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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has in recent weeks launched increased cyber attacks on Obama administration officials, hacking into their email and social media accounts. U.S. officials believe that the hacks are related to the recent arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Tehran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has routinely conducted cyberwarfare against American government agencies for years. But the U.S. officials said there has been a surge in such attacks coinciding with the arrest last month of Siamak Namazi, an energy industry executive and business consultant who has pushed for stronger U.S.-Iranian economic and diplomatic ties. Obama administration personnel are...

In less than two weeks, the Office of Personnel Management is expected to launch the new background investigation service to help fix the mess created by a series of incidents ranging from a lack of contractor oversight to the massive data breach affecting 21.5 million current and former federal employees. Officials promise the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) will be a much different organization than its predecessor, the Federal Investigative Services. “It will have a politically appointed director, will be headquartered in D.C. and be a full member of the Performance Accountability Council, so it aligns with customers for increased...

""Judicial Watch: New Huma Abedin Emails Reveal Additional Instances of Clinton Sending and Receiving Classified Emails Through Unsecure Server""" (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 894 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was sent additional classified information through her unsecure clintonmail.com email account by top aide Huma Abedin. The Abedin emails also include repeated instances of Clinton’s detailed daily schedules being sent to top Clinton Foundation officials at unsecured email addresses. The records were produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the non-state.gov email...

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Friday predicted North Korea is more likely to unleash a large-scale cyberattack against the U.S. than take military action. Kelly, speaking with NBC "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, said a physical attack from the North Korean military is unlikely despite the country's warning earlier this week of a "big event" this weekend. "A kinetic threat against the United States right now I don't think is likely, but certainly a cyber threat," Kelly told Todd in a preview clip. "So we would raise various threat levels in the event that something happened and we...

Before I get to the meat of this post, we need to revisit a little history. The cyber security firm hired to inspect the DNC hack and determine who was responsible is a firm called Crowdstrike. Its conclusion that Russia was responsible was released last year, but several people began to call its analysis into question upon further inspection. Jeffrey Carr was one of the most prominent cynics, and as he noted in his December post, FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report: A Fatally Flawed Effort:

PARIS — France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from the United States over new spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden. French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel said in separate reports published Monday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored tens of millions of phone communications in France and hacked into former Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s email account. The allegations come on top of revelations already leaked by Snowden and published in June that the US had a vast, secret program called PRISM to monitor Internet users, which French prosecutors...

While the media started asking critical questions about The Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid last year, newly published emails show Chelsea Clinton was digging deeper into the foundation's dealings as far back as 2011. According to hacked documents released by WikiLeaks, the former first daughter discovered and shared wide-ranging allegations involving conflict-of-interest concerns, suspected internal cyber spying and other issues. In nearly four-dozen emails from October 2011 to February 2012, Chelsea Clinton’s sometimes-abrasive relationship with her father’s top confidant and other key Clinton aides is on full display.(snip) She claimed an employee witnessed Cooper loading spyware...

An Ireland-based cyber-security and payments industry firm has opened its Brookhaven location, which will eventually create 500 jobs for DeKalb County. Sysnet Global Solutions intends to invest $2 million with the Brookhaven center in the Perimeter Summit development. Numerous officials and community leaders were on hand for a ceremony at the site Thursday, including Brookhaven Mayor John Ernst. He’s said he’s excited to have the company in town. “Five hundred plus jobs is always a great sign of a vibrant economy,” he said in January....

Days before U.S. Capitol Police told House members that three Pakistani brothers who ran their computer networks may have stolen congressional data, their stepmother called Fairfax County, Virginia police to say the Democratic staffers were keeping her from her husband’s deathbed. A relative described her situation as being held in captivity for months while the brothers schemed to take their father’s life insurance and other assets. The brothers — who as IT professionals for Congress could read House members’ emails — allegedly used wiretapping devices on their own stepmother and threatened to abduct loved ones in Pakistan if she didn’t...

There are few people with computer science backgrounds who work in the federal government. Long hours coupled with smaller salaries make it hard to recruit techies to Washington, according to Representative Ruben Gallego. But one way to get more tech people to serve their country is to set up a cybersecurity reservist system, like a National Guard for digital security, said Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona. "We have to accept that, look, this person is not going to man a machine gun, why would we put them through bootcamp, we're never going to send them to the front line," Gallego...

Flashback: First FISA Request on Trump Tower Came After Clinton and AG Lynch Met Privately on Tarmac Was it coincidence or an indication of things to come? The pieces to Obamagate are falling together. On June 27th of 2016, Bill Clinton met secretly with Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. A week later FBI Director James Comey laid out in a press conference the many scandalous activities taken by Hillary Clinton while she was President Obama’s Secretary of State and then he said the famous words: "Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would...

A couple of months ago, my card was hacked, not my account, so I waited for a new one to re-submit my FR donation.

Cory Louie, the White House’s now former chief cybersecurity officer, was reportedly removed from his position. Louie “was forced to resign,” according to an editor at The Atlantic, who was the first to report his exit, despite initially saying that he was a member of the Secret Service. The story was apparently corroborated by ZDNet, who spoke to unnamed sources on the matter. {..snip..}

Rudy Giuliani has found his place in the Trump administration. The former New York City mayor will be advising President-elect Donald Trump on cyber security issues, the presidential transition team announced Thursday. “Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector,” the Trump team said in a press release. The soon-to-be president also plans to meet with corporate executives to understand their cyber challenges — as well as those that face the US government.

A hacker claims to have breached the FBI’s official website for the second time, describing their security systems as “lazy.” The hacker, who goes by the name CyberZeist, reportedly breached the FBI’s website and posted some of the private information he obtained to the open source site Pastebin. FBI trying to patch-up their Plone CMS #0day at https://t.co/IRhqdQjNbp, too late!! #ComingSoon #NewYearsEve pic.twitter.com/u7KOXNO3qV — CyberZeist (@cyberzeist2) December 31, 2016 “This leak is totally devoted to the Anonymous Movement,” he wrote. CyberZeist reportedly exposed a vulnerability in the Plone Content Management System (CMS) of the FBI’s, reportedly penetrating the website’s systems...

No One Cared About Hacking until We found Out How Corrupt Liberals Are By S. Noble - January 6, 2017 US major government and military organizations are hacked all the time by endless numbers of foreign and domestic actors. Nothing was done to fix our cybersecurity. But let a privates organization like the DNC get hacked or careless John Podesta’s emails get hacked and all hell breaks loose. John Podesta left his smart phone in a cab, he fell for a phishing incident and his password was ‘passwØrd”. Hillary put our state secrets on a personal server she kept in...

Office Depot has suspended PC Health Check – its malware-scanning service – after it was accused of lying about infections to push antivirus software. Former Office Depot technician Shane Barnett told Seattle TV station KIRO 7 that the PC Health Check service would lie to customers that their otherwise-clean PCs were infected with malware, and that this was used to flog expensive disinfection tools. He claimed he was let go from his job because he refused to run the allegedly dodgy scanner on people's machines. ... The station decided to investigate his claims and took six virgin PCs along to...

The co-founder of the newly launched Senate Cybersecurity Caucus is pushing federal agencies for possible solutions and responses to the security threat from insecure “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as the network of hacked security cameras and digital video recorders that were reportedly used to help bring about last Friday’s major Internet outages. ... I have been asked by several reporters over the past few days whether I think government has a role to play in fixing the IoT mess. Personally, I do not believe there has ever been a technology challenge that was best served by additional government...

Default passwords on devices from the digital video recorder in your living room to the security camera in your office threaten the stability of the internet, as hackers build vast networks of “Internet of Things” devices to bombard websites with traffic. The attack on Dyn, a domain name service provider, that disrupted access to high-profile sites such as Twitter, Spotify and the New York Times on Friday, highlighted the risks posed by the billions of devices connected to the internet with little or no cyber security protections. Unidentified hackers took over tens of millions of devices using malicious software called...