Monopolizing The Currency Market By Creating Multiple Blogs and Forums Which all Link Back To A Master Forum. This generates add revenue for the Master forum. Most of these sites are flagged for unethical as well as illegal activitity including Wire fraud, Mail fraud, and Violations Committed under the unlawful sales of securities pursuant to 11 51 301
One of many more lawsuits under investigation ... http://www.dora.state.co.us/securities/pdf_forms/enforcement/amiraq-verified-petition.pdf
Data Being collected @ http://www.iraqidinarmoney.com/theiraqidinar/
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Colo. Tells Firm To Stop Promoting Investments In Iraqi Dinar
October 6, 2011
Colo. Tells Firm To Stop Promoting Investments In Iraqi Dinar
DENVER -- A company selling investments in Iraqi money has been ordered to stop by the state of Colorado.
The cease and desist order is for AmIraq Fund, LP, its general partner, BB&M International Corporation, and the managing director and CEO of both, William Burbank, all of Coronado, Calif.
The AmIraq Fund sold investors on buying Iraqi dinar by saying the dinar is currently undervalued, Iraq has great long-term potential and that the dinar will recover post-war, officials said.
Colorado investors were offering one million dinar for $975, securities officials said. The funds were to be held in an Iraqi bank.
"Promoters often offer investors an opportunity to get in on the ‘ground floor’ of a new idea or concept and make a great economic return,"
Securities Commissioner Fred Joseph said. "Unsuspecting investors can be lured into these schemes, especially if the returns sound good. These offerings require careful research and a strong reminder that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true, nor will it be profitable to anyone but the promoter."
Colorado officials alleged that Burbank was offering securities and that he failed to register its security offering.
Burbank agreed to obey the cease and desist order, but neither admitted to nor denied the allegations, state officials said.
link
and more links
Colo. Tells Firm To Stop Promoting Investments In Iraqi Dinar
DENVER -- A company selling investments in Iraqi money has been ordered to stop by the state of Colorado.
The cease and desist order is for AmIraq Fund, LP, its general partner, BB&M International Corporation, and the managing director and CEO of both, William Burbank, all of Coronado, Calif.
The AmIraq Fund sold investors on buying Iraqi dinar by saying the dinar is currently undervalued, Iraq has great long-term potential and that the dinar will recover post-war, officials said.
Colorado investors were offering one million dinar for $975, securities officials said. The funds were to be held in an Iraqi bank.
"Promoters often offer investors an opportunity to get in on the ‘ground floor’ of a new idea or concept and make a great economic return,"
Securities Commissioner Fred Joseph said. "Unsuspecting investors can be lured into these schemes, especially if the returns sound good. These offerings require careful research and a strong reminder that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true, nor will it be profitable to anyone but the promoter."
Colorado officials alleged that Burbank was offering securities and that he failed to register its security offering.
Burbank agreed to obey the cease and desist order, but neither admitted to nor denied the allegations, state officials said.
link
and more links
Friday, August 19, 2011
'Counterstrike' details U.S. intelligence agencies' cyberwar efforts in Iraq ...
08/19/2011
'Counterstrike' details U.S. intelligence agencies' cyberwar efforts in Iraq
The U.S. military has hacked and temporarily disabled Iraqi insurgent and terrorist-based websites, a little-known tactic that's part of a government "counterstrike" capability, according to a new book.
At least two sites were "knocked off the web" before Iraq's March 2010 national election after "the largest interagency meetings held since" the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, write New York Times reporters Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker in "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda."
The sites, including one sponsored by a "shadowy organization" called the JRTN, "were posting specific operational information that was considered a clear and emerging threat to the security of the vote," they wrote.
At least one site, hosted by a U.S.-based Internet service provider, was shut down after a visit from U.S. lawyers "presenting snapshots of virulent, extremist and violent web pages carried on their server," they wrote. The U.S. provider was not identified.
The book, in chapters called "Terror 2.0" and "The New Network Warfare," sheds light on offensive U.S. cyber operations seldom discussed by U.S. officials. The book's cites tactics such as "overloading," without details.
Pentagon said otherwise
The book's disclosures contrast with the Pentagon's public description of its strategy for blunting cyberattacks, which focuses on improving defenses instead of deterring intrusions or threatening retaliation.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn on July 14 released the Pentagon's "Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace," which outlines five "strategic initiatives." One is to partner with other U.S. agencies and private industry to craft a "whole-of-government" approach.
Left unsaid was that the approach includes a capability to review and approve selective U.S. attacks under a forum known as the "Strategic Operational Planning Interagency Group for Terrorist Use of the Internet," the authors write.
Proposals for attacks are reviewed by what Schmitt and Shanker call a "powerful board of governors assigned to oversee counterstrikes on the Internet," under a "three-way agreement" among the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department "for considering timely attacks on terrorist websites, with the president making the final decision on whether to proceed."
Then-President George W. Bush, in a secret authorization, in effect "declared Iraq an official battle space for America's cyberwarriors," as it became "a real-world laboratory for computer network warfare," they write.
To sow distrust and confusion among jihadists, the United States also uses a technique of "webspoofing" called "false band replacement," where U.S. intelligence officers infiltrate networks to post their own materials.
The agencies have forged an al-Qaida "web watermark" that in effect "makes messages posted on these sites official," Schmitt and Shanker wrote.
One official told them, "We have learned to mimic their watermarks."
The U.S. military also "had the ability to hack into their phones and we would text message guys" telling them "another guy is cheating you out of money," one "senior official" told the reporters.
Radio jam
Pentagon and State officials in Kabul devised an "over-broadcast" technique to jam insurgent pirate radio networks using a strong signal cover to block the adversaries' message and send "counterprogram" coalition messages on adjacent channels.
"The goal is fuzzing out the militants' radio broadcasts so everybody has to turn to another station -- and that station is yours," said a U.S. official. The commercial technology to track, locate and "overbroadcast a signal" costs about $10,000, the official said.
Perhaps the U.S. greatest technological advance in the war on terror is the eavesdropping National Security Agency's supercomputers that can "collect, analyze, sort and store data from a range of communications, in particular cell phone conversations, emails and websites, billions of times faster than humans can."
The NSA computers scan and store the call history of cell phones turned over by thousands of temporary and permanent detainees that pass through U.S. camps in Iraq and Afghanistan or voluntary applicants for government jobs, they write.
"Each of these cell phones can be copied or cloned in seconds" and scanned for any matches to terrorist group members. "It opens the door to a whole command and control network," he told the authors.
http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_18718411
'Counterstrike' details U.S. intelligence agencies' cyberwar efforts in Iraq
The U.S. military has hacked and temporarily disabled Iraqi insurgent and terrorist-based websites, a little-known tactic that's part of a government "counterstrike" capability, according to a new book.
At least two sites were "knocked off the web" before Iraq's March 2010 national election after "the largest interagency meetings held since" the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, write New York Times reporters Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker in "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda."
The sites, including one sponsored by a "shadowy organization" called the JRTN, "were posting specific operational information that was considered a clear and emerging threat to the security of the vote," they wrote.
At least one site, hosted by a U.S.-based Internet service provider, was shut down after a visit from U.S. lawyers "presenting snapshots of virulent, extremist and violent web pages carried on their server," they wrote. The U.S. provider was not identified.
The book, in chapters called "Terror 2.0" and "The New Network Warfare," sheds light on offensive U.S. cyber operations seldom discussed by U.S. officials. The book's cites tactics such as "overloading," without details.
Pentagon said otherwise
The book's disclosures contrast with the Pentagon's public description of its strategy for blunting cyberattacks, which focuses on improving defenses instead of deterring intrusions or threatening retaliation.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn on July 14 released the Pentagon's "Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace," which outlines five "strategic initiatives." One is to partner with other U.S. agencies and private industry to craft a "whole-of-government" approach.
Left unsaid was that the approach includes a capability to review and approve selective U.S. attacks under a forum known as the "Strategic Operational Planning Interagency Group for Terrorist Use of the Internet," the authors write.
Proposals for attacks are reviewed by what Schmitt and Shanker call a "powerful board of governors assigned to oversee counterstrikes on the Internet," under a "three-way agreement" among the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department "for considering timely attacks on terrorist websites, with the president making the final decision on whether to proceed."
Then-President George W. Bush, in a secret authorization, in effect "declared Iraq an official battle space for America's cyberwarriors," as it became "a real-world laboratory for computer network warfare," they write.
To sow distrust and confusion among jihadists, the United States also uses a technique of "webspoofing" called "false band replacement," where U.S. intelligence officers infiltrate networks to post their own materials.
The agencies have forged an al-Qaida "web watermark" that in effect "makes messages posted on these sites official," Schmitt and Shanker wrote.
One official told them, "We have learned to mimic their watermarks."
The U.S. military also "had the ability to hack into their phones and we would text message guys" telling them "another guy is cheating you out of money," one "senior official" told the reporters.
Radio jam
Pentagon and State officials in Kabul devised an "over-broadcast" technique to jam insurgent pirate radio networks using a strong signal cover to block the adversaries' message and send "counterprogram" coalition messages on adjacent channels.
"The goal is fuzzing out the militants' radio broadcasts so everybody has to turn to another station -- and that station is yours," said a U.S. official. The commercial technology to track, locate and "overbroadcast a signal" costs about $10,000, the official said.
Perhaps the U.S. greatest technological advance in the war on terror is the eavesdropping National Security Agency's supercomputers that can "collect, analyze, sort and store data from a range of communications, in particular cell phone conversations, emails and websites, billions of times faster than humans can."
The NSA computers scan and store the call history of cell phones turned over by thousands of temporary and permanent detainees that pass through U.S. camps in Iraq and Afghanistan or voluntary applicants for government jobs, they write.
"Each of these cell phones can be copied or cloned in seconds" and scanned for any matches to terrorist group members. "It opens the door to a whole command and control network," he told the authors.
http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_18718411
Sunday, August 14, 2011
FBI sees mortgage fraud growing as economy stumbles
August 13, 2011
FBI sees mortgage fraud growing as economy stumbles
Washington, Mortgage and investment schemes targeting troubled U.S. homeowners jumped in 2010 and may increase further if the economy does not improve, the FBI said on Friday.
The FBI said in an annual report that pending investigations increased 12 percent in the fiscal year ended September 30, 2010, to 3,129 cases. That in turn was a 90 percent jump from the previous fiscal year.
An FBI official said the trend will continue as more borrowers struggle to pay their mortgages.
"If we have continuing high unemployment and increased numbers of foreclosures, what we see is a greater percentage of the population of existing homeowners being vulnerable to these schemes," said David Cardona, FBI deputy assistant director.
The collapse of the housing boom and the resulting financial crisis has led to a wave of foreclosures. In 2010, 2.5 million foreclosures were initiated, with a similar number expected this year.
The FBI said mortgage origination schemes have declined due to the depressed market for home purchases.
Fraud targeting troubled borrowers, however, has increased and includes loan modification scams and foreclosure rescue schemes in which perpetrators convince borrowers they can save their homes through deed transfers and upfront fees.
Cardona said stock market fluctuations have also resulted in more Americans falling for fake investments.
"It's not a dynamic that we think will self-correct. If anything it could get worse," he said
The report listed "hot spots" for mortgage fraud. California, Florida and New York were among the hottest of those, in line with some of the worst unemployment and mortgage default rates in the country.
Since the FBI was tasked with rooting out criminal activity that exacerbated the housing crisis in 2008, it has been criticized as ineffective against powerful executives of companies tied to the housing and financial industry.
"Although we tried mightily we just didn't hit the mark," Cardona said, referring to the aborted investigation of Washington Mutual Bank in early August.
Cardona said the government struggles to prove criminal intent in corporate crime.
One of the biggest cases so far was a $3 billion fraud case involving the privately held mortgage firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. The chairman of the firm, Lee Farkas, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted on 14 counts of conspiracy, wire, securities and bank fraud.
Cardona said the FBI is hoping the government can win more high-profile cases through civil probes. He said the FBI is cooperating "closer now than ever" with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"We're going to see a quicker return on investment through civil means than showing criminal intent by some of these high-level officials," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-sees-mortgage-fraud-growing-economy-stumbles-215355231.html
FBI sees mortgage fraud growing as economy stumbles
Washington, Mortgage and investment schemes targeting troubled U.S. homeowners jumped in 2010 and may increase further if the economy does not improve, the FBI said on Friday.
The FBI said in an annual report that pending investigations increased 12 percent in the fiscal year ended September 30, 2010, to 3,129 cases. That in turn was a 90 percent jump from the previous fiscal year.
An FBI official said the trend will continue as more borrowers struggle to pay their mortgages.
"If we have continuing high unemployment and increased numbers of foreclosures, what we see is a greater percentage of the population of existing homeowners being vulnerable to these schemes," said David Cardona, FBI deputy assistant director.
The collapse of the housing boom and the resulting financial crisis has led to a wave of foreclosures. In 2010, 2.5 million foreclosures were initiated, with a similar number expected this year.
The FBI said mortgage origination schemes have declined due to the depressed market for home purchases.
Fraud targeting troubled borrowers, however, has increased and includes loan modification scams and foreclosure rescue schemes in which perpetrators convince borrowers they can save their homes through deed transfers and upfront fees.
Cardona said stock market fluctuations have also resulted in more Americans falling for fake investments.
"It's not a dynamic that we think will self-correct. If anything it could get worse," he said
The report listed "hot spots" for mortgage fraud. California, Florida and New York were among the hottest of those, in line with some of the worst unemployment and mortgage default rates in the country.
Since the FBI was tasked with rooting out criminal activity that exacerbated the housing crisis in 2008, it has been criticized as ineffective against powerful executives of companies tied to the housing and financial industry.
"Although we tried mightily we just didn't hit the mark," Cardona said, referring to the aborted investigation of Washington Mutual Bank in early August.
Cardona said the government struggles to prove criminal intent in corporate crime.
One of the biggest cases so far was a $3 billion fraud case involving the privately held mortgage firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. The chairman of the firm, Lee Farkas, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted on 14 counts of conspiracy, wire, securities and bank fraud.
Cardona said the FBI is hoping the government can win more high-profile cases through civil probes. He said the FBI is cooperating "closer now than ever" with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"We're going to see a quicker return on investment through civil means than showing criminal intent by some of these high-level officials," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-sees-mortgage-fraud-growing-economy-stumbles-215355231.html
Monday, August 8, 2011
U.S. Agents, an Aerial Snoop and Teams of Hackers
"Hacker" used to be a bad word. Now, Hackers are being offered positions with the government to combat cyber crime. So, tell all your homies they could turn their lives around and go legit, roger that .. done deal.
August 7, 2011
U.S. Agents, an Aerial Snoop and Teams of Hackers
Defcon, a convention of computer hackers here, was crawling with hackers, digital security professionals and federal agents.
WHY are federal agents hobnobbing with hackers?
Defcon, a convention of computer hackers here, was crawling with them on Friday. They smiled, shook hands, handed out business cards, spoke on a panel called “Meet the Federal Agent 2.0” and were really, really nice.
Naturally, federal agents have been hanging out at hacker gatherings for years to snoop. “Cloak and dagger,” as one put it.
This time they came with another purpose: to schmooze, impress and, perhaps ultimately, lure. The United States Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s Internet defense arm, “has a work force issue,” said Daron Hartvigsen, special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. “We have needs that some in this community can solve. We need folks with skills.”
Government agencies especially need computer professionals with cybersecurity skills. At Defcon, these skills were in ample supply — and they can alternately thrill and scare. There were hackers and lockpickers here, problem solvers and troublemakers. There were attendees with mohawks and blue hair, and some with blue mohawks. One wore a cape. A few wore kilts. Most, whether out of fear or conceit, insisted on using their digital names rather than their real ones: Lost, alien, Abstract.
In their midst were Internet crime investigators representing the Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA. The F.B.I. set up a recruiting table at Black Hat, a related conference of security professionals earlier in the week. A National Security Agency official was to speak to next-generation hackers at a two-day event called Defcon Kids on Saturday.
For the federal agents, it seemed less an aggressive recruiting drive than a public diplomacy mission. They took pains to describe themselves as lovable hackers under their crew cuts.
Ryan Pittman, an ex-cop who now works computer crime cases in the Army’s criminal investigations division, said the convention was an opportunity to whittle away the federal agents’ image as “jackbooted thugs.” Ahmed Saleh, a computer crime investigator with NASA, described a job that might be appealing “if you’re a geek and you want to catch the bad guys.”
There seemed to be plenty of receptive hackers. Christine Banek, 29, a software programmer with plum-colored hair, sidled up to Mr. Saleh after the panel and asked if his agency was still hiring. She said she had applied online and had not heard back. “If they were offering, I would totally take it,” she said. Later, she suggested aloud that the government legalize marijuana. Positive drug tests generally disqualify a candidate from a law enforcement position.
It flies. It spies. It is the color of sunshine, and it has googly eyes.
Meet WASP, the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, one of the star attractions of this year’s Black Hat conference.
It’s a remote-controlled plane with a computer in its belly that can fly up to 400 feet above the ground, snoop quietly on wireless networks below and attack one if it wants to. It can also pretend to be a GSM cellphone tower, eavesdropping on calls and text messages that pass through.
The WASP was built by Richard Perkins and Mike Tassey using hobby materials, including a Styrofoam plane body, a plastic propeller and foam tires, along with circuit boards and wires. The materials are all off the shelf, costing $6,190 — a fraction of the cost of a spy plane, with cyberweapons included.
Its creators eschew the term “spy plane.” “There’s a negative connotation to a spy plane,” Mr. Tassey said. “This was done in an attempt to prove a concept.”
What concept?
“That it can be done,” he said.
His sentiment perfectly embodied the ethos of Black Hat, a spirited gathering of technologists who sometimes make scary things to show that they can be made, and at other times break things to show how badly they need to be fixed.
The bird conjured by Mr. Perkins and Mr. Tassey is barely four feet long and becomes an imperceptible, quietly humming little creature when it hovers overhead. It could be deployed over, say, an office building to sniff out information going across its wireless network. Or if the office network is well secured, the plane could follow an employee on a trip to a neighborhood Starbucks.
The WASP could mimic the cafe’s network, luring the unwitting employee and allowing access to a laptop or cellphone. As Mr. Tassey put it, “In Starbucks, no one can hear your laptop scream.”
They sat at tables along the perimeter of a ballroom in the Rio hotel. Lights were low. Laptops burned like campfires. Men and women hunched over the machines, their backs curved like question marks. Their fingers clicked away furiously.
“This is a spelling bee for hackers,” explained Giovanni Vigna, 42, a professor of computer science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a way to prove your hacking skills.”
Each team, he said, was given the same type of virtual server, with the same strengths and weaknesses. The teams were charged with defending their servers and attacking those of others. Each time a weak spot was attacked, a flag was awarded. The team with the most flags won. Hence, the name of the contest: Capture the Flag. This was the final round.
Contests are a big deal at Defcon. But they’re not all on computers. Defcon is about celebrating tinkering.
There was a “lockpicking village” where interested parties did exactly that: pick locks. “Most of us see locks as puzzles,” Babak Javadi, 26, one of the organizers, explained. He has been taking apart locks since he was a kid, he said, and now runs a security business, specializing in high-security locks.
There was a barber offering mohawks. There were vendors selling “advanced gaming eyewear,” glasses that sell for up to $189 a pair, designed to reduce the glare of a computer screen and ease eye fatigue. There were vendors selling luggage tags that said “Geek on Board.”
In one hall, a competition was under way to invent a beer-cooling contraption. In another, teams were competing to tamper with so-called tamper-resistant materials.
“You’re doing something you’re not meant to do: That’s the essence of hacking,” said Chris Kuivenhoven, 34, a security engineer from Atlanta. “People can use it for good or bad.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/technology/scenes-from-hacker-gatherings-in-las-vegas.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
August 7, 2011
U.S. Agents, an Aerial Snoop and Teams of Hackers
Defcon, a convention of computer hackers here, was crawling with hackers, digital security professionals and federal agents.
WHY are federal agents hobnobbing with hackers?
Defcon, a convention of computer hackers here, was crawling with them on Friday. They smiled, shook hands, handed out business cards, spoke on a panel called “Meet the Federal Agent 2.0” and were really, really nice.
Naturally, federal agents have been hanging out at hacker gatherings for years to snoop. “Cloak and dagger,” as one put it.
This time they came with another purpose: to schmooze, impress and, perhaps ultimately, lure. The United States Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s Internet defense arm, “has a work force issue,” said Daron Hartvigsen, special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. “We have needs that some in this community can solve. We need folks with skills.”
Government agencies especially need computer professionals with cybersecurity skills. At Defcon, these skills were in ample supply — and they can alternately thrill and scare. There were hackers and lockpickers here, problem solvers and troublemakers. There were attendees with mohawks and blue hair, and some with blue mohawks. One wore a cape. A few wore kilts. Most, whether out of fear or conceit, insisted on using their digital names rather than their real ones: Lost, alien, Abstract.
In their midst were Internet crime investigators representing the Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA. The F.B.I. set up a recruiting table at Black Hat, a related conference of security professionals earlier in the week. A National Security Agency official was to speak to next-generation hackers at a two-day event called Defcon Kids on Saturday.
For the federal agents, it seemed less an aggressive recruiting drive than a public diplomacy mission. They took pains to describe themselves as lovable hackers under their crew cuts.
Ryan Pittman, an ex-cop who now works computer crime cases in the Army’s criminal investigations division, said the convention was an opportunity to whittle away the federal agents’ image as “jackbooted thugs.” Ahmed Saleh, a computer crime investigator with NASA, described a job that might be appealing “if you’re a geek and you want to catch the bad guys.”
There seemed to be plenty of receptive hackers. Christine Banek, 29, a software programmer with plum-colored hair, sidled up to Mr. Saleh after the panel and asked if his agency was still hiring. She said she had applied online and had not heard back. “If they were offering, I would totally take it,” she said. Later, she suggested aloud that the government legalize marijuana. Positive drug tests generally disqualify a candidate from a law enforcement position.
It flies. It spies. It is the color of sunshine, and it has googly eyes.
Meet WASP, the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, one of the star attractions of this year’s Black Hat conference.
It’s a remote-controlled plane with a computer in its belly that can fly up to 400 feet above the ground, snoop quietly on wireless networks below and attack one if it wants to. It can also pretend to be a GSM cellphone tower, eavesdropping on calls and text messages that pass through.
The WASP was built by Richard Perkins and Mike Tassey using hobby materials, including a Styrofoam plane body, a plastic propeller and foam tires, along with circuit boards and wires. The materials are all off the shelf, costing $6,190 — a fraction of the cost of a spy plane, with cyberweapons included.
Its creators eschew the term “spy plane.” “There’s a negative connotation to a spy plane,” Mr. Tassey said. “This was done in an attempt to prove a concept.”
What concept?
“That it can be done,” he said.
His sentiment perfectly embodied the ethos of Black Hat, a spirited gathering of technologists who sometimes make scary things to show that they can be made, and at other times break things to show how badly they need to be fixed.
The bird conjured by Mr. Perkins and Mr. Tassey is barely four feet long and becomes an imperceptible, quietly humming little creature when it hovers overhead. It could be deployed over, say, an office building to sniff out information going across its wireless network. Or if the office network is well secured, the plane could follow an employee on a trip to a neighborhood Starbucks.
The WASP could mimic the cafe’s network, luring the unwitting employee and allowing access to a laptop or cellphone. As Mr. Tassey put it, “In Starbucks, no one can hear your laptop scream.”
They sat at tables along the perimeter of a ballroom in the Rio hotel. Lights were low. Laptops burned like campfires. Men and women hunched over the machines, their backs curved like question marks. Their fingers clicked away furiously.
“This is a spelling bee for hackers,” explained Giovanni Vigna, 42, a professor of computer science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a way to prove your hacking skills.”
Each team, he said, was given the same type of virtual server, with the same strengths and weaknesses. The teams were charged with defending their servers and attacking those of others. Each time a weak spot was attacked, a flag was awarded. The team with the most flags won. Hence, the name of the contest: Capture the Flag. This was the final round.
Contests are a big deal at Defcon. But they’re not all on computers. Defcon is about celebrating tinkering.
There was a “lockpicking village” where interested parties did exactly that: pick locks. “Most of us see locks as puzzles,” Babak Javadi, 26, one of the organizers, explained. He has been taking apart locks since he was a kid, he said, and now runs a security business, specializing in high-security locks.
There was a barber offering mohawks. There were vendors selling “advanced gaming eyewear,” glasses that sell for up to $189 a pair, designed to reduce the glare of a computer screen and ease eye fatigue. There were vendors selling luggage tags that said “Geek on Board.”
In one hall, a competition was under way to invent a beer-cooling contraption. In another, teams were competing to tamper with so-called tamper-resistant materials.
“You’re doing something you’re not meant to do: That’s the essence of hacking,” said Chris Kuivenhoven, 34, a security engineer from Atlanta. “People can use it for good or bad.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/technology/scenes-from-hacker-gatherings-in-las-vegas.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Madoff trustee in $1 billion settlement with Tremont
July 28, 2011
Madoff trustee in $1 billion settlement with Tremont
NEW YORK, The trustee seeking money for victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud announced a more than $1 billion settlement with Tremont Group Holdings Inc, which he had accused of missing warning signs of the Ponzi scheme.
Thursday's settlement raises the amount of money trustee Irving Picard said he has recovered for Madoff's victims to $8.6 billion, or roughly half the $17.3 billion lost by customers who filed claims. It requires court approval.
Picard has said Rye, New York-based Tremont, which is part of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co, was the second-largest "feeder fund" group that funneled money to Madoff from its own investors.
He had sued Tremont for $2.1 billion on February 28, accusing it of missing "red flags" and "blindly relying on Madoff to drive their funds' returns" for nearly 15 years.
Tremont and its now-defunct Rye Investment Management unit lost more than $3 billion of client money funneled to Madoff and his firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, whose liquidation is overseen by Picard.
The Tremont accord covers more than one dozen U.S. and foreign investment funds and their affiliates.
Once the more than $1 billion of settlement payments are released from escrow, Picard will allow more than $3 billion of customer claims related to the Rye Select and Tremont funds against the Madoff firm's bankruptcy estate.
The settlement "gives investors in our funds the potential to recover a substantial portion of their losses" from Madoff's fraud, Tremont spokesman Montieth Illingworth said in a statement. "Bringing this matter to a close, with proofs of claim preserved, was the best outcome."
http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=104872686&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281
Madoff trustee in $1 billion settlement with Tremont
NEW YORK, The trustee seeking money for victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud announced a more than $1 billion settlement with Tremont Group Holdings Inc, which he had accused of missing warning signs of the Ponzi scheme.
Thursday's settlement raises the amount of money trustee Irving Picard said he has recovered for Madoff's victims to $8.6 billion, or roughly half the $17.3 billion lost by customers who filed claims. It requires court approval.
Picard has said Rye, New York-based Tremont, which is part of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co, was the second-largest "feeder fund" group that funneled money to Madoff from its own investors.
He had sued Tremont for $2.1 billion on February 28, accusing it of missing "red flags" and "blindly relying on Madoff to drive their funds' returns" for nearly 15 years.
Tremont and its now-defunct Rye Investment Management unit lost more than $3 billion of client money funneled to Madoff and his firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, whose liquidation is overseen by Picard.
The Tremont accord covers more than one dozen U.S. and foreign investment funds and their affiliates.
Once the more than $1 billion of settlement payments are released from escrow, Picard will allow more than $3 billion of customer claims related to the Rye Select and Tremont funds against the Madoff firm's bankruptcy estate.
The settlement "gives investors in our funds the potential to recover a substantial portion of their losses" from Madoff's fraud, Tremont spokesman Montieth Illingworth said in a statement. "Bringing this matter to a close, with proofs of claim preserved, was the best outcome."
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
U.S. Arrests 14 for Roles in PayPal Cyber Attack ...
July 19, 2011 U.S. arrests 14 for roles in PayPal cyber attack
Washington, U.S. authorities on Tuesday arrested 16 people on charges they participated in major cyber attacks, including the crippling of eBay's PayPal website as retribution for dropping WikiLeaks as a client.
FBI agents arrested 14 people in nine states and Washington, D.C., for the PayPal attack, which occurred last December and was allegedly coordinated by the hacking group Anonymous. It was the biggest take down so far tied to the high-profile cyber attack.
Financial institutions like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard withdrew services from WikiLeaks last year after the website published thousands of sometimes embarrassing secret U.S. diplomatic reports that have caused strains between Washington and numerous allies.
Hackers responded with so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks that flooded the companies' websites and rendered them unavailable to legitimate users, according to the indictment filed in California.
PayPal suffered attacks for several days last December.
The 14 individuals were charged with conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison if convicted, and intentional damage to a protected computer, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Law enforcement authorities believe Anonymous is mostly made up of hackers believed to be in their teens and early 20s.
"The fact that they have been tracked back and that some of them have been arrested is a significant development," said Mark Rasch, a former chief of the Justice Department's cyber crimes unit and now director of Cybersecurity and Privacy Consulting for the government technology services firm CSC.
In addition, U.S. authorities executed more than 35 search warrants around the country as part of its investigation into coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department and FBI have been under pressure to crack down on hackers who have stepped up their attacks on corporate and government websites over the last several months in a bid to thwart their activities.
Stewart Baker, a former top official of the Homeland Security department, said the FBI probably gave the case extra attention because of the public taunting the bureau received from Anonymous and related groups.
"It does look like some of these guys (hackers) were just fools. The PayPal attack in particular," said Baker, now at the law firm Steptoe and Johnson LLP. "It looks like these bozos must have just said 'Cool, an attack on PayPal. You can use my machine.'
"I think it makes it a lot less likely that that people will join the next digital lynch mob," he said.
Another related arrest came in New Mexico where an employee for a contractor for AT&T's wireless service faced charges of accessing a computer without authorization by allegedly downloading thousands of documents related to its 4G data network and LTE mobile broadband network.
The data was subsequently downloaded to a file-sharing web site in April and another one of the loosely organized groups of hackers, Lulz Security, subsequently publicized the data breach, the complaint said.
AT&T had no comment on the arrest.
http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=102964380&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281
Washington, U.S. authorities on Tuesday arrested 16 people on charges they participated in major cyber attacks, including the crippling of eBay's PayPal website as retribution for dropping WikiLeaks as a client.
FBI agents arrested 14 people in nine states and Washington, D.C., for the PayPal attack, which occurred last December and was allegedly coordinated by the hacking group Anonymous. It was the biggest take down so far tied to the high-profile cyber attack.
Financial institutions like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard withdrew services from WikiLeaks last year after the website published thousands of sometimes embarrassing secret U.S. diplomatic reports that have caused strains between Washington and numerous allies.
Hackers responded with so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks that flooded the companies' websites and rendered them unavailable to legitimate users, according to the indictment filed in California.
PayPal suffered attacks for several days last December.
The 14 individuals were charged with conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison if convicted, and intentional damage to a protected computer, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Law enforcement authorities believe Anonymous is mostly made up of hackers believed to be in their teens and early 20s.
"The fact that they have been tracked back and that some of them have been arrested is a significant development," said Mark Rasch, a former chief of the Justice Department's cyber crimes unit and now director of Cybersecurity and Privacy Consulting for the government technology services firm CSC.
In addition, U.S. authorities executed more than 35 search warrants around the country as part of its investigation into coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department and FBI have been under pressure to crack down on hackers who have stepped up their attacks on corporate and government websites over the last several months in a bid to thwart their activities.
Stewart Baker, a former top official of the Homeland Security department, said the FBI probably gave the case extra attention because of the public taunting the bureau received from Anonymous and related groups.
"It does look like some of these guys (hackers) were just fools. The PayPal attack in particular," said Baker, now at the law firm Steptoe and Johnson LLP. "It looks like these bozos must have just said 'Cool, an attack on PayPal. You can use my machine.'
"I think it makes it a lot less likely that that people will join the next digital lynch mob," he said.
Another related arrest came in New Mexico where an employee for a contractor for AT&T's wireless service faced charges of accessing a computer without authorization by allegedly downloading thousands of documents related to its 4G data network and LTE mobile broadband network.
The data was subsequently downloaded to a file-sharing web site in April and another one of the loosely organized groups of hackers, Lulz Security, subsequently publicized the data breach, the complaint said.
AT&T had no comment on the arrest.
http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=102964380&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281