Dell Cameron reports: Dallas-based journalist Barrett Brown walked free from prison on Tuesday morning after spending more than four years behind bars. The 35-year-old cause célèbre, convicted in January 2015 after spending more than two years in pretrial confinement, faces a laundry list of post-release restrictions and obligations, including drug treatment, mental health evaluations, and computer monitoring. Read…
Category: U.S.
Prison sentence for former network admin who shutdown his former employer, an ISP
Howard Sheppard has the follow-up to a case where a disgruntled network admin took revenge on his former employer: Darius J. Prugar, 32, of Syracuse, New York, was sentenced today in federal court in Harrisburg by Sylvia H. Rambo to 24 months in prison for computer hacking and wire fraud. A jury convicted Prugar in…
SF MUNI hacker lashes out, threatens to release 30GBs of compromised data
Steve Ragan reports: The person claiming responsibility for the attack on San Francisco’s MUNI says the SFMTA has lax security, and warns that if the ransom isn’t paid, they’ll release 30GB of compromised data. The demands follow a weekend of headaches for SFMTA, after MUNI was targeted shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday, resulting in systems…
Ransomware Result: Free Ticket to Ride in San Francisco
Mathew J. Schwartz reports: “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted.” That was part of a message that reportedly appeared on thousands of Windows systems used by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, better known as Muni, in recent days, after they were locked by ransomware and 100 bitcoins – currently worth $73,000 – demanded in exchange for a…
MT: Bigfork school computers breached
Hilary Matheson reports: Bigfork School District will not submit to ransom demands after the district’s computer network was compromised over the weekend by ransomware. Information technology staff have been working to recover computer files and remove the malicious software, which encrypted and locked files from being opened. It’s often the case that ransomware is not…
18-Year-Old “Computer Genius” Charged with Launching DDoS Attacks
Catalin Cimpanu reports: US authorities charged Michaela Gabriella King, 18, of Murrysville, Pennsylvania with launching multiple DDoS attacks against Franklin Regional High School, the school she was attending. According to investigators, King used the BetaBooter DDoS stressor to launch DDoS attacks on her’s school’s network, from her home computer, her mobile phone, but most of…