Researchers from the company stated that earlier one hard drive they got through a source showed a picture of one computer belonging to an activist in Syria whom local officials had targeted.

A Skype-facilitated conversation had contaminated that activist’s computer. The conversation actually started off from a co-activist’s PC. Curiously, the co-activist was already in police custody so questionably how could he have been an initiator of the chat.

F-Secure, which conducted an investigation, found that the infection first happened with a file named MACAddressChanger.exe that came into the activist’s computer via the chat. Rather than alter his system’s hardware Media Access Control detail to enable it evade certain security software, the file installed silvia.exe another file that contained a backdoor namely ‘Xtreme Remote Access Tool’ or ‘Xtreme RAT.’

Read more from SpamFighter.

A scientist indicted in U.S. District Court for allegedly emailing trade secrets from a Utah drug company to his brother-in-law in India has pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful access to a protected computer.

The case against Prabhu Mohapatra, 42, of North Logan, marks the first time an industrial espionage case has been filed against a Utah defendant, according to the FBI.

In exchange for Mohapatra’s plea, 25 other charges were dismissed, including those related to the theft of trade secrets.

He faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 28 by Judge Clark Waddoups.

Read more from SaltLakeTribune.

By Sergio Bichao

She made it look so easy. And perhaps it was.  Over a period of 18 months beginning in January 2010, Yuan Li, a young research scientist working at the U.S. headquarters of Sanofi-Aventis in Bridgewater, copied more than 144,000 pharmaceutical compounds onto her company-issued laptop.

The compounds were company trade secrets, but Li, a Chinese national living in the Somerset section of Franklin on a work visa, was keeping secrets of her own.

Unbeknownst to her employers, Li was a co-owner of Abby Pharmatech, a U.S. subsidiary of Chinese chemical company Xiamon KAK Science and Technology Co.

Read more from CentralJersey.

Yuan Li, 30, of Somerset, New Jersey, a Chinese national, previously pleaded guilty to an information charging her with one count of theft of trade secrets. Li entered her guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano, who also imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

Read more from the FBI.

By Charles Tannock

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin was always a foregone conclusion. But when he is sworn in on Monday, he will retake formal charge of a country whose politics — even Putin’s own political future — has turned unpredictable.

Putin’s return to the presidency, following a period of de facto control as prime minister, was supposed to signify a reassuring continuation of ”business as usual” — a strong, orderly state devoid of the potentially destabilizing effects of multiparty democracy and bickering politicians.

Instead, the Russian people have now challenged the status quo. Their reaction to Putin’s plan — from the announcement on Sept. 24 that President Dmitry Medvedev would stand aside for his mentor, to the deeply flawed parliamentary and presidential elections in December and March — and their accumulated resentment of Kremlin cronies’ massive enrichment, has placed pressure on Putin and the top-down system of government that he created.

Read more from MoscowTimes.

Hackers claimed to have breached the systems of the Belgian credit provider Elantis and threatened to publish confidential customer information if the bank does not pay €150,000 (US$197,000) before Friday, May 4, they said in a statement posted to Pastebin. Elantis confirmed the data breach on Thursday, but the bank said it will not give in to extortion threats.

The hackers claim to have captured login credentials and tables with online loan applications which hold data such as full names, job descriptions, contact information, ID card numbers and income figures. They demanded a payment of “the equivalent of roughly €150,000″, with which Elantis could prevent the publication of confidential customer information, they said in a Pastebin post published on Tuesday. According to the hackers the data was stored unprotected and unencrypted on the servers. To prove the hack, parts of what they claimed to be captured customer data were published.

Read more from PCWorld.

HHS reached a settlement on March 12, 2012 with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (“BCBST”) for $1.5 million stemming from a 2009 data breach. This settlement represents the first under the HITECH Act. 

Pursuant to its obligations under the HITECH Act, BCBST notified the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) that 57 unencrypted hard drives had been stolen from a locked closet in a facility that BCBST was not occupying at the time. (BCBST was in the process of moving to a new facility.) The locked data closet was secured by biometric and keycard scan security with a magnetic lock and an additional door with a keyed lock. In addition, the property manager provided general facility security services. The drives included protected health information that belonged to approximately 1 million individuals. This ultimately prompted an OCR investigation that found that BCBST failed to implement appropriate administrative safeguards since it had not performed a required security evaluation in response to operational changes (i.e., its process of moving to a new location) and that it had failed to provide physical safeguards to adequately protect the information.

Read more from JDSupra.

By Shaun Waterman

Iran is recruiting a hacker army to target the U.S. power grid, water systems and other vital infrastructure for cyberattack in a future confrontation with the United States, security specialists will warn Congress Thursday.

“Elements of the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] have openly sought to pull hackers into the fold” of a religiously motivated cyberarmy, according to Frank J. Cilluffo, director of theHomeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Lawmakers from two House Homeland Security subcommittees will hold a joint hearing Thursday about the cyberthreat posed by Iran, as tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program continue at a high level, and a possible Israeli strike looms.

The Washington Times obtained advance copes of witnesses’ prepared testimony.

Read more from WashtingtonTimes.

By Matthias Gebauer

NATO cyberwarfare experts suspect that Chinese and Russian intelligence services are behind a recent uptick in cyberattacks against the Western alliance. 

The number of cyberattacks perpetrated against NATO is on the rise, say experts at alliance operational headquarters, with most of them apparently originating with intelligence services in Russia and China. “Each day, we are seeing up to 30 significant attacks on our digital networks or on individual computers, mostly by way of emails infected by spyware and sent to individual NATO employees,” Lieutenant General Kurt Herrmann told SPIEGEL ONLINE on the sidelines of an informational seminar at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) located in Mons, Belgium.

Herrmann heads up a unit of 120 NATO computer experts whose task is protecting sensitive data belonging to the alliance from cyberattacks. The unit, called the NATO Communication and Information Systems Services Agency, or NCSA for short, collects details on all attacks that target NATO information systems. It was founded in 2004, has been operational since 2005 and is to be further expanded next year. Two years ago, the NATO alliance officially identified the danger of cyberattack against member states as a strategic threat.

Read more from Spiegel.

NEWARK, N.J. – Two Taiwanese nationals are charged for allegedly seeking to export sensitive U.S. military technology to China after federal agents investigating counterfeit goods smuggling uncovered plots to smuggle drugs into and sensitive defense articles out of the United States, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman and FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Ward announced today.

Hui Sheng Shen, a/k/a “Charlie,” 45, and Huan Ling Chang, a/k/a “Alice,” 41, were previously charged in connection with an alleged scheme to import 50 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, or “meth,” from Taiwan into the United States. Those charges arose as a result of parallel international investigations that also disrupted conspiracies to import hundreds of millions of dollars in counterfeit goods from China.

Federal agents arrested Shen and Chang on Feb. 25, 2012, in New York. The pair were charged in a criminal Complaint unsealed March 2, 2012, with one count of conspiracy to import and one count of importation of meth. The amended Complaint unsealed today also charges Shen and Chang with conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act.

Read more from the DOJ.