Hackers publish private information about L.A. police officers

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Feb 292012

Hackers publish private information about L.A. police officers

Los Angeles Times

By Andrew Blankstein

Twitter.com/anblanx

February 24, 2012

Photo: LAPD officers outisde police headquarters.

Credit: Los Angeles Times

The FBI is probing an Internet breach in which hackers publicly posted private information belonging to more than 100 local law enforcement officers who are part of the Los Angeles County Police Canine Assn.

Tony Vairo, a San Fernando police officer, who is president of the group, told The Times that they were contacted by the FBI Tuesday morning informing them that information belonging to its members, who include the Los Angeles police and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies, had been compromised.

“I’m appalled that our website was breached,” Vairo said. “It’s not right and we will pursue it [a case] on every level, state or federal.”

Vairo described the FBI probe into the hacking incident as being part of an ongoing criminal investigation. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller would not comment on what, if any, involvement the agency had in the case.

The incident, first reported Tuesday by CNET.com, comes two months after personal information about more than two dozen members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s command staff was anonymously posted on an Internet site.

In that case, the hackers posted officers’ property records, campaign contributions, biographical information and, in a few cases, the names of family members, including children. But that information was gleaned from public records.

Authorities said the current intrusion is different because the information gleaned from the association’s website was not available to the public.

Marshall E. McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officer’s Assn., which has three members whose information was compromised, said his association has contacted the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to ask for a criminal investigation.

The postings were linked to from a publicly available Twitter account, where unnamed activists claimed responsibility for the information dump. The information was posted on a site that allows users to anonymously input data. This type of site has increasingly been used to post personal information of individuals who raise the ire of online activists. The practice is known as “doxing.”

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SAHER HoneyNet : A Tunisian Honeynet Project

Articles of Interest, Social Media, Technology & Digital Security No Responses »

Nov 152011

SAHER HoneyNet : A Tunisian Honeynet Project
by THN Reporter
11/13/2011

A honeynet is a network set up with intentional vulnerabilities; its purpose is to invite attack, so that an attacker’s activities and methods can be studied and that information used to increase network security. A honeynet contains one or more honey pots, which are computer systems on the Internet expressly set up to attract and “trap” people who attempt to penetrate other people’s computer systems. Although the primary purpose of a honeynet is to gather information about attackers’ methods and motives, the decoy network can benefit its operator in other ways, for example by diverting attackers from a real network and its resources.

The Tunisian honeynet project “Saher-HoneyNet” is an initiative launched by the Tunisian CERT, in order to mitigate threats related to malicious traffic in order to improve the national cyberspace security by ensuring preventive and response measures to deal with malware infections.

The Honeynet Project, a non-profit research organization dedicated to computer security and information sharing, actively promotes the deployment of honeynets.

The first research activities started in 2004, by deploying few honeyd sensors and testing new detection and prevention techniques to come up with a very powerful detection platform by the year 2008 as more resources are invested in the project. Now, the Tunisian honeynet project is a part of the Tunisian cyber early warning system “SAHER” created to deal with all cyber threats and to coordinate with the international community.

This project involves all the cyberspace stakeholders, including the government, ISPs, Telcos, and critical information infrastructure, providing them coordination with tools for the detection; procedures to share information and technologies to clean-up the cyberspace and track malicious sources.

Direct Link: http://thehackernews.com/2011/11/saher-honeynet-tunisian-honeynet.html