Tag Archives: hacking

Reuters reports: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday raised more questions about Russia’s reported role in cyber attacks on U.S. political parties and individuals as well as the timing of the White House’s response under President Barack Obama. “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House waite so long to act? Why did they only …

NBC News reports: U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked …

Mediaite reports: During an interview on CNN today, Republican National Committee spokesperson Sean Spicer essentially blamed Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for Russians hacking his email, stating that if it weren’t for him and others behaving badly none of the hacking would have occurred. Speaking to host Wolf Blitzer, Spicer was asked about the CIA’s assessment that Russia intervened in …

Via Mediaite: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest fielded a lot of questions today on reports of Russian interference in the election. “You didn’t need a security clearance,” he said, “to figure out who benefited from malicious Russian cyber activity.” Earnest even said of Donald Trump, “He called on Russia to hack his opponent… so he certainly had a pretty good …

Politico reports: Hillary Clinton’s top political adviser John Podesta said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election. “The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution …

Politico reports: Ambassador John Bolton claimed Sunday that hacks during the election season could have been “a false flag” operation — possibly committed by the Obama administration itself. In an interview with Fox News’ Eric Shawn, Bolton questioned why FBI Director James Comey said during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server, there was no direct evidence found of foreign …

NBC News reports: Reince Priebus vehemently denied that the Republican National Committee had been hacked alongside its Democratic counterpart as part of what the CIA concluded was a Russian attempt to influence the outcome of the United States election in Donald Trump’s favor. “Number one, the RNC was not hacked. I don’t know of any employees, on any of their …

The Hill reports: Donald Trump aide Kellyanne Conway on Sunday said the president-elect “absolutely respects” the intelligence community. “He’s made very clear he’s going to put his own people in there as well,” she added on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” Conway noted that Trump has said the notion that Russia intervened in the election to help him win the presidency …

Politico reports: President-elect Donald Trump called reports that the Russian government endeavored to help him win last month’s presidential election “ridiculous” and “just another excuse” in an interview that aired Sunday morning, once again questioning the intelligence community he will take charge of when he is inaugurated next month. Trump told “Fox News Sunday” that he suspected that Democrats are …

Via Mediaite: CNN’s Michael Smerconish spoke with Sean Spicer of the Republican National Committee today, and the conversation became a fiery shouting match over the CIA’s reported conclusion that Russian hackers meddled with the election. Spicer argued that WaPo’s report did not contain a formal assessment, and the Times was wrong because their piece ignored evidence provided by the RNC …

The Guardian reports: US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in last month’s presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, according to reports. A secret CIA assessment found that Russian operatives covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate’s victory, the Washington Post reported, citing officials briefed on the …

David Corn reports at Mother Jones: Congressional Democrats are increasing the pressure for an official and public inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), a Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the House government oversight committee, announced they were introducing legislation to create …

But only because the US hasn’t yet formally asked. ABC News reports: Ecuador’s Foreign Minister says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should receive guarantees that he will not be extradited to the US if he faces justice in Sweden after four years of living in the South American nation’s embassy in London. Mr Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing a flood …

Kurt Eichenwald reports at Newsweek: Trump has been surrounded by advisors and associates with economic and familial links to Russia. The publicized connections and contacts between former campaign manager Paul Manafort with Ukraine have raised concerns. Former Trump advisor Carter Page is being probed by American and European intelligence on allegations that he engaged in back-channel discussions with Russian government …

NBC News reports: The U.S. government believes hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to undermine next week’s presidential election and is mounting an unprecedented effort to counter their cyber meddling, American officials told NBC News. The effort is being coordinated by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, but reaches across the government to include the CIA, …

Reuters reports: The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said. U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, …

SC Magazine reports: Xiongmai, a Chinese electronics firm, has initiated a product recall, prompted by the large DDoS attack that caused large internet websites such as GitHub, Reddit and Spotify to grind to a halt on the east coast of the US, and mainland Europe this past Friday. The root distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), was believed to be …

From cyber security expert Brian Krebs: A massive and sustained Internet attack that has caused outages and network congestion for a large number of Web sites was launched with the help of hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as CCTV video cameras and digital video recorders, new data suggests. That’s because while many of these devices allow users to …

This morning numerous major sites were inaccessible across the northeast of the United States after unknown hackers launched a denial of service attack on a major DNS host. The initial attack was “mitigated” in about two hours but another wave launched early this afternoon is presently also affecting accessibility on much of the west cost. Politico reports that your earlier …

At this writing many major sites are unreachable in much of the eastern United States. Gizmodo has the story: Twitter, Spotify and Reddit, and a huge swath of other websites were down or screwed up this morning. This was happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. …