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Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the servers were taken offline. Security specialists and administrators have been working since then to analyze the intrusion and the extent of the compromise as well as reinstall Fedora systems. We are using the requisite outages as an opportunity to do other upgrades for the sake of functionality as well as security. Work is ongoing, so please be patient. Anyone with pertinent information relating to this event is asked to contact fedora-legal redhat com One of the compromised Fedora servers...

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who broke into military computers looking for evidence of UFOs in the "biggest military hack of all time," did so using his home computer and a 56k modem. I think we just lost our rights to complain about not having Japan-fast broadband. Using his own computer at home in London, McKinnon hacked into 97 computers belonging to and used by the U.S. government between February 2001 and March 2002.McKinnon is accused of causing the entire U.S. Army's Military District of Washington network of more than 2,000 computers to be shut down for 24 hours.Using...

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts. One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the...

Hacktivists collect fingerprint of fingerprint collector A hacker club has published what it says is the fingerprint of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's interior minister and a staunch supporter of the collection of citizens' unique physical characteristics as a means of preventing terrorism. In the most recent issue of Die Datenschleuder, the Chaos Computer Club printed the image on a plastic foil that leaves fingerprints when it is pressed against biometric readers. No-one from the Germany-based group has been able to test the foil to see if it can fool a computer into believing it came from Schauble. But the technique has...

The MacBook Air went first; a tiny Fujitsu laptop running Vista was hacked on the last day of the contest; but it was Linux, running on a Sony Vaio, that remained undefeated as conference organizers ended a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference. Earlier this week, contest sponsors had put three laptops up for grabs to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A US$20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal, but the payout was halved each day as contest rules were relaxed and it became easier to penetrate the computers.

Calling himself "a good person" who made a bad mistake, radio host Don Imus said Monday he would check his acid tongue after being lambasted for making racially charged comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. "Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it," he said on his nationally syndicated radio show Monday morning. "And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean it's going to be what it's been for the next five years or whatever." Imus said he was "embarrassed"...

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday admitted he “really screwed up” by spending tax dollars on a leased Cadillac and high-end office furniture, but he strongly defended the hiring of a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife. “Every governor has had staff to help support the work of the office, including the work of the first lady,” Patrick said during an impromptu press conference. “It’s official business.” However, a Patrick aide could recall only two events Diane Patrick has attended this year, one to promote early education initiatives in the State House and a second to appear at a reading event...

There is a major zero day bug announced in solaris 10 and 11 with the telnet and login combination. It has been verified. In my opinion NOBODY be should running telnet open to the internet. Versions of Solaris 9 and lower do not appear to have this vulnerability. The issue: The telnet daemon passes switches directly to the login process which looks for a switch that allows root to login to any account without a password. If your telnet daemon is running as root it allows unauthenticated remote logins. Telnet should be disabled. Since 1994 the cert.org team has recommended...

This is incredible. Maine Governor John Baldacci (D) has nominated a flack from the Maine Attorney General's Office as a District Court judge. The staffer, Mr. Chuck Dow, has negligible trial experience. The legislature's Judiciary Committee (8 D, 5 R, 1 Native American) voter 9-3 (8 D's and 1 R) to recommend confirmation by the full State Senate. The GOP Senate Minority Leader issued a press release, vowing to oppose Mr. Dow's confirmation. A snippet of her press release appears below: According to a questionnaire completed by the nominee, Dow earned his law degree in 1997 then worked at a...

The MSM troops have begun to rally around their man.Interviewing Ted Kennedy on MSNBC, Chris Matthews referred to the controversy over Kerry's comments as a 'brouhaha' and a 'rhubarb. Kennedy was of course only too happy to agree, calling the controversy a "diversion" and even casting Kerry as the victim, claiming he is the "target of Republicans" reacting to his criticism of the war.A bit later in the hour, Matthews flatly claimed that Kerry only meant to say that Bush hadn't studied enough before he became president and thus got us into a mess in Iraq, and later still:"I think...

Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold’s security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate: The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes,...

Some professors at Princeton University have posted a video on YouTube showing how to hack into the Diebold voting machines that are supposed to be used in 40% of the elections this fall. On Democratic Underground they're talking about how to steal cards just like the voting machines use from Diebold laundry machines used in laundromats, and then reprogram them to change the votes on the voting machines.

AT&T on Tuesday said hackers broke into one of its computer systems and accessed personal data on thousands of customers who used its online store. The information that was illegally accessed includes credit card numbers, AT&T said in a statement. The cyberattack affects about 19,000 customers who purchased equipment for high-speed DSL Internet connections through AT&T's Web site, the company said. "We deeply regret this incident," Priscilla Hill-Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T, said in the statement. "We will work closely with law enforcement to bring these data thieves to account." The break-in occurred over the weekend and was discovered...

It's not easy to remove Microsoft's anti-piracy program, but it can be done Scot Finnie Today’s Top Stories or Other Windows Stories July 30, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software is installed on computers running Windows XP via Microsoft's online update services. For most XP users, that means Automatic Updates, which Microsoft has worked very hard since Windows XP SP2 to make us run in full-automatic mode. WGA has already appeared in several beta versions, with slightly different behaviors, and Microsoft appears to be still actively developing this tool. For many people, the fact that the software giant...

Mitt Romney's political future ended at 11:00 p.m. last night...

Hacker Invades FBI Computers WASHINGTON, D.C., July 6, 2006(CBS) A U.S. government consultant used software programs found on the Internet to break into the FBI's computer system, where he gained access to the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Washington Post reports. The newspaper said Joseph Thomas Colon broke into the computer system four times in 2004 in hacks that gave him access to files on the Witness Protection Program and counterintelligence. As a result, the bureau was forced to temporarily shut down the system and conduct a lengthy investigation to determine whether any...

Hackers are trying to lure people to a malicious Web site using cell phone text messages, a security company has warned. The blended attack uses social engineering techniques in its attempt to trick people to the site, security vendor Websense said in an advisory. An SMS text message is sent to the targets' cell phones, thanking them for subscribing to a fictitious dating service. The message states that they will be automatically charged a fee of $2.00 per day via their phone bill, unless their subscription is cancelled online. The same message has also been sent multiple times to the...

China Construction Bank may not know that a security vulnerability on its server has been exploited Criminals appear to have hacked a Chinese bank's server and are using it to host phishing sites to steal personal data from customers of eBay Inc. and a major U.S. bank., according to Internet services company Netcraft Ltd. It may be the first scheme that uses one bank's infrastructure to exploit another bank, said Paul Mutton, an Internet services developer for Netcraft, based in Bath, England. A user of Netcraft's free phishing toolbar reported receiving a suspicious e-mail, Mutton said. The e-mail led to...

WASHINGTON Rep. John Murtha, a key Democratic voice who favors pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, said in remarks airing on Monday that he would not join the U.S. military today. A decorated Vietnam combat veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Murtha told ABC News' "Nightline" program that Iraq "absolutely" was a wrong war for President George W. Bush to have launched. "Would you join (the military) today?," he was asked in an interview taped on Friday. "No," replied Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees...

December 17, 2005: StrategyPage doesn’t just report on Cyber War, sometimes we get caught in the middle of it. We got an electronic nastygram from China recently when, as we were installing a new server, at a hosting site (to improve response time, and lessen the workload on the volunteer staffers who maintain the server). There was a gap of a few days between the time the new server went online, and the hardware firewall (which is a bear to configure) got installed. Into that opening, some Chinese hackers got onto the server and tried to take it over. Actually,...