Tag Archive for: WAVYcom

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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Stay or go? Fence, Guard pose Capitol security questions – WAVY.com

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Nobody, it seems, wants to keep the security fence around the U.S. Capitol anymore — except the police who fought off the horrific attackon Jan. 6.

Lawmakers call the razor-topped fencing “ghastly,” too militarized and, with the armed National Guard troops still stationed at the Capitolsince a pro-Trump mob laid siege, not at all representative of the world’s leading icon of democracy.

“All you have to do is to see the fencing around the Capitol to be shocked,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said in an interview Friday.

How to protect lawmakers, while keeping the bucolic Capitol grounds open to visitors has emerged as one of the more daunting, wrenching questions from deadly riot. Not since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has security been so elevated, and the next steps so uncertain, for the Capitol complex.

Five people died after the mob stormed the building trying to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election over Republican Donald Trump. The former president was impeachedby the House, and acquitted by the Senate, for inciting the insurrection.

The U.S. Capitol Police has asked for the fencing and the National Guard to remain, for now.

Police officers are working grueling round-the-clock overtime shifts after being overrun that day, engaging at times in hand-to-hand combat with rioters outfitted in combat gear and armed with bats, poles and other weaponry. One woman was shot and killed by police and an officer died later, among scores of police injured in what officials have said appeared to be a planned and coordinated assault.

With warningsof another attack in early March by pro-Trump militants and threats on lawmakers that have nearly doubled since the start of 2021, the police, the Pentagon and lawmakers themselves are wrestling with how best to secure what has been a sprawling campus mostly open to visiting tourists and neighborhood dog walkers alike.

“The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th forever changed how we look at the ‘People’s House,’” acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said in written testimony before Congress in February.

She said that even before the…

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