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US: Hackers joining Wall Street protests

Wilson Dizard
NY Post
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:57 UTC
Amid the real world protests swarming around Wall Street, the Department of Homeland Security has warned financial companies to be vigilant against a looming cyber- security threat from Anonymous, a headless horde of activist hackers.

Wanted for shutting down Web sites as high-profile as that of the CIA, a recently released DHS bulletin said the group "will continue to exploit vulnerable publicly available Web servers, computer networks and other digital information mediums for the foreseeable future."

While the DHS warning doesn't mention Wall Street protests in particular, it did say that "publicized events" like Occupy Wall Street may motivate the group.
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Laptop

Iran warns US and UK cyber attacks will result in retaliation


V3
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:00 UTC
Iran has been flexing its muscles on the world stage again, warning the US and its allies that any cyber attack against the country will result in retaliation from Tehran.

Muslim news organisation the Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported Brigadier General Ali Shadmani, head of the Operations Department of the Iranian Armed Forces, as saying that any cyber attack on Iran would be "risky" and met with swift reprisals.

Shadmani is reported as saying that Western allies have been trying to destabilise Iran for decades, backing "anti-revolutionary terrorist organisations" such as MKO.
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Laptop

US:Anonymous leaks personal details of alleged Wall Street pepper spray cop


V3
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:03 UTC
wstreet
© V3
Online hacktivist collective Anonymous has posted the personal details of a New York Police Department inspector caught on camera apparently pepper spraying female protestors at an anti-establishment march in Wall Street at the weekend.

The footage, which has been widely circulated, depicted a white shirted police officer who casually walked up to a group of protestors, many of whom were women and penned in behind orange netting, and sprayed them in the face before walking away.
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Family

Anonymous hacktivists turn rapper on YouTube, iTunes

John Leyden
The Register
Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:14 UTC
Hip hop flop still beats hack wack cack


Hacktivist groups TeaMp0isoN and Anonymous have teamed up with an independent artist to release a rap song which they hope will storm the music charts.

Proceeds from the ‪#OpCensorThis‬ digital activism project, a collaboration between TeaMp0isoN and ‪Lyricist Jinn - ‬will go to the East Africa Crisis Appeal. A slick professionally produced video was released to accompany the tune, which enjoyed a delayed release via iTunes and YouTube on Wednesday.
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Control Panel

US: Diebold e-voting hack allows remote tampering

Dan Goodin
The Register
Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:21 UTC
$11 microprocessor-in-middle attack is 'significant'

Computer scientists have demonstrated a hack that uses off-the-shelf hardware to tamper with electronic voting machines that millions of Americans will use to cast ballots in the 2012 presidential elections.

The attack on the Diebold AccuVote TS electronic voting machine, which is now marketed by Election Systems & Software, relies on a small circuit board that an attacker inserts between the components connecting the touch screen of the device to its microprocessor. The $10.50 card then controls the information flowing into the machine's internal processor, allowing attackers to change votes with almost no visible sign of what's taking place.

In a video demonstration, researchers from the Vulnerability Assessment Team at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois showed how the card could be used to briefly kill the power to the voting machine's touch screen to temporarily black out what's displayed so voters can't see their choices being modified. Using optional hardware costing about $15, they showed how attackers can remotely tamper with machines from distances as far away as half a mile.
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MIB

US: Domestic Spying Across the Country

Lance Page
Truthout
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:26 UTC
Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts.

"In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of National Security Agency (NSA) "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
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Control Panel

Frankenstein Finance: How Supercomputers Preying on Human Fear are Taking Over the World's Stock Markets

Robert Harris
The Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:35 UTC
stock market graphic
© n/a73 per cent of shares on the New York Stock Exchange are traded by computer
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of capitalism. A vast and highly unstable mixture of debt - trillions of dollars of sovereign, corporate and private borrowing accumulated over decades - is strapped to the advanced Western economies like a suicide bomber's gelignite vest.

The task facing our politicians is somehow to defuse this bomb without inadvertently triggering the sequence of defaults and bankruptcies that would set it off. No wonder they walk around the problem scratching their heads, prodding it gingerly here and there. The horrible truth is dawning that the problem may well not be technically solvable.

For the first time in my life - I am 54 - I get the sense of what it must have been like to have lived in my grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation: in 1913, say, or 1937. One feels a great smash coming ever closer, almost in slow-motion, and yet there seems to be nothing that can be done to avoid it.

How have we got ourselves into this mess? After all, we were supposed to be living in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
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Life Preserver

Greece to miss deficit targets despite austerity

Dina Kyriakidou and Ingrid Melander
Reuters
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:17 UTC
George Papandreou
© Reuters/Panagiotis TzamarosGreece's Prime Minister George Papandreou arrives for a cabinet meeting inside the parliament in Athens October 2, 2011.

Greece will miss a deficit target set just months ago in a massive bailout package, according to government draft budget figures released on Sunday, showing that drastic steps taken to avert bankruptcy may not be enough.

The dire forecasts came while inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank, known as the troika, were in Athens scouring the country's books to decide whether to approve a loan tranche. Without that installment, Greece would run out of cash as soon as this month.

The 2012 draft budget approved by cabinet on Sunday predicts a deficit of 8.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2011, well short of the 7.6 percent target.
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Bad Guys

Canada: Harper's office kept defence minister in the dark?

James McCarten
The Canadian Press
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
Peter MacKay
© unknownDefence Minister Peter MacKay
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office was so seized with controlling public opinion of Canada's shooting war in southern Afghanistan that even Defence Minister Peter MacKay wasn't always in the loop, says a new book about the conflict.

The Savage War, by Canadian Press defence writer and Afghanistan correspondent Murray Brewster, paints a portrait of a PMO keen to preserve its tenuous grip on minority power and desperate to control the message amid dwindling public support for the war.

MacKay, who took over Defence from Gordon O'Connor in August 2007, was blindsided by the Harper government's decision later that year to set up a blue-ribbon panel to review the mission headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, Brewster writes.

"It wasn't discussed with the broader cabinet, no," the minister says in the interview. "I didn't know all of the specifics."

Jack Layton knew even less. In interviews before his death earlier this year, the late NDP leader confides to Brewster that Harper never once tried to engage him in an in-depth discussion about Canada's deepening involvement in a deadly counterinsurgency effort.
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Bizarro Earth

UK seeks end to Human Rights Act?


Press TV
Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:53 UTC
Theresa May
© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images EuropeTheresa May
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May says she would like to see an end to the Human Rights Act in comments that threaten to trigger a row within the coalition government.

"I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it," she told the Sunday Telegraph.

The Human Rights Act is the piece of regulation that integrates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law; May claims that it prevents the Ministry from easily dealing with what she called foreign criminals and suspects of terrorism.

May's remarks risk dividing the coalition as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged during the Liberal Democrat party conference last month that they will not allow any major changes in the Act.

"Let me say something really clear about the Human Rights Act. In fact I'll do it in words of one syllable: It is here to stay," he said.
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