LulzSec and Anonymous police and FBI investigation sees two more arrested

 

Two men arrested in South Yorkshire and Wiltshire as part of investigation into international online hacking gangs

LulzSec, which uses this logo, and Anonymous are being investigated by UK police and the FBI over claims the online groups hacked websites.

Two men have been arrested in connection with online attacks by hacking gangs Anonymous and LulzSec, Scotland Yard said.

The men, aged 24 and 20, were arrested on Thursday in Mexborough, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, and Warminster, Wiltshire, for conspiring to commit offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Scotland Yard said the arrests were part of a continuing investigation in collaboration with the FBI, South Yorkshire Police and other law enforcement bodies, into activities of Anonymous and LulzSec, especially in connection with suspected offenses under the cover of online identity "Kayla".

A spokesman said the men were arrested separately. He said the Doncaster address was searched by police and computer equipment was removed for forensic examination.

Detective Inspector Mark Raymond from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), said: "The arrests relate to our inquiries into a series of serious computer intrusions and online denial-of-service attacks recently suffered by a number of multi-national companies, public institutions and gPressovernment and law enforcement agencies in Great Britain and the US.

"We are working to detect and bring before the courts those responsible for these offenses, to disrupt such groups, and to deter others thinking of participating in this type of criminal activity."

In a separate investigation two men were charged on Thursday over online attacks by Anonymous, Scotland Yard said.

Christopher Weatherhead, 20, from Northampton, and Ashley Rhodes, 26, from Kennington, south London, have been charged with conspiracy to carry out an unauthorized act in relation to a computer.

Police had already charged a youth from Chester aged 17 and student Peter David Gibson, 22, from Hartlepool, in relation to the same offences.

All four will appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates Court on September 7.

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DHS warns of planned Anonymous attacks

Bulletin from feds highlights group's Occupy Wall Street, Operation Facebook, Project Mayhem campaigns

 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today issued a somewhat unusual bulletin warning the security community about the planned activities of hacking collective Anonymous over the next few months.

The bulletin, issued by the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), warns financial services companies especially to be on the lookout for attempts by Anonymous to "solicit ideologically dissatisfied, sympathetic employees" to their cause.

Anonymous has recently used Twitter to try and persuade dissatisfied employees within the financial sector to give them information and access. Though such attempts appear to have been largely unsuccessful so far, "unwilling coercion through embarrassment or blackmail may be a risk to personnel," the bulletin warned.

The unclassified DHS communique is addressed broadly to those in charge of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection and also warns about new tools that Anonymous has said it plans to use in launching future attacks.

One of the attack tools highlighted in the alert is dubbed #RefRef, which is said to be capable of using a server's resources and processing power to conduct a denial of service attack against itself.

"Anonymous has stated publicly that the tool will be ready for wider use by the group in September 2011," the DHS said. "But though there have been several publicly available tools that claim to be versions of #RefRef, so far it's unclear "what the true capabilities of #RefRef are."

The bulletin also cites the so-called Apache Killer tool that can be used to launch denial of service attacks. The DHS alert also warns of three cyber attacks and civil protests it says are planned by Anonymous and affiliated groups.

The first attack, dubbed Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is scheduled for Sept. 17.

The so-called 'Day of Rage' protest was first announced by a group called Adbusters in July and is being actively supported by Anonymous. The organizers of OWS hope to get about 20,000 individuals to gather on Wall Street on that day to protest various U.S. government policies.

The protest is being coordinated through Adbuster's website as well as via an Anonymous YouTube video that exhorts followers to "flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months," the DHS noted in its alert.

Similar rallies targeting financial districts are being planned in Madrid, Milan, London, Paris and San Francisco, it said,

Adbusters is planning another protest in October. That event, to mark the 10th anniversary of war in Afghanistan, is slated to be held at the Washington DC National Mall.

The two other planned attacks by Anonymous that are highlighted in the bulletin are, Operation Facebook a November 11 protest targeting the social media site for its alleged privacy violations, and Project Mayhem, scheduled for Dec 21, 2012.

Though there has been little dialogue or hints about the specific tactics, techniques and procedures that Anonymous plans to employ for Project Mayhem there are indications that it could involve physical disruption and targeting of information systems.

The name Project Mayhem is derived from the movie Fight Club in which "the main character is ultimately responsible for destroying buildings belonging to major financial institutions with explosives," the bulletin said.

The bulletin is testimony of sorts to the kind of attention that Anonymous has managed to attract following cyberattacks and related protests in recent years. The group has been associated with a string of high-profile attacks against organizations such as HB Gary, Booz-Allen Hamilton, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency

Though members of Anonymous are thought to have been associated with several "maliciously intolerant cyber and physical incidents" in the past, of late they have evolved to "what appears to be a hactivist agenda."

"Anonymous has shown through recently reported incidents that it has members who have relatively more advanced technical capabilities who can also marshal large numbers of willing, but less technical, participants for DDOS activities," the DHS said.

 

 

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Unredacted US embassy cables available online after WikiLeaks breach

 

Guardian denies allegation in WikiLeaks statement that journalist disclosed passwords to archive

 Unredacted US embassy cables have been made available online after a security breach. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

A security breach has led to the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables being made available online, without redaction to protect sources.

WikiLeaks has been releasing the cables over nine months by partnering with mainstream media organisations.

Selected cables have been published without sensitive information that could lead to the identification of informants or other at-risk individuals.

The US government warned last year that such a release could lead to US informants, human rights activists and others being placed at risk of harm or detention.

A Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables. The user is believed to have found the information after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, all of which cited a member of rival whistleblowing website OpenLeaks as the original source of the tipoffs.

The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais were the first five news organisations to publish stories based on the documents, allegedly leaked by US soldier Bradley Manning, in December 2010.

WikiLeaks published a statement blaming the documents' release on the Guardian's book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, by investigations editor David Leigh and Luke Harding, published in February 2011.

The statement, released on WikiLeaks's official Twitter feed, alleged: "A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the state department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course." The Guardian denies WikiLeaks's allegations.

WikiLeaks said it contacted the US state department on 25 August to warn that the full publication of cables may be imminent and to check whether the department's programme to notify those named in the documents had been completed. Julian Assange was said to have had a 75 minute phone conversation with Cliff Johnson, a legal advisor at the department, but was refused a face-to-face meeting to exchange further information.

The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. This is considered a basic security precaution when handling sensitive files. But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music. This file's contents were never publicised, nor was it linked online to WikiLeaks in any way.

A statement from the Guardian said: "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way.

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.

"It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.

"No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."

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Germany Prostitutes Can Now Pay Tax Anonymously Conveniently

 

The German city of Bonn has put 'parking meters' on the streets where prostitutes can pay their nightly taxes.

 

BERLIN — The city of Bonn has begun collecting taxes from prostitutes with an automated pay station similar to a parking meter, proving again that German efficiency knows few if any bounds.

 

Bonn is not the only city in Germany to charge such a tax, but it is the first to hit upon the idea of a ticket machine that prints out receipts for the nightly flat fee of 6 euros (currently about $8.65) for the privilege of streetwalking. The meter went into service over the weekend, and by Monday morning had collected $382 for the city’s coffers.

Prostitution is legal in Germany; the Reeperbahn in Hamburg is one of the largest red-light districts in Europe. Attempts are often made to regulate the industry, unionize the workers and tax the proceeds, but they are not always effective, given both the discretion and the unpredictability that are inherent in the business.

Street prostitution as practiced in Bonn, once the capital of West Germany and a town better known for sleepiness than sexiness, would be unfamiliar to many people outside Germany for its unusual degree of organization and institutionalization.

The women wait for customers on a stretch of the Immenburgstrasse in a largely industrial part of the city. In addition to the Siemens-built meter machine, which cost $11,575 including installation, the city has built special wooden garages nearby where customers can park their cars and have sex.

“They are called, in fairest and finest administrative High German, ‘performance areas,’ but I believe the Italian prime minister would say ‘bunga bunga,’ ” said Monika Frömbgen, a spokeswoman for the city. Still, she said, the serious issue that the meter was intended to address boils down to tax fairness.

“The women in the bordellos and the sauna clubs also pay the tax, and so should those working on the streets,” Ms. Frömbgen said.

The city estimates that it has 200 sex workers, of whom about 20 ply their trade on the street. The Bonn government spends $116,000 a year for a private security company to guard the area and to provide security for the sex workers.

Under the new meter system, street prostitutes must purchase the tickets to work between the hours of 8:15 p.m. and 6 a.m. Leaflets explaining the system, translated into several languages, are handed out to the prostitutes. After one warning, a sex worker caught working without a ticket would be fined up to $145.

Opinion was divided Wednesday on Bonn’s blocklong strip where the women cruise for customers.

“The other night I worked all night but didn’t get any work, but I still had to pay it,” said a young woman from Hungary who gave her name only as Monica and said she thought the new system “stinks.”

Vero, a middle-age woman who spoke Italian but no German, said the tax was “proper.”

“It’s like rent, food or all the other things everybody has to pay for,” said the woman, who declined to give her last name.

Franz-Reinhard Habbel, a spokesman for the German Association of Cities and Municipalities, said he expected other cities “to follow Bonn’s example.” The country’s 11,000 municipalities are struggling under a combined $11 billion in debt and are searching for new, “relatively simple” sources of income, he said.

Advocates for sex workers say the tax is unfair because prostitutes in Germany already pay income taxes. But the meter itself is not an issue, said Mechthild Eickel, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Alliance of Counseling Centers for Sex Workers. “An automat is no worse than a person,” she said. 

 

 

 

 

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Amazing Paraplegic Pilot Flies Microlight Plane Solo From UK To Australia

A British paraplegic pilot has touched down in Sydney after flying all the way from the UK in a microlight plane! Dave Sykes covered nearly 12,000 miles (19,312 kilometres) after leaving the northern English city of York on April 28.

A British paraplegic has successfully flown from England to Australia on his own in a microlight. The journey of nearly 12,000 miles took Yorkshireman Dave Sykes more than four months.

 

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Swedish vodka maker hits Absolut record

Absolut Vodka smashed previous production records during the past fiscal year, shipping out 99 million liters of the popular distilled spirit from its factory in southern Sweden, the company reported on Thursday.

Absolut, exclusively produced in the small municipality of Åhus in Skåne, broke production records during the past fiscal year, according to the annual report for Pernod Ricard, the parent company of The Absolut Company.

Both sales and sales volume increased by 6 percent.

This means that 11 million 9-liter cases, representing 99 million liters were produced, thus setting a new record for the distillery in Åhus.

That breaks down to more than 600,000 bottles produced every day.

Absolut Vodka , representing more than 400 years of vodka-making tradition, is produced from a hardy winter wheat found in Åhus.

Every bottle contains more than one kilogram of the grain.

The precursor to today’s Absolut Vodka, “Absolut Rent Brännvin" (Absolute Pure
Vodka), was introduced in 1879 by the Swedish entrepreneur and legend, Lars Olsson Smith, also known as “The Vodka King,” who used a continuous distillation process.

Since its launch in 1979, Absolut Vodka has risen to fourth largest spirits brand in the world.

It’s parent company, Pernod Ricard, claims a worldwide leading position in premium and prestige spirits, with more than €7,000 million ($10,000 million) in net sales and 18,000 employees across 70 countries.

Other brands owned by the wine and spirit giant include Ricard pastis, Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish Whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin, Kahlúa and Malibu liqueurs, Mumm and Perrier-Jouët champagnes, among others.

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Formula 1  Calendar 2012 without Turkey

No winning photo from Istanbul next year

The motor sports World Council of the International Automobile Federation (FIA) announced on Wednesday the race calendar for the Formula 1- WC 2012 adopted

It is no longer in contrast to the current season to Turkey. For the U.S. return as planned on the F1 Map back. The Grand Prix will be held on 18th in Austin, Texas November as the penultimate race of the season a week before the final, Brazil.

The first event on 18th Australia in March. The canceled this year because of political turmoil Bahrain Grand Prix returns to the calendar, is on 22 April 2012 as the fourth race of the season on the program. The World Championships 2012 comprises the first time in the history of Formula 1 20 races. Already this year 20 Grand Prix had been planned, due to the elimination of the launch in Bahrain, but only 19 races remaining. Of them have gone 12^th

The new U.S. Grand- Prix ​​in Austin was originally scheduled for June, the heat in Texas in November but should be much more bearable. The penultimate race of the season will make the team but remains a logistical challenge. After the race already in Japan and South Korea (7 and 14 October 2012) and India and Abu Dhabi (October 28 and November 4) held at weekly rhythm lie, even between U.S. and Brazil, only six days. The racing teams have in the "back- to- back "- Not only their race cars, but for the most part the ship motorhomes.

Turkey was definitely no room in the calendar. The Turks had since 2005 in the north-east of the Bosphorus Istanbul Park Metropolis one races. The Spectator Response was always, however, been disappointing. The decision for the new racing program is loud FIA Information please unanimously.

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