Tag Archive for: hack

Swiss police raid over hack on U.S. security-camera company – WAVY.com

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by: JAMEY KEATEN and MATT O’BRIEN, Associated Press

Posted: / Updated:

GENEVA (AP) — Swiss authorities on Monday confirmed a police raid at the home of a Swiss software engineer who took credit for helping to break into a U.S. security-camera company’s online networks, part of what the activist hacker cited as an effort to raise awareness about the dangers of mass surveillance.

The Federal Office of Justice said regional police in central Lucerne, acting on a legal assistance request from U.S. authorities, on Friday carried out a house search involving hacker Tillie Kottmann.

The hacker said online that electronics devices were seized during the raid. The Swiss office declined to specify the location or comment further, deferring all questions to “the relevant U.S. authority.”

The FBI said in a statement Friday it was “aware of the law enforcement activity conducted in Switzerland” but had no further comment.

Kottmann had identified as a member of a group of “hacktivists” who say they were able to view live camera feeds and peer into hospitals, schools, factories, jails and corporate offices for much of Monday and Tuesday last week after gaining access to the systems of California startup Verkada. They said the action was aimed at raising awareness about mass surveillance.

Verkada later locked them out by disabling all internal administrator accounts that the hackers had accessed using valid credentials found online. The company alerted law enforcement and its customers.

Kottmann, who uses they/them pronouns, said on the social media site Mastodon last week that the raid wasn’t specifically about the Verkada hack but was tied to an earlier FBI investigation. Kottmann has previously attracted attention for leaking hacked material to expose security flaws, including from U.S. chipmaker Intel last year.

It’s common for professional cybersecurity researchers to probe online systems for security flaws, though “hacktivists” often take that a step further by publicly exposing security risks or leaked materials to effect social change.

Kottmann didn’t…

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Cyber Codes

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Veracode Hacker Games challenges university students to hack and patch real-life apps online

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Veracode announced the launch of the Veracode Hacker Games. The two-week collegiate competition will challenge computer science and cybersecurity student teams from eight leading universities across the U.S. and the U.K., including University of Virginia, Tufts and University of Warwick, to test their secure coding skills and give them the opportunity to win individual prizes, plus $15,000 in charitable donations for the top universities.

“With mounting pressure on developers to deliver software that is secure and keeps society safe from harmful cyberattacks, gaining foundational security knowledge translates to fewer exploitable problems during production and after deployment,” said Chris Wysopal, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Veracode.

“Yet, training around secure coding is almost absent at the university level. We’ve launched The Veracode Hacker Games to help universities make secure coding a core part of their computer science and cybersecurity curriculum, while giving students an edge when it comes to putting their skills to the test in a real-world environment.”

Industry research paints a picture of the skills gap

By empowering the next generation of software developers to write secure code at the start of the development cycle, organizations will be able to better manage their risk profile.

  • Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, now attacking every 39 seconds according to a recent study by the University of Maryland.
  • According to IBM, the average total cost of a data breach for a company is nearly four million USD.
  • Currently, only 3 percent of U.S. bachelor’s degree graduates have cybersecurity-related skills (National Center for Education Statistics) and in the UK only five undergraduate computer science degrees are certified by the UK’s National Cyber Security Center for cyber security content (National Cyber Security Center).

Ming Chow, Associate Teaching Professor, Tufts University, said, “As educators, our job is to ensure the next generation is fully prepared for the challenges they will face in their careers.

“In this case, software development and security need to become tightly integrated from the start. The Hacker Games…

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How China’s Devastating Microsoft Hack Puts Us All at Risk

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By Matthew Brazil



a group of people on a stage: Michael Borgers/Getty

© Provided by The Daily Beast
Michael Borgers/Getty

During World War II, the Chinese communists cultivated opium in their base area and trafficked it into Japanese-occupied cities. Mao Zedong’s man in charge was one of the biggest master spies of the period, Li Kenong. Though Mao later regretted cultivating the “special product,” which he called “that certain thing,” the drug caused disruption in the enemy rear and benefited the Red-area economy.

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Now it seems to be applying the same strategy in the West’s rear area, causing disruptions to online systems and simultaneously benefiting the Chinese economy with viruses and worms used to steal information from computer systems worldwide. The latest simultaneous exploit against thousands of organizations, disclosed on March 2, was dubbed the Microsoft Exchange hack, exploiting servers that manage email systems. The hack allows perpetrators to read messages of selected targets and then venture deeper into infected networks.

Over 60,000 organizations in the U.S. and at least 280,000 users worldwide using Microsoft Exchange for their email were hacked between Feb. 26 and March 3, according to Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The organizations include defense contractors, universities, state and local governments, policy think tanks, infectious disease researchers, and businesses: anyone that chose to use Microsoft Exchange for their email service.

The unidentified organization behind the hack, assessed by Microsoft to be a Chinese state-sponsored entity, is known by the code name HAFNIUM. The hack has enabled unauthorized access to entire email systems and follow-on access to connected databases that store classified information, trade secrets, the wide range of other proprietary…

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