Younes Khantouri

US Identifies 6 Russian Government Officials Involved In DNC Hack

November 7, 2017 by Younes Khantouri Leave a Comment

This weak, I found this interesting article that I thought I should share with you. A summary is included as well.

Enough evidence to charge six Russian government officials were gathered by the United States Department of Justice in plating a role in hacking DNC systems and leaking information during the 2016 presidential race. Earlier this year, US intelligence agencies conducted that the Russian government was behind hacking and exposing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails to the influence of Donald Trump favor. The US authorities believe that another dozen of unnamed Russians are could be charges with the participation in the DNC attack as well. However, both Putin and Russian government officials have denied allegations.

This incedent happened one year ago when thousands of DNC emails were stolen from the DNC computer system. These emails included Haliry Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. They were appeared in Wikileaks website.

U.S. federal agents and prosecutors in Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and San Francisco have been cooperating with the DNC investigation. However, none of them has revealed the actual identity of the six suspects.

However, even after getting charged, the Russian officials or hackers will hardly be prosecuted in the United States until they enter the US soil because the country has no extradition agreement with Russia.

https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/dnc-email-russian-hackers.html

Voting vulnerability

October 31, 2017 by Younes Khantouri Leave a Comment

Dubbed “voter identity theft” by study authors Latanya Sweeney, Professor of Government and Technology in Residence, research analyst Ji Su Yoo and graduate student Jinyan Zang, the vulnerability could be exploited by attackers to attempt to disenfranchise many voters where voter registration information can be changed online. Armed with personal information obtained through legitimate or illegitimate sources, hackers could know enough to impersonate voters and change key information using online voter registration systems.

One tactic, researchers said, would be to simply change voters’ addresses, making it appear — to poll workers at least — as though they were voting at the wrong location. Those voters might be forced to cast provisional ballots, which in many circumstances are not counted. The study is described in a September 6 paper published in the Journal of Technology Science.

Though the researchers don’t report evidence of attackers exploiting the vulnerability, Sweeney, Yoo and Zang said the fear is that it might be used to either undermine confidence in elections or even to swing the result in favor of a particular candidate.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170906103803.htm

Fitbit Vulnerabilities Expose Wearer Data

October 31, 2017 by Younes Khantouri Leave a Comment

I really like the following article this week and I think it’s nice to share it with the entire class:

Fitbit became another device that can be used to track our personal lives and give Hackers the ability to even change our record that Fitbit collects. These Hackers discovered a way of intercepting messages transmitted between fitness trackers and the cloud servers where data is sent for analysis.

These changes that can be made in the record would not only affect us as users but big companies as well. So many companies are dependent on such devices to collect information do develop and rate certain product won’t receiving accurate data and all their new products would be built using false information.

If this kind of analysis that shows that the Fitbit servers are not receiving the correct data. It could be used to determine whether a person has a specific medical condition; and, the impact of this to the individual could be raised healthcare premiums or even denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Further, once the data is in the hands of an organization, it could potentially be sold for other purposes.

To solve this issue and secure the Fitbit, the researchers have created guidelines to help manufacturers remove similar weaknesses from future system designs to ensure users’ personal data is kept private and secure. It is very hard to secure such devices but it can be done by keep researching and studying all the weaknesses to create the right patches that will not give chance to Hackers to reach out there goals.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/fitbit-vulnerabilities-expose/