Special counsel Robert Mueller will make his first public statement on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election at 11 a.m. ET.
Watch the statement and CNN analysis on https://t.co/kE2PnwqItJ https://t.co/5KTjhkcAiL pic.twitter.com/v9UBWGtyjW
— CNN (@CNN) May 29, 2019
At 4pm Irish time.
Watch proceedings here
Update:
A pressure cooker last night.
Sido writes:
The main news in today’s Guardian is that the American NSA pay UK GCHQ lots of money for intelligence, The UK’s lax snooping laws, and the fact that they are not constrained about spying on Murican citizens, means that they can do just that.
The really funny story though, is about some unfortunate family in New York, who had been looking to purchase a pressure cooker for cooking lentils, and had also been browsing back packs. The teenage son had also looked at details of the Boston bombings.
They were visited by FBI agents in three black SUVs. I don’t know if one of them was Special Agent Leeroy Jethro Gibbs, that’s probably confidential, but there you have it.Funny but frightening, Don’t consider buying a pressure cooker in the near future.
New York woman visited by police after researching pressure cookers online (Guardian)
Just like on NCIS…
Several hours ago, the latest hacker group to gain prominence, AntiSec, a subset of Anonymous, disclosed that it had obtained the confidential user data contained in some some 12 million Apple units after hacking an FBI Dell Vostro notebook computer
In other words, the FBI had the personal data of a substantial number of Apple device users, certainly all of which had been obtained without prior permission. Naturally the question here is why on earth does the FBI have this data, and as TNW suggests, “They published the UDID numbers to call attention to suspicions that the FBI used the information to track citizens. Much of the personal data has been trimmed, however, with the hackers claiming to have left enough for “a significant amount of users” to search for their devices.” AntiSec has subsequently released one million of these UUIDs and their associated data.
Thanks Nigel Hives-Toblerone
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3spwzUZfQ
An Irish police officer’s email blunder led to the spectacular leak of a sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard, US Law enforcement said..
An indictment unsealed in a New York court alleges that a teenager linked to the Lulz Security group of hackers was able to eavesdrop on the call after an unnamed officer with Ireland’s national police force forwarded a work message to his insecure personal email account.
The email, which apparently originated from the FBI’s Timothy Lauster, invited dozens of law enforcement officers from across Europe and the United States to coordinate their efforts against LulzSec and its amorphous umbrella group, Anonymous.
The FBI’s indictment said that 18-year-old [first year Trinity College student] Donncha O’Cearrbhaill (above) intercepted the email and used the information in it to access and secretly record the Jan. 17 call, which hackers subsequently broadcast (video above) across the Internet.
FBI: Irish Misstep Led to Conference Call Leak (Associated Press)
How The Leak Happened:
At some point in December 2011 or January 2012, two Garda officers had their personal Gmail accounts compromised by a hacker. No big deal from a security perspective—except that one of the officers “routinely sent e-mail messages from an official Garda e-mail account to one of the Compromised Gmail Accounts,” according to the FBI warrant.
The hacker monitored the Gmail account for weeks. During the month of January alone, Google’s records show that he accessed the compromised accounts 146 times through a VPN called Perfect Privacy. At some point, he saw an e-mailed invitation for a conference call related to Anonymous, and he pounced.
Using the name “anonsacco,” the hacker then entered a private Anonymous IRC chatroom called “#sunnydays” and spoke to the government source tagged only as “CW” in the FBI affidavit today. (CW appears to have been “Sabu,” a notorious Anonymous/LulzSec hacker who had in fact been arrested in June 2011 and then turned into an FBI informant)
Anonsacco opened the dialogue with CW by saying, “Hi mate. Could I ask you for help? I need to intercept the conference call which would be a very good leak. I have acquired info about the time, phone number, and pin number for the conference call. I just don’t have a good VOIP setup for actually calling in to record it… If you could help me, I am happy to leak the call to you solely. I guarantee it will be of interest!!!”
On January 17, using login details in the e-mail, anonsacco joined and recorded the conference call.
On January 28, anonsacco was back in IRC with an offer to share the recording he had made. “I think we need to hype it up,” he wrote. “Let the feds think we’ve been recording the calls. They will be paranoid that none of their communications methods are safe or secure from Anon.” (The Twitter account “AnonymousIRC” took the advice to heart, tweeting, “The #FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now. #OpInfiltration”)
Anonsacco then used an online file-sharing service to send a copy of the recording to CW. It was later uploaded to YouTube by someone else, where it was viewable by the public.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation in the affidavit is that anonsacco/palladium had a history with the police. He had actually been picked up by the Garda on September 1, 2011 in conjunction with another hack. (He later told CW that he had been “v&” or “vanned” by the police, and he expressed surprise that the police showed him detailed transcripts of his conversations.) He was released after his arrest, however, and promptly went back out and infiltrated Garda e-mail accounts. On January 9, 2012, he even boasted to CW that he had “just got into the iCloud [account] for the head of a national police cyber crime unit. I have all his contacts and can track his location 24/7.”
FBI names, Arrests Anon who Infiltrated Its Secret Conference Call (Arstechnica)
If extradited O’Cearbhaill, a socialist activist whose father is independent Offaly county councillor John Carroll, faces a potential ten years in US prison for the first, “computer conspiracy” charge and five years for the “unlawfully intercepted wire communication” charge. The potential penalty in the Irish jurisdiction for cyber crimes in unclear.
Attempts to contact O’Cearbhaill, who is Head of Research at digital marketing company Emarkable, proved unsuccessful. A family member informed the University Times that he remains in Garda custody in Terenure and his computer and phone have been seized. Trinity College Communications Office had “no comment to make” on the matter. The University Times understands that O’Cearbhaill was arrested near to his Halls home [yesterday] morning.
In what the federal authorities on Thursday called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.
But.
Not so fast G-men…
Coming just a day after civil protests in the United States over proposed antipiracy bills, the arrests were greeted almost immediately with digital Molotov cocktails. The hacker collective that calls itself Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Justice Department and several major entertainment companies and trade groups in retaliation for Mega-upload’s seizure. The Justice Department’s site and several others remained inaccessible for much of Thursday afternoon.
From blogger IIIIIIIIIIIIII:
In November 1964, the FBI sent Martin Luther King Jr. a package, containing a letter and several recordings. Besides a few dirty jokes, the recordings mainly consisted of King having sex with women other than his wife. The letter concludes with the warning above. King and others interpreted this as a veiled threat, and a suggestion that he commit suicide. It’s unclear what the 34 days referred to, but presumably it was to prevent King from accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, on 10 December.
On Friday, the FBI shut down three of the world’s most popular online poker sites, replacing their home pages with the screen above.
The three sites are: Poker Stars (based in the Isle of Man); Absolute Poker (based in Costa Rica) and Full Tilt Poker (founded in Los Angeles but relocated to Dublin after the US Congress attempted to shut down online gambling in 2006).
From Joseph Menn at the Financial Times:
US prosecutors have charged the founders of three of the world’s largest online poker companies with bank fraud and other offences, in the largest crackdown since Congress banned electronic gambling transactions in 2006.
In an indictment unsealed on Friday, the government accused the creators of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker of illegal gambling, money laundering and bank fraud.
From Nathaniel Popper and Tiffany Hsu at the LA Times:
Eleven people, including the founders of the three largest poker sites open to U.S. players, were charged by a federal grand jury with bank fraud, money laundering and violating gambling laws. The government also is seeking to recover $3 billion from the companies.
Full Tilt Poker has since responded to the shut-down.
Dublin Ireland (April 15, 2011) – Full Tilt Poker is saddened by today’s charges against its CEO Raymond Bitar and offers its full support to Mr. Bitar and Nelson Burtnick.
Online poker is a game of skill enjoyed by tens of millions of people in the United States and across the world. And, Full Tilt Poker remains as committed as ever to preserving the rights of those players to play the game they love online.
Mr. Bitar and Full Tilt Poker believe online poker is legal – a position also taken by some of the best legal minds in the United States. Full Tilt Poker is, and has always been committed to preserving the integrity of the game and abiding by the law.
“I am surprised and disappointed by the government’s decision to bring these charges. I look forward to Mr. Burtnick’s and my exoneration,” said Mr. Bitar.
Unfortunately, as a result of this action, Full Tilt Poker has decided that it must suspend “real money” play in the United States until this case is resolved. However, Full Tilt Poker will continue to provide peer-to-peer online poker services outside of the United States.
Also: Poker Companies Face Online Fraud Charges (Irish Times)
Via BoingBoing
