Ex-NSA director: China has hacked 'every major corporation' in U.S.

money.cnn.com

Mike McConnell, the ex-NSA director, says Chinese hackers "have penetrated every major corporation of any consequence in the United States and taken information." 

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Hacked! Cyber activity at White House detected effects phones computers etc

Mary Greeley

Here Are the World's Five Cybercrime Hotspots

TIME

Report: U.S. Weapons System Designs Breached by Chinese Cyber Attacks

By Breitbart News 

According to a report prepared for the Pentagon and the defense industry, US weapons systems have been infiltrated by Chinese hackers.  "More than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached were programs critical to U.S. missile defenses and combat aircraft and ships, according to a previously undisclosed section of a confidential report prepared for Pentagon leaders by the Defense Science Board."

Gaining access to these systems could not only accelerate the development of Chinese weapon systems, but also cripple our military advantage in the future. The Defense Science Board, an advisory board of civilian and government experts, did not state that the Chinese stole the weapons information and designs. But officials with knowledge of the breaches reported the intrusions were part of a larger campaign by the Chinese against the US defense systems.

A report in January warned that the US and the Pentagon is not prepared to protect against a full scale cyber attack. The Washington Post was given a copy of the confidential report listing all of the weapons systems that were compromised.

The designs included those for the advanced Patriot missile system, known as PAC-3; an Army system for shooting down ballistic missiles, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD; and the Navy’s Aegis ballistic-missile defense system.Also identified in the report are vital combat aircraft and ships, including the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship, which is designed to patrol waters close to shore.Also on the list is the most expensive weapons system ever built — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is on track to cost about $1.4 trillion. The 2007 hack of that project was reported previously.

In March of this year, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon gave a speech instructing China to "control it's cyberactivity."  But the US addressed this issue as well in a four hour private meeting a year ago. "The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a closed meeting, said senior U.S. defense and diplomatic officials presented the Chinese with case studies detailing the evidence of major intrusions into U.S. companies, including defense contractors."

The Chinese deny they conduct cyber-espionage. President Obama will meet with President Xi Jinping next month in California and is expected to address the issue.

A senior military official stated  “This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China. They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development. It’s nuts.”

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."

BREAKING NEWS: AP Twitter account hacked, posts false White House scare

NBCNews.com

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Following a hack attack, the Associated Press' verified Twitter account posted "an erroneous tweet" claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended. Immediately following the false tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered. (See chart below.)

Google

Following the false @AP tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered.

"That's a bogus tweet," an AP spokesperson initially told NBC News, a statement that was repeated by the company's corporate communications account. Though the false tweet disappeared, the false message continued to exist on the service in over four thousand retweets. In a briefing that occurred after the erroneous tweet appeared, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that "the president is fine, I was just with him." Julie Pace, AP's chief White House correspondent, reiterated during the briefing that "anything that was just sent out about any incident at the White House is actually false." AP media relations director Paul Colford is quoted, in a blog post, as saying that the company had also suspended other AP Twitter feeds, "out of a sense of caution." He added, "We are working with Twitter to sort this out." A wire statement issued later explained that the mid-day tweet "came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists." The New York Times revealed a tweet by a group called the Syrian Electronic Army claiming credit for the hack. The group's Twitter account is currently suspended. Social media accounts associated with CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were compromised on Saturday. The same group, known for its pro-Assad politics, took credit for that attack too, as well as earlier attacks on the Twitter accounts of NPR and the BBC. The group is not to be confused with the hacking collective known as Anonymous — in fact, they have previously clashed online. Passwords are weak link Because password theft is the culprit behind social-media account takeovers, security experts say that better protection is needed. Responsibility for security is shared between the user and the service. "The challenge (with corporate-owned Twitter accounts) is, we share the password," Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told NBC News. "Once you get enough people with the password, bad things are going to happen," he adds. "There's no good way of isolating or limiting access these high-profile accounts." Wisniewski said it is up to Twitter to strengthen security by using two-factor authentication, a log-in technique used by Google, Apple, Facebook and others that requires the pairing of a password with a code delivered to a user's cellphone. "In my opinion, this is overdue for Twitter, especially for verified accounts," he said, regarding how incidents like this could be prevented. "Humans are the weakest things when it comes to a phish [attack]." NBC News has reached out to Twitter for additional comment. — with additional reporting by NBC News' Stacey Klein, Helen Popkin and Patrick Rizzo

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hacked [???] Over Romney’s Lifting of Cuba Embargo

everything is possible, but there is not a "ministerio de defensa" in cuba but a "ministerio de las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias".
even if the alleged original document estaba dirigido a un a foreigner, el espanol empleado es peor que el que ofrece cualquier traductor automatico. un documento firmado por el cercano a fallecer general julio casas regueiro, dificilmente mencionaria a fidel castro y en todo caso no se refiriria a el y a raul como "mister". tampoco es comun mencionar el 2do nombre de raul escrito por demas en minusculas y mucho menos en un documento de esta naturaleza. mucho celo han puesto los castros en que sus nombres jamas aparezcan involucrados en operaciones encubiertas.

-------------------

Veteranstoday

By Gordon Duff 

Document Below Promises Lifting Sanctions if Elected

Since 1999, a team of FBI and intelligence agents from Mexico have traced Mitt Romney and his mistress, Maria, Perez Andropov, a Cuban/Russian intelligence agent, traveling in and out of Cuba on diplomatic passports.

The memo below, received from official sources, highly classified, outlines the deal made with Raul and Fidel Castro and Mitt Romney.

Accompanying documents reveal too much about the intelligence networks that passed this on.  Their report gives dates and times of travel, intercepts phone calls from Romney while in Cuba and tracks Romney as he travels through Cuba, meets with the Castros and flies back through Canada or Mexico.

Please download and distribute this before it is hacked.  We have been under continual attack since exposing the Romney/Cuba relationship.

Currently we are validating the one photograph of Romney and Maria getting off a plane in Havana, hand in hand, both in stripes, his collarless shirt, her very short dress.

They make a lovely couple. (Surveillance notes below)

The following was included with the photographs, as an excerpt:

Location: La Vaezero Cuba
Date: xxxxxxxxx1999
Subjects: Willard Mitt Romney and Maria Perez (Andropov) Suspected Cuban intelligence operative
Notes: Discussions between the aforementioned persons of interest  taking place on Cuban territory in the city of La Vaezero include but are not limited to drug trafficking, money laundering and currency and human trafficking into the United States of America.
Witnessed was a romantic encounter between the aforementioned persons.
Records: Photographs of the romantic encounter and contemporaneous surveillance team notes. A series of audio recordings were made.

Successful hacker attack could cripple U.S. infrastructure, experts say

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read on usnews >>

Hundreds of companies at risk of cyber hacking: Mandiant

ReutersVideo

Report: Chinese army tied to US hacking

behindthewall

Carlos Barria / Reuters

A general view of 'Unit 61398,' a secretive Chinese military unit on the outskirts of Shanghai on Feb. 19. The unit is believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks, a U.S. computer security company said, prompting a strong denial by China and accusations that it was in fact the victim of U.S. hacking.

By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

BEIJING – A group of hackers linked to the Chinese military has stolen reams of sensitive data from more than 100 prominent American companies and organizations, according to an explosive new report.

“The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them,” U.S. computer-security firm Mandiant Corp. said in a 74-page report released on Tuesday.

The story was first reported by The New York Times.

One group originating from China that Mandiant had been tracking since 2006 and identified in the study as “APT1” allegedly swiped data from 141 companies in 20 industries ranging from aerospace to telecommunications, according to the report. More than 110 of those companies were American, according to Mandiant.

Mandiant said that the data suggests that the hacker group was either working for or sponsored by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Indeed, according to the organization’s information, APT1’s activity originated from a People’s Liberation Army cyberware division known as “Unit 61398.”

“Our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources,” it said, according to the report.  “PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”

Mandiant said that the hacking originated from a drab 12-story office building on the outskirts of Shanghai. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of operatives performed covert corporate espionage and extracted trade secrets, blueprints, pricing data and other corporate information from countless American servers from the innocuous tower, according to Mandiant.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported on Thursday that Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated their computer systems. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

The hackers used techniques like “spear-phishing” -- using spoof emails to trick users into granting access to internal servers --demonstrating a strong proficiency in the English language and advanced understanding of computer security and network operations, the organization said.

Media blackoutThough the story exploded on Twitter and in the foreign news media, it has hardly made any waves in China. Twitter has long been blocked in the country and foreign media companies that broadcast on the mainland like CNN were blacked out when the report was mentioned on air. 

Coverage of Mandiant’s report was also absent from Chinese news websites, but some discussion of the report could still be found on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo.

“Chinese hackers are so capable! I always thought Americans are very powerful!” exclaimed one user.

“Reports by foreign media cannot be fully trusted,” warned another user, “but there must be something.”

Related: Wall Street Journal infiltrated by Chinese hackers

This was a sentiment partly shared by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, who responded today to questions about the hacking report by calling them “groundless” and reiterating the government’s unwavering position on the matter.

“To make groundless accusations based on some rough material is neither responsible nor professional,” he said, before noting that China was also the victim of hacking attacks.

Hong also argued that the new evidence provided by Mandiant and the New York Times will not withstand closer scrutiny.

But China’s cyber activities have been under increasingly closer scrutiny in recent weeks, as a slew of news stories have come out about Beijing’s reported hacking ambitions. Last month, the New York Times reported that its own servers had been attacked by hackers originating in China, possibly in response to an embarrassing expose it published showing the hidden riches of out-going Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao.

While the White House has largely remained silent on the hacking issue -- President Barack Obama mentioned hacking in his State of the Union but did not specifically cite China -- the government has been noticeably increasing efforts to strengthen cyber security.

Last week Obama issued an Executive Order calling for the improving of critical infrastructure tied to cyber security. That the move came on the eve of the publication of two similar exposes -- last week Bloomberg printed another story demonstrating PLA hacking of American systems -- suggests the administration could be taking a long called for tougher stance on Chinese hacking by “naming and shaming” known mainland hacking groups. 

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?

BUSH EMAILS HACKED? Secret Service Investigates Report of Breached Emails

foxnews

The Secret Service has confirmed to Fox News that it is investigating reports that a hacker broke into the email accounts of Bush family members and accessed private photos and messages between the former first family.

Personal photos of Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush were posted online after a hacker who calls himself “Guccifer” breached the accounts of multiple Bush family members.

On Friday, TheSmokingGun.com reported that the hacker claimed to have swiped “a lot of stuff,” including telephone numbers, home addresses for dozens of Bush family members and a security code to one of the Bush homes.

“Guccifer” claims to have gained access to three years' worth of personal emails dating back to 2009. The hacker has posted several of the photos online, including one that appears to show the elder Bush in a hospital late last year.

The website says another email hacked was from current White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who had forwarded a message from President Obama to Bush when he was in the hospital. The message read: “Michelle and I haven’t wanted to impinge on you while you are recuperating, but please know that we are thinking of you and the entire family.”

Bush spokesman Jim McGrath told The Houston Chronicle the matter is "under criminal investigation." 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/08/investigation-under-way-after-bush-family-emails-photos-apparently-hacked/?test=latestnews#ixzz2KKRw5BJv

Piratas informáticos chinos atacan el diario 'The New York Times'

elpais

El primer ministro chino, Wen Jiabao. / EFE

Un grupo de hackers chinos ha realizado varios ataques contra el periódico estadounidense The New York Times en los últimos cuatro meses, ha anunciado el diario este miércoles. Los piratas informáticos se han introducido en el sistema del diario y han sustraído contraseñas.

Los ataques se han producido después de que el periódico haya publicado el pasado 25 de octubre un reportaje sobre las ganancias multimillonarias que habían conseguido los parientes del primer ministro chino Wen Jiabao en operaciones comerciales.

“Los hackers han utilizado métodos que nuestros consultores asocian a los que el Ejército chino ha empleado otras veces para penetrar en el sistema del Times”, ha declarado el periódico. Los piratas han robado correos electrónicos y documentos, introduciéndose, por ejemplo, en las cuentas de correo del jefe del despacho en Shanghai, David Barboza, que ha escrito la investigación sobre los parientes de Wen Jiabao, y en las del antiguo jefe del despacho de Pekín, Jim Yardley, que ahora controla el área del sureste asiático desde la India.

Al parecer, los hackers buscaban averiguar los nombres de las fuentes de las informaciones publicadas por Barboza. El diario había pedido a la empresa AT&T, que vigila su red informática, que estuviera atenta a cualquier actividad inusual en el sistema, cuando responsables del Gobierno chino les avisaron de que la investigación sobre los parientes de Wen Jiabao tendría “consecuencias”.

El periódico ha recurrido al detector de amenazas informáticas Mandiant el pasado 7 de noviembre, cuando los ataques se han incrementado. “Si se examina cada acción de forma separada, se puede decir que es el Ejército chino”, ha dicho el responsable de seguridad de Mandiant, Richard Bejtlich.

El New York Times asegura que ha conseguido cerrar el acceso a los hackers con la ayuda de expertos en seguridad informática. “Habrían podido hacer destrozos en nuestros sistemas”, ha afirmado el jefe de comunicación, Marc Frons, aunque, según la directora del diario, Jill Abramson, ningún correo o fichero del reportaje sobre el entorno de Wen Jiabao ha sido sustraído.

El ministro chino de Defensa ha desmentido cualquier vínculo entre las intrusiones y el Gobierno, y ha dicho que el New York Times, “que acusa al Ejército de su país de lanzar ciberataques sin pruebas, no es profesional”.
-------------------
Ver Family of Wen Jiabao Holds a Hidden Fortune in ... - New York Times

Aaron Swartz's Death And There Are Some Questions That Need To Be Answered

businessinsider

Flickr/Creative Commoners

Henry Blodget 

I didn't know anything about Aaron Swartz until he killed himself two days ago.

Since then, thanks to the outpouring of emotion over his death, I've learned a lot.

I've learned enough to know that Swartz's death is a big loss not just to those who knew him and loved him but to the community at large. The number of amazing things that Swartz was involved in during his short life—RSS, Reddit, campaigns against the Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA, et al—suggests that he might have gone on to do much, much more.

I've also learned enough to know that some serious questions need to be answered about the legal situation that Swartz was involved in.

After his death, Swartz's family and friends said the behavior of the U.S. Attorney, who was prosecuting Swartz for an alleged criminal hacking incident, contributed to his suicide.

That's a serious charge, one that would weigh heavily on the conscience of any fair person involved in the prosecution. So for the sake of both sides, it needs to be investigated.

(To be fair, there's no way that the prosecutors bear the full responsibility here, no matter how they behaved. Life isn't fair. And millions of people have gotten through tougher situations than the one Swartz was facing.)

Lawrence Lessig, the noted Harvard professor and legal scholar, concurs with Swartz's family, saying that Swartz was a victim of prosecutorial "bullying," in which a prosecutor was taking what appears to have been a relatively minor transgression and using it to brand Swartz as a "criminal felon" and force him to plead guilty to multiple felonies.

Other writers, such as Jonathan Blanks, have already cited the case as another instance of prosecutorial overreach and described the reality that prosecutors are endowed with an extraordinary amount of power but are not incented to use that power to be fair and reasonable. Rather, they are incented to prosecute those whom they, in their sole discretion, regard as criminals—and get convictions. And this incentive system leads some prosecutors to overreach—bring cases they shouldn't, or use their power too harshly—without having enough respect for the lives of those they prosecute.

After reading these essays, I read the prosecutor's indictment of Swartz.

In 2011, Swartz was charged with multiple felonies after downloading millions of academic papers from the online repository JSTOR—a service that aggregates these papers and makes them available for a modest fee to institutions and individuals. Based on the prosecutors' description of this incident—a description that has not yet been established as fact—there's no question that Swartz did something unethical and, probably, illegal.  He accessed a network he was not entitled to access, hid his real identity, changed his digital identity multiple times once his actions were discovered and blocked, and knew he was doing something wrong.  But there's a far cry between "unethical" and "13 felonies" punishable by a long prison sentence, especially when the items that Swartz downloaded were mostly freely available academic papers.

This is where prosecutorial discretion comes in.

And that's where we enter a part of our legal process that is often unfamiliar to those who haven't had firsthand experience with it.

Our legal system is a so-called "adversarial system." It pits one side, prosecutors, against the other side, defendants. If a case goes to trial, each side has an opportunity to make its case. And then a neutral party, a judge or jury, decides who is right.

Our legal system is a good system. If you haven't taken a moment to appreciate the fact that, in America, you 1) have the right to "have your day in court" and 2) your day in court has a reasonable chance of being a relatively fair hearing, you should do so now. People in many countries do not have these things. And the amount of injustice that is dispensed in these countries would make any fair person cringe.

But just because our system is good doesn't mean it is perfect.

Our system does not always "get it right." (No system does.)  And our system can be unfair in ways that are not always obvious to those who haven't been through the process.

When a prosecutor decides to charge someone with a crime, the prosecutor immediately puts that person's normal life on hold. The prosecutor also forces the person to either 1) cut a deal, or 2) defend him or herself in court.

If you are guilty of the prosecutors' charges, this decision is easy: You plead guilty and cut a deal.

If you are not guilty, however, or guilty of much less serious infractions, you find yourself in an extraordinarily stressful and, to some extent, no-win situation.

Defending yourself in court is an extremely stressful, expensive, time-consuming, and risky proposition. Unless you choose to use a public defender, even small trials can cost astronomical amounts of money and take years to prepare for. (Lawrence Lessig tossed off the remark that Swartz's trial would be a "million-dollar" trial that had already depleted Swartz's modest wealth.)  Even if you win, you don't get your money, time, or reputation back. So it will be a Pyrrhic victory, regardless.

If you defend yourself and lose, meanwhile, your sentence is likely to be far more punitive than it would have been if you had just "taken responsibility for your actions" and cut a deal. For obvious reasons, judges and prosecutors look favorably on defendants who save the government money and time by not defending themselves. And these folks usually get a better deal.

All of this is logical. 

And if a fair-minded prosecutor who is completely convinced of a defendant's guilt brings fair charges and offers a reasonable deal prior to trial, then the system is working as it should.

The trouble comes when the prosecutor is not fair-minded. Or not certain of a defendant's guilt. Or does not bring fair charges. Or does not offer a reasonable deal.

In these cases, a defendant faces an even tougher choice:

• Either plead guilty to a crime(s) you didn't commit and/or accept a punishment that you know you don't deserve,

OR

• Defend yourself at the cost of immense stress, money, and time and risk losing and getting an even harsher punishment

The reality of our justice system, in other words, is that prosecutors don't just have the power to act as "adversaries." To a certain extent, by being able to bring major pressure to try to force a plea deal, they also have the power to act as judge and jury.

In Aaron Swartz's case, the U.S. Attorney had charged Swartz with 13 criminal felonies, including wire fraud,and the usual kitchen-sink crimes that seem to get tossed into any computer-related case.

If Swartz were to have been convicted of even some of these felonies, he would likely have faced many years in prison.

So his downside risk was huge.

If Swartz had considered himself to have committed these 13 felonies, he would likely have pleaded guilty and cut a deal.

So it seems safe to assume that Swartz did not believe he was guilty of 13 felonies. And it also seems safe to assume that he was not offered a plea deal that he could live with—either because the prosecutor was demanding that he plead guilty to crimes he didn't think he had committed and/or because the prosecutor was offering a sentence that Swartz thought was too harsh.

So the key questions that need to be answered are these:

• Were the allegations and charges brought against Swartz reasonable in light of what he actually did?
• Did the prosecutor offer a reasonable plea deal to Swartz?

Or, as Lessig and others suggest, was this a case in which a prosecutor decided to make an example of Swartz in hopes of claiming a high-profile scalp and furthering his own career?

(It would also be helpful to know what Swartz's motivations were in downloading the academic papers. He wasn't going to make a personal financial gain, clearly, so the action appears to have been motivated by an idealistic view that "information should be free and freely available" or some other philosophy that is common in some parts of the tech community, especially among younger people.)

Regardless of the answers to these questions, Aaron Swartz's death is a tragedy, and nothing that happens in the future will change that. And no matter how he was treated by prosecutors, there is no way that they deserve all of the blame for what happened. (Life isn't fair, and many people have survived far greater unfairness and injustice than this—if that's indeed what happened here.)

But especially because Swartz is no longer here to defend himself, and because the U.S. Attorney is being partially blamed for his death, we need to get the answers to these questions.

We owe both sides that.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-swartzs-death-questions-2013-1#ixzz2HuSPefCv

Family of web activist Swartz blasts prosecutors over his death

nbcnews

Michael Francis Mcelroy / Zuma Press

Aaron Swartz, a noted Internet freedom ''hacktivist,'' died Friday at his apartment. He was 26. He was due to begin a federal trial next month on charges he downloaded millions of academic papers and meant to distribute them for free.

By Isolde Raftery, Staff Writer, NBC News

In the 24 hours since Aaron Swartz, a prodigy programmer turned Internet folk hero, hanged himself in his New York apartment, his family and a close friend and mentor have not only expressed devastation – they have been angry.

“Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy,” his family wrote in a statement. “It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”

Swartz, who helped to create RSS at age 14, was indicted in 2011 on charges alleging he improperly downloaded more than four million articles from JSTOR, an online system for archiving academic journals. Swartz argued for transparency -- JSTOR costs more than $50,000 for an annual university subscription -- but court records show that the federal government believed he had, among other felonies, committed wire fraud and computer fraud and unlawfully obtained information from a protected computer.

JSTOR ultimately backed Swartz. But his family’s statement was unflinchingly critical of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Cambridge, Mass., university where Swartz had allegedly registered a ghost computer to download the records:

Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community's most cherished principles.

JSTOR paid tribute to Swartz in a statement on its front page, saying it regretted being drawn into the case because the organization's "mission is to foster widespread access to the world’s body of scholarly knowledge."

"At the same time, as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content," the statement said. "To that end, Aaron returned the data he had in his possession and JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011."  

Swartz’s family described him as entirely committed to social justice. He helped to defeat an Internet censorship bill and “he used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place.”

Swartz, 26, hanged himself in his New York apartment on Friday, his family confirmed. 

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who described himself as a mentor and close friend to Swartz, took to Tumblr to express his own raw emotions. He wrote that Swartz's actions may not have been ethical, but the government's response was overly aggressive:

From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office told Reuters that officials wanted to respect the family's privacy and did "not feel it is appropriate to comment on the case at this time." Reuters and The Associated Press reported that they could not reach MIT for comment.

Lessig described Swartz as brilliant, funny, “a soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think?”

He concluded his piece: “We need to get beyond the ‘I’m right so I’m right to nuke you’ ethics that dominates our time. That begins with one word: Shame.”

How to disappear from the Internet forever

lifehacker.com.au

On Five "easy" steps

Step 1: Delete your social network accounts

Step 2: Remove unwanted search results

Step 3: Get rid of background check, criminal, and public record results

Step 4: Remove any usernames attached to an email address with your name

Step 5: Stay off search engines without going offline by remaining anonymous  

Details with  Thorin Klosowski >>

Experts: Hackers CAN [WILL?] crack election systems

WND/ Steve Elwart

The result of an election will be changed by hackers, the only question remaining for an online security expert is which election will it be.

“I’m somewhat surprised it hasn’t happened yet,” said Stephen Cobb, a security evangelist for ESET-North America, an IT security company, in a recent article in Dark Reading.

With the U.S. presidential election turning into a dead heat, every vote is going to count, but if some hackers had their way, your vote won’t matter.

Hacktivist groups like Anonymous and LulzSec are growing more sophisticated every day with their use of new collaborative hacking techniques, such as “crowdsourcing.” Meanwhile, voter databases are increasingly being put online on state and local computer systems that are often insecure and administered by part-time IT personnel.

“If big, Internet-based companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn, or Sony can fall to hackers, then, yeah, big government databases and local authorities who actually administer the election process can be hacked,” said Cobb.

While the voter databases carry mostly innocuous information, such as name and address, a hacktivist group could create havoc in an election if they were to make changes to that database.

A hacker could, for example, switch the addresses of people on a voting roll, putting them in a different precinct than where they actually live. An error like this could be done close to the election and could very well not be noticed until the day of the election. By then it would be too late. That person would be ineligible to vote that day.

Combining a voting database with other database information, such as those collected by supermarkets, coupon offers, and consumer polling data, hackers could target an area for disenfranchisement by simply looking at the demographic breakdown of a voting precinct.

In a close race, as this presidential contest is shaping up to be, shifting the election turnout in a few precincts in a swing state (i.e. Ohio) could change the outcome of an entire election. One only needs to look at the 2000 election results in Florida to see how the voting results in one or two precincts would have given the country President Gore.

In the 2008 senatorial race in Minnesota, Al Franken won by 312 votes, the equivalent of one precinct. Tampering with just one machine could have changed the outcome of the election.

Such a scenario is not fanciful. States like Washington and Maryland putting voter registration data online make the threat all too real.

“Any system that is networked, especially to the Internet, is inherently vulnerable to attacks on its availability, and the confidentiality and integrity of its data,” says Steve Santorelli, director of global outreach for the security research group Team Cymru.

According to Dr. Hugh Thompson, program committee chairman for RSA Conference, one of the biggest dangers of voting-related cybercrime is its undermining of voter confidence.

“Interestingly, the wrong person winning is not the worst thing that can happen,” he says. “The real worst case is a hacker proving that the vote was compromised and ultimately undermining the entire voting process.”

Many political observers are already saying that this election could be even more contentious than the 2000 contest without the added complexity of electronic voter fraud. The new reality is that a candidate may not have to just win an election, but to win it convincingly enough to avoid a challenge in court.

If a hacktivist group were to prove that their activities changed the outcome of the presidential election, it could throw the legitimacy of the outcome of all levels of election results into question.  More on WND.com. >>

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Panetta: Cyber intruders have already infiltrated US systems

By Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, NBC News

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a call to arms against cyber attacks on U.S. targets and said the Pentagon must be prepared to launch preemptive attacks in cyberspace against potential attackers. He warned that a cyber attack by a nation state or terrorists on the U.S. could be America's "cyber Pearl Harbor" and "be just as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11."

In a speech before business executives in New York, Panetta revealed that cyber intruders have already gained access to some of America's critical control systems that run chemical, electric and water systems with the intent to "cause panic, destruction and loss of life."

With a current annual budget of $3 billion for cybersecurity, Panetta urged that more needs to be done to create an army of "skilled cyber warriors" to confront the immediate and growing threat. The Defense Department is already hammering out new "rules of engagement" for a potential cyber war.  More >>