Hacks hit embassy, government e-mail accounts worldwide
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A cache found online of usernames and passwords for more than 100 government e-mail accounts includes takings from Iranian, Russian, Indian, U.K., and Kazakh victims.
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Hackers compromised dozens of Department of Homeland Security computers, moving sensitive information to Chinese-language Web sites, congressional investigators said Monday.
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About 140 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to hack into the computer networks of the U.S. government and U.S. companies, a top counterintelligence official said.
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Lost in space A Romanian hacker has been charged with running amok on more than 150 US government computers.â¦
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Attacked by Nigerian Arm Robbers The Lads from Lagos have apparently expanded their repertoire to incorporate hacking into Hotmail accounts.â¦
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Malware arrives in an e-mail message, launches denial of service attack.
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Customers of UK net provider Plusnet are changing their passwords after hackers steal a list of e-mail addresses.
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In recent weeks, China has been accused of hacking the Pentagon as well as British and German government offices.
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Chinese hackers have infiltrated German government computers with spy programmes, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday. via Earth Times
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Internet fraudsters have developed a sophisticated new method of using e-mails to capture internet banking customers&#39; details.
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On eve of Patch Tuesday, hackers jump Word segment of Microsoft Office in second attack.
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(InfoWorld) - Accounts on Google's Gmail can be easily hacked, allowing any past -- and future -- e-mail messages to be forwarded to the attacker's own in-box, a vulnerability researcher said Tuesday. Dubbed a "cross-site request forgery" (CSRF), the Gmail bug was disclosed Tuesday by Petko Petkov, a U.K.-based Web vulnerability penetration tester who has made a name for himself of late. In the past two weeks, Petkov has publicly posted information about critical, zero-day bugs inÂ Apple's QuickTime, Microsoft's Windows Media Player andÂ Adobe Systems' Portable Document FormatÂ (PDF). According to Petkov, who declined to release details about the vulnerability, attackers can use Gmail's filtering feature to exploit the bug. An attack, he said, would start with a victim visiting a malicious Web site while also still logged into his Gmail account. The malicious site would then perform what Petkov called a "multipart/form-date POST" -- an HTML command that can be used to upload files -- to one of the Gmail application programming interfaces, then inject a rogue filter into the user's filter list. Petkov posted a series of screenshots on the Gnucitizen.org site that illustrated one possible attack. "In the example, the attacker writes a filter, which simply looks for e-mails with attachments and forwards them to an e-mail of their choice," Petkov said. "This filter will automatically transfer all e-mails matching the rule. "Keep in mind that future e-mails will be forwarded as well. The attack will remain present for as long as the victim has the filter within their filter list, even if the initial vulnerability, which was the cause of the injection, is fixed by Google," he added. Google did not immediately reply to questions about whether it had confirmed the vulnerability, and if so, when it would patch the problem. At least one user commenting on Petkov's posting, however, claimed that a Firefox extension could block exploits of the Gmail bug. Giorgio Maone, the creator of the popular NoScript add-on, said that his extension blocks CSRF attacks from untrusted sites, which a malicious page likely would be. (NoScript blocks JavaScript, Java, other scripting and executable content from running from untrusted sites; Firefox users can download it from theÂ Mozilla add-on site.) As he did last week when he disclosed a major bug in Adobe's pervasive PDF file format, Petkov again defended his decision to post information about the Gmail flaw without first reporting the vulnerability to Google. The reasoning, however, was oblique: "Let's say that it is just one of my social experiments." Jeremy Grossman, the chief technology officer at San Jose-based WhiteHat Security, said that the Gmail flaw is "especially scary." In an entry to his blog, Grossman explained further: "Web mail accounts are in many ways more valuable than a banking account because they maintain access to many other online accounts (blog, banking, shopping, etc.). [Attacks exploiting this vulnerability would be] simple, silent and extremely clever." Petkov added his own two cents on the bug's implications. "In an age where all the data is in the cloud, it makes no sense for the attackers to go after your box," he said. "It is a lot simpler to install one of these persistent backdoor/spyware filters. Game over! They don't own your box, but they have you, which is a lot better." Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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(InfoWorld) - Usernames and passwords for more than 100 e-mail accounts at embassies and governments worldwide have been posted online. Using the information, anyone can access the accounts that have been compromised. Computer Sweden Â has verified the posted information and spoken to the person who posted them. The posted information includes names of the embassies and governments, addresses to e-mail servers, usernames and passwords. Among the organizations on the list are the foreign ministry of Iran, the Kazakh and Indian embassies in the U.S. and the Russian embassy in Sweden. Freelance security consultant Dan Egerstad posted the information. He spoke openly about the leak when Computer Sweden contacted him. "I did an experiment and came across the information by accident," he said. Egerstad says he never used the information to log in to any of the compromised accounts in order not to break any laws. Computer Sweden confirmed that the login details for at least one of the accounts is correct. Egerstad forwarded an e-mail sent on Aug. 20 by an employee at the Swedish royal court to the Russian embassy. The person who sent the e-mail, in which she declines an invitation to the Russian embassy, has confirmed that she sent the e-mail. "Yes, that is right. We did decline the invitation. As far as I can remember I did send the e-mail," she said. Computer Sweden has not been able to confirm the authenticity of any of the other information that has been posted. "When something like this happens you usually contact people and ask them to fix it. But in this case it felt too big for that, calling to other countries," Egerstad said. Of the compromised accounts, 10 belong to the Kazakh embassy in Russia./p> Around 40 belong to Uzbeki embassies and consulates around the world. Login details for e-mail accounts at the U.K. visa office in Nepal were also posted. Login details for the foreign ministry of Iran, the Kazakh and Indian embassies in the U.S. and the Russian embassy in Sweden were also posted. "I hope this makes them take action. Hopefully, faster than ever before, and I hope they become a bit more aware of security issues," Dan Egerstad says. Computer Sweden has contacted both the Russian and Indian embassies in Stockholm for comment. The Russian embassy confirmed the leaks and says that logins have now been changed. The Indian embassy declined to confirm the information and give comment. Computer Sweden has not published where the login details can be found. The information in this story has been verified by Computer Sweden without using any of the published login details. Computer Sweden is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Several antispam organizations have been targeted by an attempt to knock them offline.
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Online auction house eBay confirms reports that some of its users have been hit by fake e-mails that could steal their account details.
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Email scams from fake foreign officials are still a potent Internet problem.
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Hackers publish more than 6,000 internal e-mails from anti-piracy firm MediaDefender.