USAHitman | Conspiracy News |  |
- ICANN hackers sniff around global DNS root zone system
- US investigators link North Korea to Sony hack
- NSA and EFF to square off in court over internet surveillance
- LAPD becomes first major police force to equip all officers with body cameras
- Egyptian cemetery with 1mn bodies stumps scientists
- Pope Francis unexpected hero of US-Cuba relations breakthrough
- Qatar hires ‘$8 fake fans’ to fill empty stadiums
- Obama announces US will establish embassy in Cuba, lift sanctions
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:52 PM PST
 Domain-name overseer ICANN has been hacked and its root zone system compromised, the organization has announced. Attackers sent staff spoofed emails appearing to coming from icann.org. The organization notes it was a “spear phishing” attack, suggesting employees clicked on a link in the messages, and then typed their usernames and passwords into a bogus webpage, providing hackers with the keys to their accounts. No sign of two-factor authentication, then. “The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members,” the announcement reads, noting that the attack happened in late November and was discovered a week later. With those details, the hackers then managed to access a number of systems within ICANN, including the Centralized Zone Data System (CZDS), the wiki pages of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), the domain registration Whois portal, and the organization’s blog. The CZDS provides authorized parties with access to all the zone files of the world’s generic top-level domains. It is not possible to alter those zone files from within the system, but the hackers did manage to obtain all the information of those who are registered with the system, which include many of the administrators of the world’s registries and registrars. In an email sent to every CZDS user, ICANN has warned that “the attacker obtained administrative access to all files in the CZDS including copies of the zone files in the system. The information you provided as a CZDS user might have been downloaded by the attacker. This may have included your name, postal address, email address, fax and telephone numbers, and your username and password.” ICANN says it has found no impact on the other systems hacked. “Based on our investigation to date, we are not aware of any other systems that have been compromised, and we have confirmed that this attack does not impact any IANA-related systems,” it stated. While the hack is nowhere near the same level as the hack on, say, Sony that has seen gigabytes of information leaked onto the internet, it will prove extremely embarrassing to ICANN, which hopes to be handed control of the critical IANA contract next year. It also comes as the US government revealed yesterday the process by which updates to the internet’s root zone files are done through ICANN. When changing the network addresses for the world’s top-level nameservers, the process relies on a secure email from ICANN, or a request sent through a secure web portal, a standard format change request and self-certification that ICANN has followed its own processes. With the email addresses of staff with access to root zone records having been compromised and the hack only noticed a week later, there will be significant concern that had the hackers been luckier or if an IANA staffer – who also useicann.org email addresses – had logged in to the fake site the hackers may have gained access to the system used to make changes at the very top of the internet. ICANN seeks to assure people that it is on top of the situation: “Earlier this year, ICANN began a program of security enhancements in order to strengthen information security for all ICANN systems. We believe these enhancements helped limit the unauthorized access obtained in the attack. Since discovering the attack, we have implemented additional security measures.” Read More Here The post ICANN hackers sniff around global DNS root zone system appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.       |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:39 PM PST
 American officials investigating the source of the recent Sony hack have determined that North Korea is “centrally involved” in the cyber attack against the studio, the New York Times reported. The news comes in the wake of Sony’s decision to cancel the release of its film “The Interview,” which involves a fictional, CIA-sanctioned plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The hackers had previously threatened a violent response if the movie was released — recalling the September 11 attacks — and the country’s largest theater chains decided to drop the film from their venues. According to CNN, American officials will detail their findings on Thursday. Meanwhile, other unnamed officials told NBC News that the source of the cyber attack did not come directly from within North Korea. Instead, investigators believe the individuals responsible were taking orders from North Korea. “We have found linkage to the North Korean government,” said a US government source. Despite the discovery of such a link, unnamed officials told the New York Times that the White House is still mulling over what type of response to make in public.Some in the Obama administration believe the US should respond forcefully and confront Kim, while others are wary of escalating the situation. Additionally, some officials do not want to divulge too many details regarding their investigation, since North Korea’s computer networks are extremely difficult to breach and they don’t want to inadvertently reveal their methods. In a report by ABC News, US officials said the government believes that “Bureau 121,” a highly capable North Korean cyber unit, could be behind the attacks. They also said there is evidence indicating the hack was “routed through a number of infected computers in various locations overseas, including computers in Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Bolivia, Poland and Cyprus.” Read More Here The post US investigators link North Korea to Sony hack appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:10 PM PST
 A digital rights group in the United States plans to argue in federal court this week that the National Security Agency’s internet surveillance operations violate the US Constitution’s ban against unlawful searches and seizures. Six years after the Electronic Frontier Foundation brought suit against the NSA on behalf of a former AT&T customer, Carolyn Jewel, US District Court Judge Jeffrey White for the Northern District of California will hear an EFF attorney argue on Friday for summary judgment and attest that the intelligence agency’s data collection methods breach the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment clauses intended to protect private information. Filed back in 2008, the EFF’s fight against the NSA long predates the public’s awareness of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about the agency’s surveillance operations in 2013 and has since been charged with espionage and theft by the US Department of Justice. The disclosures attributed to Snowden and subsequent admissions from the intelligence community have in the past year provided the EFF and others with ample fodder to plead their cases against the government, however, and on Friday, Judge White is expected to be told by the group that the operations of the NSA as they’re known today are unconstitutional. In the EFF’s original 2008 complaint against AT&T, the California-based legal group alleged that the major telecommunication provider has since 2003 participated in a program with the NSA that allowed the government to receive huge swaths of communications sent over the telecom’s network under the guise of national security. “The NSA in cooperation with AT&T has installed and is operating a nationwide system of Surveillance Configurations in AT&T facilities across the country,” the EFF said, citing earlier, unauthorized but pre-Snowden disclosures. “This network of Surveillance Configurations indiscriminately acquires domestic communications as well as international and foreign communications,” the complaint continued, amounting to dragnet collection of communication records from AT&T databases undertaken by the NSA. In July of this year, the EFF filed a motion for summary judgment in which its attorneys asked to rule AT&T’s now decade-old activities as a violation of the Fourth Amendment because those operations are, according to the plaintiffs, absence probable cause and “fail to keep the government within constitutional bounds.” Attorney Richard Wiebe, a special counsel for the EFF, plans on putting forth those arguments against a government attorney at Friday’s hearing. “Under the government’s legal theory, it can copy virtually all Internet communications and then search them from top to bottom for specific ‘identifiers’ — all without a warrant or individualized suspicion—as long as it does so quickly using only automated processes,” the EFF said in a statement on Tuesday this week. “Wiebe will argue before the court that the Fourth Amendment definitively bars this type of dragnet. As EFF presented in its motion, enough information now exists on the record for the court to rule that the government’s technique represents an unconstitutional search and seizure.” According to the July motion filed by the EFF, the NSA’s reach of electronic communications, such as with AT&T, constitutes “a technological surveillance system that makes it impossible for ordinary Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing to engage in a fully private online conversation, to privately read online or to privately access any online service.” “Millions of innocent Americans have their communications seized and searched as part of this dragnet even when the government is not targeting them or those with whom they communicate,” EFF’s attorneys wrote, adding that scooping up such communications constitutes two separate Fourth Amendment violations. “First, the government unconstitutionally seizes plaintiffs’ Internet communications. Technology at plaintiffs’ Internet service provider, AT&T, automatically creates and delivers to the government a copy of plaintiffs’ online activities, along with those of millions of other innocent Americans—including email, live chat, reading and interacting with websites, Internet searching, and social networking,” the EFF wrote. “Second, the government unconstitutionally searches the content of much of the communications stream it has seized. The government admits that it searches the content of the online communications that it has seized if it believes there is some indication that the origin or destination of the communication is outside the United States.” “In truth, no valid warrant could authorize the government’s admitted practices here. The government’s targeting and minimization procedures are no substitute for the fundamental protections that the Constitution guarantees to all Americans. The ongoing dragnet seizure and search of innocent Americans’ Internet activities violates the Fourth Amendment,” the motion continues. Since the first Snowden revelations appeared in June 2013, the Obama administration has been hit with an array of lawsuits concerning previously unconfirmed intelligence gathering operations, including the vacuuming of dialing records from phone companies and the dragnet surveillance of domestic data. The EFF notes that, with respect to internet surveillance, the “government claims the content searches are justified under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and do not violate the Fourth Amendment.” Source The post NSA and EFF to square off in court over internet surveillance appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:08 PM PST
 The Los Angeles Police Department will become the first major American law enforcement agency to outfit its entire 7,000-member force with body cameras, the Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Tuesday. LA will buy 2,000 cameras, starting with 800 in January. At a news conference to outline his plans to implement funding for the equipment in the 2015-2016 budget, Garcetti said the cameras “are not a panacea, but they are a critical part of the formula. They’re a great step forward.” The purchase of the initial 800 Taser body cameras will be funded by more than $1.5 million in private donations, Gizmodo reported. Policies on proper use of the cameras will be considered in early 2015, while the device rollout will happen within the next six months, the mayor’s office said. The remainder of the equipment will be fully deployed by June 2016 and paid for out of the city’s budget. Los Angeles is not currently planning to make use of the money-matching program President Barack Obama announced at the beginning of December ‒ but has not yet been authorized by Congress. “These cameras will be a critical step forward that will provide both the officers and Angelenos with recording evidence of their interactions, helping to address the uncertainty and questions that plague so many investigations,” Garcetti said. “On the street things aren’t always clear cut. This isn’t TV. It’s not easily scripted. It’s not always easy to tie up the loose ends. So the more facts and evidence we have, the more likely it is that we can get to the truth no matter what happens on the street.” The LAPD has been under fire in recent months, including for the officer-involved shooting death of Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old black man described by his family as having “mental problems,” just two days after Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown. According to the victim’s family, Ford was complying with officers at the time of the shooting, and was killed while face down in front of the police. “The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment,” Garcetti said. “Trust is built on transparency.” Read More Here The post LAPD becomes first major police force to equip all officers with body cameras appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:05 PM PST
 An ancient cemetery in Egypt contains 1 million bodies, according to a team of archeologists who discovered the burial ground. What the site represents remains a mystery, as the scientists are still puzzled about where exactly all the people came from. “We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It’s large, and it’s dense,” said Project Director Kerry Muhlestein, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU). Muhlestein presented his findings at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars Colloquium, held in Toronto in November, Live Science reported. Archaeologists from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, have been exploring a mysterious cemetery in Egypt for about 30 years. They excavated about 1,700 mummies within the project in Egypt so far. But there is still much work to do. According to the archaeologists many of the mummies date back to the times when Egypt was a Roman province, from the 1st century BC onward. Scientists say a nearby village seems too small to produce all these large burial sites. A small pyramid is situated near the cemetery. But it was built more than 4,500 years ago, about 2 millennia before these million mummies were buried. People buried at the cemetery, which is now called Fag el-Gamous (Way of the Water Buffalo), did not belong to royalty, concluded the researchers. There were no coffins. And the internal organs of the deceased were rarely removed. “I don’t think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification. If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified,” Muhlestein said, adding that they were in fact mummified by the arid natural environment. However, researchers still found some beautiful items at the burial site. The objects include linen, glass and even colorful booties for a child. “A lot of their wealth, or the little that they had, was poured into these burials,” Muhlestein said. Read More Here The post Egyptian cemetery with 1mn bodies stumps scientists appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:05 PM PST
 Pope Francis has congratulated both the US and Cuba on restoring relations, as the Vatican together with Canada were confirmed to have played a significant role in the talks which broke 50 years of cold. The Vatican said that it was a key player in negotiations between the two countries, “resulting in solutions acceptable to both parties.” Pope Francis added that he will continue to be supportive of the process. It emerged on Wednesday that he had sent a personal letter to both US President Barack Obama and President of Cuba Raul Castro during the summer. Earlier in the day, a US Senator had mentioned both Vatican involvement and the letter, saying that it had provided “greater impetus and momentum for us to move forward.” “Pope Francis sent letters to President Obama and to Cuban President Raul Castro this past summer urging a resolution of the matter of prisoners and progress in our bilateral relationship,” US Ambassador to the Vatican, Kenneth Hackett, confirmed to Reuters. Additionally, the Vatican was responsible for playing host to meetings between Cuban and US officials. Canada was a host to the secret talks, it turned out Wednesday. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed his country’s role in the negotiations and said that he stood behind a Cuba which acknowledged “the values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Cuba exchanged American citizen Alan Gross for three Cubans jailed in the United States on Wednesday. The prisoner swap is set to pave the way for a major overhaul of bilateral ties, potentially bringing an end to over five decades of severed diplomatic relations. US officials said Gross was transported on a government plane in the morning after being released on humanitarian grounds, which followed a request from the White House. He arrived at Andrews Air Force base near Washington DC. Footage broadcast by MSNBC showed him exciting the aircraft, where he was met by well-wishers. The three Cubans had been part of the so-called ‘Cuban Five.’ The group was allegedly sent by former Cuban President Fidel Castro to carry out espionage in South Florida. The men, who were convicted by a court in Miami in 2001 on charges including conspiracy and failure to register as foreign agents, are widely lauded back home. Read More Here The post Pope Francis unexpected hero of US-Cuba relations breakthrough appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:00 PM PST
 Migrant workers in Qatar get one dollar an hour for sitting in the stadiums and pretending to have fun, to applaud and to do the wave, AP reports. Sometimes they even were asked to dress like Qataris in white robes and head-scarves. “Qatar has a true passion for sports. Everything in our country revolves around sport,” Aphrodite Moschoudi, Qatar presenter in 2019 world championships host selection, said in November. However, Qataris do not attend matches so often. A poll published this year by Ministry of Development, Planning and Statistics says two-thirds of Qataris surveyed did not attend any football matches during the previous season, while two-thirds of respondents said fake fans were one of the reasons to keep them away from a stadium. That is why Qatari officials need someone to fill the empty places in stadiums, according to the Associated Press. 30 Qatari riyals, equivalent to eight American dollars for migrant workers, though, is good money and some of them even enjoy their “work.” “Shaking my body all over … being in the crowd and shouting and dancing,” Adu, a worker from Ghana told the agency. “Being there and getting paid is a plus for me.” Besides, some stadiums are equipped with free WiFi networks and workers may send e-mails to relatives and get news from home. The sportsmen say it is a “bizarre” situation. “Bizarre, but we prefer that to playing in front of nobody,” French volleyballer Edouard Rowlandson. Officials at FIVB, an international volleyball governing body, said it was news for them. This is not the first controversial issue concerning 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Earlier this year it was reported that 185 Nepalese workers died in 2013 while building infrastructure for the World Cup and almost 1,000 died since the country was proclaimed the host of championship. Read More Here The post Qatar hires ‘$8 fake fans’ to fill empty stadiums appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 17 Dec 2014 02:46 PM PST
 United States President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the US is initiating plans to rebuild its relationship with Cuba following decades of disputes between the two nations. Speaking from the White House in Washington, DC, Pres. Obama said Wednesday that the US is seeking to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba and soon plans to open an embassy in Havana, authorize sales and exports between nations and make changes to current travel laws that for decades have restricted traffic between the two countries. “Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba,” Obama said as he offered to “extend a hand of friendship” while unveiling what he called “the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years.” “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interest,” Obama said. Raúl Castro, the president of Cuba, announced in a statement televised concurrently with Obama’s that his nation will “reestablish diplomatic relations” with the US. Since the administration of Pres. John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, restrictions and sanctions have kept the American and Cuban ways of life from all but converging policies put in place at the dawn of the Cold War in an attempt to curb the spread of Communism. Yet Obama said Wednesday that, while rooted in the best of intentions, this “rigid policy” has “had little effect” a half-century later. Indeed, Obama acknowledged, a Castro still sits atop the Cuban government as during the Kennedy administration, and that similar restraints concerning how the US dealt with China and Vietnam, “once controversial,” have long been lifted following decades of disagreements. “This is fundamentally about freedom and openness, and also expresses my belied in the power of people-to-people engagement,” Obama said of the policy change, adding that he intends such “contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.” Read More Here The post Obama announces US will establish embassy in Cuba, lift sanctions appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.   |
