wired

January 8, 2017

DNI: Putin Led Cyber, Propaganda Effort to Elect Trump, Denigrate Clinton

This post was originally published on this siteRussian President Vladimir Putin directed a massive propaganda and cyber operation aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton and getting Donald Trump elected, the top U.S. intelligence agencies said in a remarkable yet unshocking report released on Friday. Russian President Vladimir Putin tours RT facilities. Image: DNI The 25-page dossier from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stopped short of saying the Russians succeeded at influencing the outcome of the election, noting that the report did not attempt to make an assessment on that front. But it makes the case that “Russia’s intelligence […]
April 4, 2017

Dual-Use Software Criminal Case Not So Novel

This post was originally published on this site“He built a piece of software. That tool was pirated and abused by hackers. Now the feds want him to pay for the computer crooks’ crimes.” The above snippet is the subhead of a story published last month by the The Daily Beast titled, “FBI Arrests Hacker Who Hacked No One.” The subject of that piece — a 26-year-old American named Taylor Huddleston — faces felony hacking charges connected to two computer programs he authored and sold: An anti-piracy product called Net Seal, and a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called NanoCore that he says was a benign program […]
November 6, 2017

Simple Banking Security Tip: Verbal Passwords

This post was originally published on this siteThere was a time when I was content to let my bank authenticate me over the phone by asking for some personal identifiers (SSN/DOB) that are broadly for sale in the cybercrime underground. At some point, however, I decided this wasn’t acceptable for institutions that held significant chunks of our money, and I began taking our business away from those that wouldn’t let me add a simple verbal passphrase that needed to be uttered before any account details could be discussed over the phone. Most financial institutions will let customers add verbal passwords […]
November 9, 2018

Bug Bounty Hunter Ran ISP Doxing Service

This post was originally published on this siteA Connecticut man who’s earned bug bounty rewards and public recognition from top telecom companies for finding and reporting security holes in their Web sites secretly operated a service that leveraged these same flaws to sell their customers’ personal data, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. In May 2018, ZDNet ran a story about the discovery of a glaring vulnerability in the Web site for wireless provider T-Mobile that let anyone look up customer home addresses and account PINs. The story noted that T-Mobile disabled the feature in early April after being alerted by a 22-year-old “security researcher” named Ryan […]