet,” the group stated.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, recently privately warned White House officials that Anonymous hackers could have the ability to cause a limited power outage within the two years through a cyber attack on the U.S. electrical grid. The warnings were reportedly conveyed in a meeting chaired by John Brennan, President Obama’s chief homeland security advisor. (A White House spokeswoman said in an email  she could not discuss “interagency deliberations” but that the “the Administration has made cybersecurity a top priority and we are working tirelessly to protect ourselves from the threats we face.”) More >>

Vinculan a Cuba, Irán y Venezuela con plan de ciberataque contra EEUU [Documental]

El Universal (Venezuela)

Una venezolana participó en la planificación de ataques a sistemas informáticos de Estados Unidos junto a agentes cubanos e iraníes, según el documental "La amenaza iraní", producido y transmitido por la cadena Univisión.

El plan comenzó hace al menos cinco años, indica la investigación de Univisión, en la que se asegura que la cónsul venezolana Livia Acosta Noguera, entonces agregada cultural de la embajada de Venezuela en México, se reunió en México con personas que se hicieron pasar por hackers.

"Ex profesores y egresados de la Universidad (Nacional) Autonóma de México que se hicieron pasar por hackers o piratas cibernéticos lograron grabar varias conversaciones en las que la diplomática pide información del supuesto sabotaje a Estados Unidos para transmitirla al presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez", publicó Univisión.

Los ataques serían dirigidos a los sistemas informáticos de la Casa Blanca, la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA), la Oficina Federal de Investigación (FBI), el Pentágono, la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA) y centrales nucleares, citó Univisión.

"Yo quiero hacer énfasis, lo que tú me diste, lo último... ya lo vio el presidente (Chávez)", dijo la diplomática de acuerdo a las grabaciones obtenidas por Univisión.

"En el proceso de planificación de los ataques participaron activamente las embajadas de Venezuela, Irán y Cuba", explicó el entonces estudiante Juan Carlos Muñoz Ledo quien decidió grabar secretamente los encuentros al enterarse de que el propósito de la operación era atacar objetivos en Estados Unidos.

Según Nohemí Cabral, amiga de Muñoz Ledo que también hizo grabaciones clandestinas de la conspiración, Acosta tenía acceso a los oficiales encargados de la seguridad del presidente Chávez.

"Livia Acosta lo que dice es 'vamos a golpear poquito', 'vamos a golpear un poquito para que se mueva Estados Unidos, para que no se crea que es el todopoderoso", declaró Sara María Gómez, otra de las estudiantes del grupo de Muñoz Ledo, citó Univisión.

La diplomática pidió a los hackers difundir información falsa contra disidentes del gobierno de Chávez, según dijeron las fuentes al canal.

BREAKING NEWS - British teenager arrested over #LulzSec hacking attacks

A 19-year-old British youth, Ryan Cleary, has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in LulzSec, an international hacking group that has launched a wave of cyber attacks on high-profile organisations.

The 2011 census was held in March Photo: GETTY

By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent

5:25PM BST 21 Jun 2011

Cleary, from Wickford in Essex, was detained in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation” in cooperation with the FBI, the Metropolitan Police said.

He was being questioned at a central London police station on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offences. Computer forensics specialists were also examining a "significant amount of material" seized from his address.

LulzSec's victims have included Sony, the US Senate, the NHS and security companies linked to the FBI.

On Monday it hit the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s website with a Distributed Denial of Service attack, flooding its servers and forcing it offline.

The group splintered from Anonymous, a digital activism collective best known for its cyber attacks last year against corporations such as PayPal that withdrew online services from WikiLeaks. Anonymous has been under investigation for several months by British and American authorities. More than 80 alleged members have been targeted worldwide.