Jolla on Monday unveiled the first smartphone designed to run a Meego-inspired operating system called Sailfish. The Finnish mobile handset company, comprised of ex-Nokia employees, believes the self-titled mobile device will be a strong candidate in the mid- to high-end smartphone market. … Read More
IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Director Obama Partisan
Holly Paz, director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements at the IRS, is an Obama supporter who donated $2,000 to his election campaign in 2008, according to a National Review Online search of the Open Secrets database. … Read More
US nuclear weapons researchers targeted with Internet Explorer virus
The party responsible for the recently discovered security flaw in the IE 8 browser has yet to be identified, but researchers believe hackers employed a watering-hole attack to specifically target US government employees and contractors who browse a website regularly frequented by staffers in the nuclear sector.Microsoft confirmed on Friday the existence of a zero-day code-execution exploit in IE 8 that, if not fixed, could allow hackers to install malware on a victim’s machine by employing so-called “drive-by attacks.” Indeed, the flaw was discovered only after an unknown number of computers became infected with a backdoor Trojan that was reportedly installed on the machines of web surfers who used IE 8 to navigate to a specific page on the US Department of Labor website.“The Department of Labor site was rigged to redirect users to another site that infected computers with an iteration of the infamous ‘Poison Ivy’ Trojan, which was able to avoid detection by all but two major anti-virus products,” Ben Weitzenkorn wrote Monday for TechNews Daily.According to Microsoft, “The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer.””An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website,” the company said.Researchers aren’t sure yet who exploited the flaw and are still assessing any damages incurred by the issue, but they have managed to identify the single Department of Labor webpage that was compromised by hackers: the DoL’s Site Exposure Matrices (SEM) page, described by the agency as “a repository of information on toxic substances present at Department of Energy (DOE) and Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) sites.” The SEM page contains information about the links between toxic substances and recognized occupational illnesses, and was designed to be used by staffers routinely exposed to nuclear elements and other hazardous materials.”The target of this attack appears to be employees of the Dept of Energy that likely work in nuclear weapons research,” security company Invincea announced on their blog.Speaking to NextGov, Invincea founder and former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program manager Anup Ghosh said, “We can infer the target of the attack are [Energy Department] folks in a watering hole style attack compromising one federal department to attack another.”Suspects have yet to be identified, but watering hole attacks targeting specific groups of victims have been routinely used by state-sponsored cybercriminals in the past. Security firm AlienVault added that they believe the attack was carried out by “DeepPanda,” a group of hackers alleged to have previously engaged in cyber espionage on behalf of the Chinese government.Separate from the exploit, the Pentagon released on Monday a 92-page report, the 2013 “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” which discusses in detail the potential cybercrimes that could attack US computers courtesy of the Far East.The Labor Department has since taken the SEM page down, but the damage may indeed have already been done. Although the exploit in IE was only discovered last week, security firm CrowdStrike said its research led them to believe the campaign started in March and infected victims in 37 countries, including primarily machines in the US. Only computers that used version 8 of Internet Explorer and Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 to navigate to the SEM page were vulnerable, but IE is the most widely used browser in America with a market share of roughly 42 percent, according to StatCounter’s April 2013 analysis. … Read More
The U.S. Government Is Monitoring All Phone Calls, All Emails And All Internet Activity
Categories: Controlling the Herd, Crime/Police State, Editor’s ChoiceBig Brother is watching everything that you do on the Internet and listening to everything that you say on your phone. Every single day in America, the U.S. government intercepts and stores nearly 2 billion emails, phone calls and other forms of electronic communication.(Read more…) … Read More
Karzai denies CIA cash bought support of Afghan warlords, asks US to continue payments
Karzai’s statement comes less than one week after The New York Times alleged that Afghan top officials had been receiving payments from the CIA and that some of those funds were used to bribe warlords into supporting Karzai’s US-backed government, ahead of NATO’s troop withdrawal next year. While Karzai openly admitted to receiving the cash, he adamantly denied that any of it was used to buy the loyalty of warlords. Instead, he said the money – which was allegedly packed in suitcases, backpacks, and plastic shopping bags – was used for such causes as healthcare and scholarships.”This money was not given to warlords,” he told a Saturday press conference in Kabul. “The major part of this money was spent on government employees such as our guards…it has been paid to individuals, not movements…we give receipts for all these expenditures to the US government.” Karzai declined to confirm just how much money his office received each month from the CIA, although he previously stated that the cash was a “small amount.”“Yes, the office of the national security has been receiving support from the United States for the past 10 years,” Karzai said in an earlier statement. “Monthly. Not a big amount. A small amount which has been used for various purposes.” However, Karzai’s former and current advisers said that tens of millions of dollars were given to the leader over the past decade. Despite protests in Washington and criticism from Afghan opposition groups, Karzai asked US officials on Saturday to continue the cash deliveries.”Just this morning I met with the station chief of the CIA in Kabul and I thanked him for the support given to us in the past 10 years and I asked him to continue the support,” Karzai said. He added that the money was “flowing to” Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.”In the situation of Afghanistan where there is so much need…it proves extremely helpful.” After 11 years of fighting in Afghanistan, international experts worry that NATO’s planned 2014 pullout will leave Kabul unable to survive a Taliban onslaught – and that Karzai’s government won’t last without US support. A report by a British Ministry of Defense think tank, which was released in March, said NATO troops will leave Afghanistan in a fragile state.“The country will again be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base, heavily dependent upon external aid,” the report said. … Read More
Portugal to lift retirement age, working hours in austerity drive
Lisbon plans to raise the retirement age and make public sector employees work an extra hour daily as part of a package of new spending cuts needed to avoid bankruptcy and retain the euro as its currency. Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho unveiled the new austerity measures in an effort to meet the demands of international creditors, which envisions the redundancy of some 30,000 public sector jobs, together with the introduction of a 40-hour work week for civil servants and lifting the retirement age to 66. The government also has plans to save money by spending less on pensions and healthcare. The plan, which is slated to go into effect next year, would save 4.8 billion euro over three years. Coelho believes the measures will prove Portugal’s political willingness to remain in the eurozone.”With these measures, our European partners cannot doubt our commitment,” Coelho said in a televised address on Friday. “The choice is not between austerity and no austerity.”Not meeting the terms would cause Portugal to leave the euro and have catastrophic consequences for all, he added.Austerity measures in Portugal, as elsewhere in the European Union, have proved very unpopular and have sparked large protests, but not on the same level of violence as witnessed in Greece and Italy.Although the controversial proposal must still be debated with the opposition party and labor unions, the government has the authority to push it through.Portugal received a 78-billion-euro bailout from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2011, and now it must come through on pledges that it will cut back on government spending to keep the financial assistance flowing.Deeper spending cuts, however, may prove a complicated juggling act for the government as unemployment remains stuck at nearly 18 per cent – a record high – and the economy is expected to contract for a third consecutive year in 2013.Last month, the Portuguese Constitutional Court rejected more than 1 billion euro (US$1.3 billion) of proposed cuts, which included the cancellation of holiday bonuses for public workers. That forced the right-leaning government to search elsewhere for savings – though it has ruled out raising taxes.”We will not raise taxes to correct the budgetary problem resulting from the Constitutional Court’s decision,” Coelho said.”The way must be through the structural reduction of public spending.” Meanwhile, Portugal’s main Socialist opposition party has accused the government of inflicting excessive austerity on Portugal at the expense of the country’s lower income demographic groups.Although the political opposition will certainly attempt to block the new cuts, it will be difficult for the courts to overrule them.Average wages in the public sector are greater than in the private sector and its employees will now work eight-hour work days – about the same as in the private sector.”This time the government may well escape getting the plan rejected by the court as it is now trying to follow the constitutional principle of equality, which brought down the measures last time,” political analyst Antonio Costa Pinto told Reuters.And while the plan will probably cause more social strife, protests are unlikely to alter the government’s resolve in reducing the deficit, Costa Pinto said.The center-right coalition government enjoys a comfortable majority in parliament.Robert Bridge, RT … Read More
Pentagon to grant security clearance to select Apple, Samsung devices
Department of Defense employees will soon be able to use smartphones from Apple and Samsung on the job. Specifically, Apple’s iPads and iPhones as well as Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones will be granted security approval from the Pentagon according to sources familiar with the plans as first reported by The Wall… … Read More
