NSA Leaks Bring New Attention To DOJ Piling On Charges Against Barrett Brown

from the it-all-comes-around dept

A few months back we wrote about the DOJ's overprosecution of Barrett Brown, who helped publicize some of Anonymous/Antisec's hacks that revealed just some of the dirty underbelly of the intelligence-industrial complex, whereby private contractors working with the government would resort to various dirty tricks to try to "expose" Anonymous and destroy the careers of journalists like Glenn Greenwald. The charges against Brown seemed fairly ridiculous. He was charged with "concealing evidence" because he hid a laptop in his mother's dish cabinet. He was charged with threatening law enforcement agents for an admittedly ill-conceived video he posted online, in which he ranted angrily about law enforcement persecution, where he did say that he would shoot those who came after him (as I said, extremely ill-conceived). However, his main "crime," it seems, was to have been closely associated with those involved with the HBGary, Booz Allen and Stratfor hacks that helped to expose some of the tricks pulled by private contractors. And, for that, the feds just kept piling on charge after charge.

With the focus on Ed Snowden suddenly drawing a lot more attention to the role that Booz Allen and other contractors play within and around our intelligence community, some are once again remembering Barrett Brown, and how he was associated with a bunch of hacks that helped expose some of that way before all of this broke -- but mainly because all Brown really seems to have done was help draw the attention of the world to the results of those hacks. And now people are wondering why he's been sitting in prison all this time.

Ahmed Ghappour, attorney for Brown, calls the charges "prosecutorial overreach", and maintains most are related to legitimate journalistic practices, such as cutting-and-pasting a link and refusing to give the FBI access to his sources on a laptop, "a modern-day notebook". In contrast to the FBI's aggressive pursuit of Brown, no probe of the Team Themis project was launched – despite a call from 17 US House representatives to investigate a possible conspiracy to violate federal laws, including forgery, mail and wire fraud, and fraud and related activity in connection with computers. Ghappour asks:

"What length will the government go to prosecute journalists reporting on intelligence contractors? Brown was one of the first to report on the plan to take down Glenn Greenwald.

"It was clear Booz Allen Hamilton [whistleblower Edward Snowden's former employer] was consulting with the NSA, at least supporting their mass-surveillance program, and this was one of the leads Barrett was chasing at the time of the arrest."

Obviously, there are many who will argue that Brown was not a "journalist" and that he must have been much more involved, but it's not clear if that's the case at all. What is clear is that he did help draw attention to a problem that is just now getting a bit more sunlight, and the response of the feds was to throw every possible book they could find at him.

Filed Under: anonymous, antisec, barrett brown, doj, intelligence industrial complex
Companies: booz allen, hbgary federal, stratfor

Publishing Company Admits That Anonymous' UDID Data Leak Was Actually Taken From Their Database

from the the-plot-thickens dept

Last week, there was a big story in which AntiSec, a part of Anonymous, claimed to have downloaded personal info on about 12 million Apple device users from an FBI agent's computer. They released about a million UDIDs to "prove" it, claiming they had a lot more information as well. The FBI quickly denied that the evidence came from them, and Apple later insisted that it had not shared such info with the FBI either. Now, a Florida company, Blue Toad, has told NBC that an analysis of the leaked data and its own data set has made it almost certain that the data actually originated from Blue Toad's servers (whether or not it eventually got onto an FBI machine is a separate issue):

"That's 100 percent confidence level, it's our data," [Blue Toad CEO Paul] DeHart said. "As soon as we found out we were involved and victimized, we approached the appropriate law enforcement officials, and we began to take steps to come forward, clear the record and take responsibility for this.”

Apparently, Blue Toad's technology is used by tons of app publishers to help them build their own digital editions and apps -- which is why it would have access to all of this information.

The researcher who figured out that the data came from Blue Toad, David Schuetz, has pointed out that he can't say for certain if the FBI later got the same data, or where Anonymous got the data, but he does suggest that people should be skeptical of claims like that:

“It does raise questions,” he said. “I think people need to question what they see online, whether it comes from Anonymous or from a news organization or from a politician or from a corporation. You need to not take things at face value right away and jump straight to what you think it says. Somebody says, ‘Oh, this came from the FBI, everybody believes it. Well, let’s think about (it).”

Good advice.

Filed Under: anonymous, antisec, data, fbi, leaks
Companies: blue toad

FBI Denies That Hacked Apple Info Came From FBI

from the then-where-did-it-come-from dept

Earlier today, we wrote about Antisec releasing some Apple UDIDs to show that it had apparently collected info on 12 million Apple users, which it claims to have found when it hacked into an FBI's laptop. As we noted at the time, the file was called "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv," which implied that it came from the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, a vehicle set up to allow companies to share info with the government. However, the FBI is now flat out denying that any of its laptops had been hacked or that it had the info. Antisec is, to say the least, unimpressed: The FBI's denial comes after an earlier, weaker denial, in which they just said they had "no evidence" to support the story. Now they're saying it's "TOTALLY FALSE" (all caps for EMPHASIS). And, of course, Antisec folks are reminding the FBI (and the public) that they're still sitting on 3TB of additional data from this hack -- which suggests that they're planning to release more to prove that the hack really was of an FBI machine. Either way, now that the fight is happening on Twitter, it seems time to grab some virtual popcorn, sit back and watch the fireworks.

Filed Under: anonymous, antisec, apple udids, cybersecurity, fbi, hack, privacy
Companies: apple

Hackers Get Personal Info On 12-Million Apple Users... From An FBI Laptop

from the privacy-schmivacy? dept

Much of the debate over cybersecurity legislation like CISPA and the Cybersecurity Act focused on getting more private companies to "share data" with federal government agencies, including the FBI and the NSA. As we've pointed out time and time again, beyond the basic privacy rules that the bills tended to bulldoze through, any time you increase the sharing of private data, you're only making it that much easier for hackers to access that info because you're putting it in more places -- some of which will almost definitely be insecure. In other words, even though these bills were ostensibly about "protecting" from hack attacks, by increasing the sharing of data, they'd almost certainly open up new attack opportunities and make it easier for hackers to get info.

While neither bill passed (yet), the latest example of what happens when you have widespread data sharing comes from some Antisec hackers, who claim that -- in response to a presentation from the NSA's General Keith Alexander -- they wanted to probe the security of various government agencies, including the FBI. End result? They claim to have hacked into the laptop of FBI agent Christopher Stangl, who has appeared in recruitment videos for the FBI looking to hire "cyber security experts."

The hackers claim that on his laptop, they found a csv file with:

...a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.

The hackers have released 1,000,001 UDIDs and APNS tokens to prove they had the data, stripping out the personal info. The file they found was called: "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" which folks at Hacker News have pointed out likely refers to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance. According to its website, the NCFTA...

functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement with a core mission to identify, mitigate and neutralize cyber crime. In an effort to streamline intelligence exchange, the NCFTA will often organize SME interaction into threat-specific initiatives. Once a significant online scheme is realized and a stakeholder consensus defined, an initiative is developed wherein the NCFTA manages the collection and sharing of intelligence with the affected parties, industry partners, appropriate law enforcement, and other SMEs.

In other words, it's almost exactly what we were told we needed CISPA to enable. In fact, during the CISPA debate, we specifically pointed to the NCFTA to ask why we needed CISPA, since something like that was already possible.

And now it seems to also be showing why CISPA or other similar legislation focused on increased "sharing" of info could actually put many more users at risk, rather than protect them. When the feds are careless with the info they receive from companies, it's going to get hacked. These kinds of things just put a giant target on their back, and now we're seeing the harmful results of such sharing without effective privacy protections.

And the feds want more of this?

Filed Under: antisec, christopher strangl, cispa, cybersecurity, data, data sharing, fbi, ios, keith alexander, ncfta, privacy, udid
Companies: apple