Rogue admin jailed after taking down former employer’s network
Former employee’s response to being fired is a lesson for other companies about the power of their sysadmins
Naked Security – Sophos
Former employee’s response to being fired is a lesson for other companies about the power of their sysadmins
Naked Security – Sophos
On Oct. 30, a long-quiet FBI Twitter account began releasing a torrent of links to documents on the bureau’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) library server. Among the documents were several from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server and a decade-old investigation into the Clinton Foundation over a pardon given by President Bill Clinton at the end of his term. According to an FBI official, the flood of tweets occurred because of a backlog of updates dating to June. The logjam finally broke when a content management system software patch was installed last week.
William J. Clinton Foundation: This initial release consists of material from the FBI’s files related to the Will… https://t.co/Y4nz3aRSmG
— FBI Records Vault (@FBIRecordsVault) November 1, 2016
The timing of the releases—which also included documents from the investigation of former CIA director David Patraeus for leaking classified information and links to video surveillance from the 2015 protests in Baltimore—drew speculation from many on Twitter that someone at the FBI was trying to damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in the final weeks before Election Day. In response to an initial inquiry by Ars, the FBI sent the following statement:
The FBI’s Records Management Division receives thousands of FOIA requests annually which are processed on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis. By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI’s public reading room shortly after they are processed. Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures.
That, however, did not explain the mass of FOIA document tweets beginning on Oct. 30, which also included a number of seemingly random documents, including files from an investigation into inventor Nikola Tesla. Some news outlets, including the politically liberal site ThinkProgress, reported that the FBI had launched an “internal investigation” into the tweets.
Over the past two and a half years, cybercriminals have managed to steal over $ 2.3 billion from thousands of companies worldwide by using little more than carefully crafted scam emails.
Known as business email compromise (BEC), CEO fraud or whaling, this type of attack involves criminals impersonating an organization’s chief executive officer, or some other high-ranking manager, and instructing employees via email to initiate rogue wire transfers.
According to an alert issued earlier this week by the FBI, between October 2013 and February 2016, 17,642 organizations from the U.S. and 79 other countries have fallen victim to BEC attacks. The combined losses amount to over $ 2.3 billion, the agency said.
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Naked Security – Sophos