Hackers

A federal magistrate judge has denied (PDF) a request from the FBI to install sophisticated surveillance software to track someone suspected of attempting to conduct a “sizeable wire transfer from [John Doe’s] local bank [in Texas] to a foreign bank account.”

Back in March 2013, the FBI asked the judge to grant a month-long “Rule 41 search and seizure warrant” of a suspect’s computer “at premises unknown” as a way to find out more about this possible violations of “federal bank fraud, identity theft and computer security laws.”

Culminating a two-week trial in which no hacking in the traditional sense occurred, a California man was convicted Wednesday under the same hacking statute internet sensation Aaron Swartz was accused of before he committed suicide in January.

Defendant David Nosal was convicted by a San Francisco federal jury on all six charges ranging from theft of trade secrets to hacking, despite him never breaking into a computer. Nosal remains free pending sentencing later this year, when he faces a potential lengthy prison term.

Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report, which will be released on Tuesday, found the number of attacks by state-affiliated actors had nearly tripled from last year and that 96 percent were attributed to China.

 A US Air Force Academy team beat out rivals from other elite military colleges after a three-day simulated cyber "war" against hackers from the National Security Agency that is meant to teach future officers the importance of cybersecurity.

Nearly 60 government experts - sitting under a black skull and crossbones flag - worked around the clock this week to break into computer networks built by students at the Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine academies. Two military graduate schools also participated.

NASA is kicking off a worldwide hackathon this weekend, with teams of citizens competing to create software, hardware and mobile and web applications that will solve problems and improve life on Earth and in space.

As part of the second-ever International Space Apps Challenge, NASA has released 50 wide-ranging problems to be tackled during the 48-hour event.

A hacker who pleaded guilty last year to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment was sentenced on Thursday in Los Angeles to a year in prison, followed by home detention, federal prosecutors said.

Cody Kretsinger, a LulzSec hacker who used the online moniker "Recursion," pleaded guilty in April 2012 to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

A vulnerability in the ColdFusion Web server platform, reported by Adobe less than a week ago, has apparently been in the wild for almost a month and has allowed the hacking of at least one company website, exposing customer data. Yesterday, it was revealed that the virtual server hosting company Linode had been the victim of a multi-day breach that allowed hackers to gain access to customer records.

Suspected Chinese hackers defaced the website of the Philippines News Agency (PNA) on Sunday, officials said, a possible repeat of cyber attacks last year also blamed on China during a territorial row.

The state-run agency's website temporarily displayed the Chinese flag and the text: "China Hacker EvilShadow Team, We are evil shadow. We are the team. We have our own dignity China Hacker Lxxker."

L33tdawg: Ofer's slides along with all other presentation materials can be downloaded from http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2013ams/materials/

Hackers could use vulnerable charging stations to prevent the charging of electric vehicles in a certain area, or possibly even use the vulnerabilities to cripple parts of the electricity grid, a security researcher said during the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam on Thursday.

L33tdawg: If you're attending Hugo Teso's Practical Aircraft Hacking talk at HITBSecConf2013 - Amsterdam, you definitely want to read this blog post he's put up.