Top ‘good guy’ hackers to tackle biggest cyber challenges yet Read more: Top ‘good guy’ hackers to tackle biggest cyber challenges yet

According to Symantec, its upcoming Cyber Readiness Challenge will be the ultimate in cyber-defense readiness practice

Hackers – even the “good guy” breed – tend to be a shadowy bunch, keeping their identities as secret as they can. But on January 28, the identities of some of the best hackers in Israel will be unveiled, as they try to win an all-expense paid trip to the U.S., to see how security giant Symantec does cyber-defense.

The hackers, 50 of them, will be participating in the biggest-ever simulated “hack attack,” in the Israeli version of the Symantec Cyber Readiness Challenge – a worldwide and ongoing event in which “white hat hackers” (those who use their hacking powers to help, not hinder) will attempt to get to the bottom of a simulated “industrial espionage” attack against a large corporation.

By putting participants in the hacker’s shoes, said Symantec, it enables them to understand their targets, technology and thought processes so they can ultimately better protect their organization and themselves. Symantec, which makes anti-virus and security software, works in countries around the world, where it holds similar challenges, seeking out the best white-hat hackers, sometimes hiring them as well, the company said.

A hacker contest is like any other one, in that it has goals, rules, milestones, and points awarded. In the contest, hackers must conduct a cyber-investigation of an attack against a company’s site, figuring out who hacked them and how they did it, by counter-hacking shady Internet sites and servers. Points will be given for degree of success in hacking into the suspects’ servers, and for achieving 40 milestones (such as getting access to passwords, installing spyware, etc.). The winner of the contest will get an opportunity to talk to and work with top Symantec security personnel at the company’s headquarters in the U.S., all expenses paid.

The Challenge will take place at the annual ​Cybertech International Conference, sponsored by IsraelDefense, the Prime Minister’s National Cyber Bureau, and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Economy. Speakers will include top figures and cyber-security professionals from Israel and the world, including Rick Kaplan, head of IBM Israel, Erek Kreiner of Israeli security company FiveC (he is also a former head of Israel’s National Information Security Authority), Dr. Orna Berry, head of EMC Israel, and David Chinn, cyber-security director of international consulting group McKinsey and Co., among others.

Sessions will include discussions on securing financial data, how to keep hackers from physically planting cyber-spy devices on equipment, disaster recovery, and privacy issues in the digital era – all issues that have been in the news recently, with the revelations on hackers stealing credit card information from large retail stores in the U.S., and the revelations on the gathering of information by the National Security Agency in the U.S.

Dozens of cyber-security start-ups will also be showing off their wares at the event, among them Seculert, which has been working on the recent hack attacks against Target and other retailers in the U.S., in which tens of thousands of customers had their credit card information stolen, and Covertix, which created a document technology that prevents unauthorized individuals from opening and reading files, alerting managers when a document’s security is compromised, automatically blocking usage if unauthorized use is suspected. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will open the event, speaking to participants about Israel’s cyber-defense policies and challenges.

But the highlight of the event promises to be the Symantec event, said Gili Netzer, VP of marketing at Symantec Israel. That’s because instead of talking about cyber-defense, the hackers will be practicing it. “The challenge is going to be very difficult, presenting participants with problems they have not come across yet,” said Netzer. “We intend to push them to their limit. In a world where hackers attack organizations, companies and whole countries at will, we need to be one step ahead of them, prepared to deal with attacks using the most advanced hacker techniques.”

Source : The Times Of Israel

Pirate Bay co-founder charged with alleged hacking and fraud

After sitting in Swedish prison for months following a high-profile arrest and extradition from Cambodia, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is expected to go to trial in May

The co founder of Pirate Bay Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was charged with having hacked into many Swedish corporations and has been accused of pilfering personal data as well. He has been indicted of hacking into the IBM mainframe system of Logica, which is an Income Tax consultancy firm in Sweden known for providing services to the Swedish government. Moreover, he also faces allegations of trespassing into many other agencies also and of trying to illegally transfer money from a local bank, according to the prosecutor appointed by the Swedish government. Warg, who is already been in Swedish prison for more than six months, is getting into more trouble it seems and his problems are far from ending.

Pirate Bay co-founder charged with alleged hacking and fraud

Henrik Olin, the public prosecutor, said in an interview to a leading Swedish daily that “A large amount of data from companies and agencies was taken during the hack, including a large amount of personal data, such as personal identity numbers (personnummer) of people with protected identities,” and he commented that “I’d say that Svartholm Warg is the main person and brains behind the hacker attack.”

Gottfrid has been indicted together with three other co defendants, so that brings the total to four people. The four defendants have been charged with charges of serious fraud, attempted fraud, and abetting attempted fraud. Gottfrid himself has been charged on three counts of computer hacking, a case of serious fraud, and another one of attempted aggravated fraud, according to the Swedish news site.

The first count of hacking on the Pirate bay founder corresponds to illegally using the username and password of another person to conduct search on Infotorg, which is a database of private companies, individuals, and properties etc. The second count is the one related to Logica, the IT firm which caters to Swedish government which was attacked in the March of 2012, during which more than personal details of more than 10,000 people were leaked to the public and these two charges are from sometime between 2010 and 2012.

The final charge is for gaining unauthorized access into the machines of Nordic bank Nordea and attempting to conduct and unlawful transaction of transferring money to some other banks, which have been alleged to amount to up to 5.7 million  Swedish kronor, though actually only 27,000 kronor was found to have been transferred.

Gottfrid who is already in prison after he was extradited from Cambodia in September 2012 after he was sentenced for his role in the 2009 leak of copyrighted content on the internet was sentenced heavily initially but later the jail time was reduced by the court in lieu for an increased  fine.

The court has scheduled the hearing of the case during the month of May this year. While Gottfrid’s lawyer has abstained from making any comment, the other co founder of Pirate bay Peter Sunde said that   “I’m not saying that Gottfrid is innocent (or guilty). But I’m seriously questioning the charges.”

Well, the fate of Gottfrid and the extent of his legal troubles will be revealed only at the time of court ruling.

100k IEEE site Plain-Text Passwords found on Public FTP

Researcher Finds 100k IEEE.org Passwords Stored in Plain-Text on Public FTP Server

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) stored usernames and passwords for its users in a plain-text file on a publically accessible server, a Romanian computer scientist has claimed.

A plaintext file containing nearly 100,000 credentials were accessible on an IEEE.Org FTP server for at least one month before it was discovered on Sept. 18, Radu Drăgușin, a teaching assistant in the computer science department at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, wrote on the IEEElog.com site Tuesday. The file contained users who were employees at companies such as Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Samsung, as well as researchers from NASA, Stanford University, and other institutions, Dragusin wrote.

100k IEEE site Plain-Text Passwords found on Public FTP

In addition to exposing username and passwords for IEEE members, the FTP server contained the ieee.org Website logs and visitor activity log for spectrum.ieee.org, Dragusin said. It appears the IEEE Web administrators “failed to restrict access” to theWeb server logs for both sites, allowing anyone to view the contents. Every Web request to the Web sites, or more than 376 million HTTP requests, were recorded in those files, Dragusin wrote.

Web server logs should never be publicly accessible as the files generally contain information that can be used to identify users and correlate their browsing activity. It appears that IEEE has closed that security hole, as the files are no longer available.

“If leaving an FTP directory containing 100GB of logs publicly open could be a simple mistake in setting access permissions, keeping both usernames and passwords in plaintext is much more troublesome,” Dragusin wrote.

Security experts have stressed time and time again that best practices call for storing salted cryptographic hashes of passwords, using an algorithm that hasn’t already been cracked. For a professional association which includes computer science professionals and publishes security publications, keeping passwords in plaintext, and then storing them in the same location as the server logs is a colossal, and baffling, mistake to make.

It’s not known at this time whether the file was accessed before Dragusin found it. If someone else got to the file first, those users are at risk for spear phishing attacks or other targeted campaigns. If the IEEE has access logs for its FTP server, the organizations would be able to determine the extent of the damage, Dragusin speculated.

According to Dragusin’s Twitter and Google+ posts, IEEE has yet to notify users, but the organization had posted a note to its website Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging a “security incident”.

100k IEEE site Plain-Text Passwords found on Public FTP

“We have conducted a thorough investigation and the issue has been addressed and resolved. We are in the process of notifying those who may have been affected,” the IEEE wrote in the statement.

“It would be reasonable to assume, that an organization publishing leading security-focused publications, would value the privacy of its members, and be proactive in keeping their data secure,” Dragusin wrote.

Dragusin analyzed the raw data to figure out where the users were based, what email domains they were using, and common passwords. His analysis of common passwords was particularly disappointing. The top five most popular passwords in the IEEE file turned out to be “123456,” “ieee2012,” “12345678,” “123456789,” and “password. Considering many of IEEE members are security professionals and the organization has worked on various encryption and key management standards, the lack of password sophistication is worrisome.

There’s one positive thing to note, however, since it appears that a majority of the users are using unique passwords. It appears that the top five passwords are being used by only one percent of the affected users, and the top 18 passwords were used by less than two percent of users, according to Dragusin’s analysis. IEEE has become aware of an incident regarding inadvertent access to unencrypted log files containing user IDs and passwords.