Category Archives: Hacking

Dozens sue Amazon’s Ring after camera hack leads to threats and racial slurs

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Class action claims weak security allowed hackers to take over the smart cameras used on doorbells and in homes

Dozens of people who say they were subjected to death threats, racial slurs, and blackmail after their in-home Ring smart cameras were hacked are suing the company over “horrific” invasions of privacy.

A new class action lawsuit alleges that lax security measures at Ring, which is owned by Amazon, allowed hackers to take over their devices. Ring provides home security in the form of smart cameras that are often installed on doorbells or inside people’s comes.

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Revealed: how abusive texts led to discovery of hacking of Al Jazeera

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Threatening messages led to monitoring of phone that unearthed evidence of cyber-attack against Qatar-based network

A series of abusive text messages sent to an Al Jazeera investigative programme were the first crumbs that eventually led to the discovery of an unprecedented hacking operation against dozens of staff from the Qatar-based media network, according to one of the journalists who was targeted.

Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto claimed on Sunday that the UAE and Saudi Arabia used spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence company to access the phones of at least 36 journalists, producers and executives from Al Jazeera, as well as that of a London-based reporter with the Al Araby network.

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Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists allegedly hacked using Israeli firm’s spyware

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Citizen Lab researchers say cyber-attack using NSO Group software likely ordered by Saudia Arabia and UAE

Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers.

In a stunning new report, researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they discovered what appears to be a major espionage campaign against one of the world’s leading media organisations, which is based in Qatar and has long been a thorn in the side of many of the region’s autocratic regimes.

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Biden mulls punishments for Russia over suspected role in government hack

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As president-elect Joe Biden weighed options to punish Russia for its suspected hacking of US government agencies and companies, one leading Republican accused Moscow of “acting with impunity” and others called for retaliatory strikes.

Related: Trump attempt to overturn election is 'nutty and loopy', Romney says

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Trump downplays government hack after Pompeo blames it on Russia

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Secretary of state is first in administration to point to Russia but Trump attacks media over reports

Not long after Mike Pompeo became the first member of the Trump administration to blame Russia for wide-ranging hacks of US government agencies and private companies which have sent Washington scrambling to fill the breach, the president sought to play the hack down.

Related: US scrambling to understand fallout of suspected Russia hack

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Mike Pompeo: ‘We can say pretty clearly’ Russia was behind hack of US agencies

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Secretary of state blames Russia for worst-ever US government hack as Kremlin denies involvement and Trump stays silent

Mike Pompeo has become the first member of the Trump administration to blame Russia for wide-ranging hacks of US government agencies and private companies.

Related: US scrambling to understand fallout of suspected Russia hack

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Microsoft seeks Biden’s support in case against Israeli spyware firm

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Microsoft’s president says NSO Group enables more nation-states to deploy cyber-attacks, including against journalists and activists

Microsoft has called on the incoming Biden administration to weigh in on a high-profile legal case involving WhatsApp and NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm that the US software company said was helping to proliferate cyber-weapons.

Comparing NSO Group to 21st-century mercenaries, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, claimed that the rise of private companies that engineer cybersecurity attacks meant that an increasing number of nation-states could now deploy cyber-attacks – including against journalists and human rights activists.

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US scrambling to understand fallout of suspected Russia hack

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At least six government departments breached in likely Russian intelligence operation thought to have begun in March

The US government is still in the dark over how deeply Russian hackers penetrated its networks during the worst ever cyber attack on federal agencies, members of Congress warned on Friday.

At least six government departments were breached in a likely Russian intelligence operation thought to have begun in March. Although there is no evidence that classified networks were compromised, it is not known what the hackers may have stolen or how long it will take to purge them.

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Cyber-attack is brutal reminder of the Russia problem facing Joe Biden

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Analysis: new president must find a way to contain such hyper-aggressive behaviour from Moscow

It is Joe Biden’s biggest foreign policy headache. As well as confronting the Covid pandemic, the president-elect has to deal with a more familiar problem: Russia. Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election cast a shadow over US politics for four long years.

And now the Kremlin appears to have struck again. This week details emerged of an unprecedented cyber-attack against US government departments. Beginning in March, suspected Russian hackers penetrated Washington’s signature institutions.

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Deep US institutional secrets may have been exposed in hack blamed on Russia

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Intrigue surrounds what may have been exposed, from nuclear secrets to Covid vaccine data to next-generation weapons systems

Some of America’s most deeply held institutional secrets may have been stolen in a large hacking operation being blamed on elite Russian government operatives.

Intrigue surrounds what may have been exposed, from nuclear secrets to Covid-19 vaccine data to next-generation weapons systems.

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Trump’s Twitter account was hacked, Dutch ministry confirms

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Public prosecutor states Victor Gevers did access US president’s site but as ethical hacker faces no charges

Dutch prosecutors have confirmed that Donald Trump’s Twitter account was hacked in October despite denials from Washington and the company, but said the “ethical hacker” would not face charges.

The hacker, named as Victor Gevers, broke into Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump on 16 October by guessing the US president’s password, Dutch media reports said.

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Orion hack exposed vast number of targets – impact may not be known for a while

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Analysis: eavesdropping on high-value targets is labour intensive so hackers may not have made most of access

If there is one silver lining to the months-long global cyber-espionage campaign discovered when a prominent cybersecurity firm learned it had been breached, it might be that the sheer numbers of potentially compromised entities offers them some protection.

By compromising one piece of security software – a security tool called Orion developed by the Texan company SolarWinds – the attackers gained access to an extraordinary array of potential targets in the US alone: more than 425 of the Fortune 500 list of top companies; all of the top 10 telecommunications companies; all five branches of the military; and all of the top five accounting firms.

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Suspected Russian hackers spied on US federal agencies

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FBI to investigate after treasury and commerce departments believed to have been targeted

Suspected Russian hackers have carried out the biggest cyber-raid against the US for more than five years, US officials have said, targeting key government networks including the Treasury and commerce departments.

The hackers were able to monitor internal email traffic and may have compromised other government bodies, in what is being described as a highly sophisticated state-level attack. The situation is so grave it led on Saturday to a national security council meeting at the White House.

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Hackers HQ and Space Command: how UK defence budget could be spent

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Creation of specialist cyber force and artificial intelligence unit in pipeline

A specialist cyber force of several hundred British hackers has been in the works for nearly three years, although its creation has been partly held back by turf wars between the spy agency GCHQ and the Ministry of Defence, to which the unit is expected to jointly report.

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UK has mounted covert attacks against Russian leadership, says ex-mandarin

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Former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill says UK used offensive cyber-capability to exploit Moscow’s ‘vulnerabilities’

Britain has carried a series of covert attacks on Russia’s leaders and their allies, the former cabinet secretary has disclosed.

Mark Sedwill said the UK had sought to exploit Moscow’s “vulnerabilities”, including through the deployment of its recently declared offensive cyber-capability.

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Twitter softens policy on hacking after row over blocked New York Post story

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Move follows criticism from Republicans and others over story about Joe Biden’s son

Twitter has softened its policies against the sharing of hacked material after the backlash over its decision to block a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son.

Republican senators declared their intention to subpoena the Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey next week, forcing him to explain the decision, after he apologised for the lack of communication about the blocking.

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Russia spreading lies about Covid vaccines, says UK military chief

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Head of armed forces says both China and Russia trying to undermine cohesion in west

Russia is seeking to destabilise countries around the world by sowing disinformation about coronavirus vaccines that is shared rapidly across social media, the head of the armed forces has warned.

Gen Sir Nick Carter, the chief of defence staff, said the propaganda tactic reflected a strategy of “political warfare” aggressively undertaken by Beijing as well as Moscow “designed to undermine cohesion” across the west.

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Liam Fox is the latest in a long line of victims duped by Russia’s GRU

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Over the past 20 years, the military intelligence agency has stolen information from targets around the world

Liam Fox, the former UK trade secretary, is merely the latest in a long line of victims apparently duped by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Over the past two decades GRU spies have stolen classified information from numerous targets around the world. According to Reuters, last summer they broke into Fox’s email account. They made off with secret US-UK trade documents later dumped out before the 2019 election.

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Twitter hack: US and UK teens arrested over breach of celebrity accounts

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Three men charged in hack that saw accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk compromised in bitcoin scam

Authorities have charged three men in a major Twitter breach this month that hacked the accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in bitcoin.

The suspects include a 19-year-old British man from Bognor Regis, a 22-year-old man from Orlando, Florida, and a teenager from Tampa, Florida.

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WhatsApp confirms Catalan politician’s phone was target of 2019 attack

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Attack on Roger Torrent seen as possible act of domestic espionage

WhatsApp has confirmed that the mobile phone of a leading pro-independence politician in Catalonia was targeted over its messaging app in a 2019 attack that has been condemned as a possible case of domestic espionage in Europe.

In a letter to Roger Torrent, the speaker of the Catalan parliament, and obtained by the Guardian and El Pais, the company confirmed that his personal WhatsApp account was “targeted in an attempt to gain unauthorised access to data and communications on the device”.

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