Techno Savvy Club

Anonymous "declared war" on so-called Islamic State following thedeadly attacks in Paris.

As part of its "cyber-war" on IS, the hacker group has now released several guides aimed at teaching us all how to break into IS websites and attack the network's social media accounts.

It's part of Operation Paris, or #OpParis, and one document is called a "Noobguide" for beginners.

Pure and simple, hacking a computer is illegal.

There are laws which mean you could be put into prison for up to 10 years for misusing a computer system.

Professor Watson says: "We would not ask the public to help out with a hostage situation or a drugs raid, they would get in the way and may get injured.

"The same is true here.

"Even specialists find operation security difficult, so someone who picks up a 'how to' guide and tries to follow it will almost certainly give enough information away for them to be identified."

Potentially the people running an Islamic State website or social media account could trace you IP address - that means working out who you are and where you are.

Professor Watson says some will be left active deliberately, to allow security services to monitor what could turn into terrorist activity.

He explains: "I'm not party to any decision making, but you can imagine specialists will deliberately leave certain channels open because they provide useful sources of intelligence.

"Those channels might be the ones that are shut down by well-meaning people if they follow Anonymous' instructions."

* If you spot someone on Facebook or Twitter abusing the terms of service then you can report them, safely and anonymously.

* It's the same if you spot someone who is misusing websites. You can report them to the internet owner or the relevant internet authorities.

* Professor Watson says be creative and use your voice to counter some of the things which are said by IS.

However, he warns: "You are raising your head above the parapet, so you need to be careful what you are saying.

"I would not advise anyone to say anything strong against an organised group who have shown they are willing to use violence."

Data lost in such attacks could be recovered or wiped, suggests a new report from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

It says lost sales and fixing hacking damage have cost US firms tens of billions of dollars, with trade secrets being given to Chinese companies.

The commission is typically very critical of the Chinese government.

The report, which is due to be released on Wednesday, describes the American response to hacking attacks on domestic firms as "inadequate" and says the US is "ill-prepared" to defend itself from cyber-espionage.

"The Chinese government appears to believe that it has more to gain than to lose from its cyber-espionage and attack campaign," says the report.

"So far, it has acquired valuable technology, trade secrets, and intelligence.

"The costs imposed have been minimal compared to the perceived benefit.

"The campaign is likely to continue and may well escalate."

China has frequently denied involvement in hacking attacks such as the data breach that affected the government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Information on more than 22 million federal employees was affected and the White House is reported to be preparing a retaliation against China.

Sean Sullivan, security adviser at information security firm F-Secure, said: "This report about investigating the ability to hack back I think is less about Congress wanting the ability to hack back and more about clarifying, 'These are the rules, this is the line - you cross this line, this is the retaliation you will get.'"

Mr Sullivan told the BBC, however, that there might be problems with such an approach.

For one thing, data may not just be breached in the future, but covertly manipulated. Such alterations might not be noticed for many weeks or months after the incident.

And when manipulations or breaches are detected, it might be very hard to attribute the attack to a specific Chinese competitor or state actor, Mr Sullivan added.

"We can point towards Chinese IP addresses but we don't have a good idea as to which party within China was motivated and did the hacking," he said.

Still, "normalising" the practice of back-and-forth cyber-attacks might clarify the situation and "give people a firmer handle on international norms and what they should expect", according to Mr Sullivan.

Article From: bbc.com

There's a new hacking team out there that's proving surprisingly good at getting into government systems using social engineering tactics coupled with zero-day attacks in assaults that can last as long as a year.

Dubbed Strontium by researchers at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, the hackers have been active since 2007, but this year have been particularly determined going after servers in government bodies, diplomatic institutions, and military forces and installations in NATO member states and certain Eastern European governments.

The group spends a lot of time researching their targets on social media and email lists, trying to find people with access to a system they want to penetrate. Microsoft researchers say several thousand people have been subject to attack.

The first stage in an intrusion is carried out using phishing emails, typically a password reset email that looks convincing. To trick the unwary, the group sends them from domains that are similar to the proper address, such as accounts.g00gle.com or electronicfrontierfoundation.org.

Once in, the hackers search through email logs and system information to find people who have admin access to the target server. They then send a second round of emails, usually linked to current events, to encourage the target to click on a URL containing malware.

Strontium were quick to exploit the zero-day flaws exposed when the Hacking Team got its servers pwned, and also to reverse-engineer patches to exploit security flaws within days of their release. Adobe Flash Player, the Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE), Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and some components of the Windows kernel are popular choices with the group.

The attackers use custom malware that not only installs a Trojan on the system, but also writes itself into the registry files to make cleanup more difficult. The software has many modules that include key logging, email address and file harvesting, information gathering about the local computer, and remote communication with command and control servers.

The malicious code can communicate back to the hackers via HTTP, SMTP, and POP3. The coders were smart in masking the system, typically having it communicate with legitimate-sounding addresses like softupdates.info and malwarecheck.info.

"Strontium is a very challenging adversary for a targeted institution to defend against: it possesses a broad range of technical exploitation capabilities, significant access to resources such as previously undiscovered zero-day exploits, and the determination to keep up an attack for months or years until it succeeds," Microsoft said in its report.

Redmond doesn't say who the attackers might be, but given the amount of time they are willing to spend on an attack, the choice of targets, and the sophistication of its software, a nation state hacking team seems likely. 

Article From : theregister.co.uk

A newly identified gene that renders bacteria resistant to polymyxin antibiotics—drugs often used as the last line of defense against infections—has the potential to be shared between different types of bacteria. The finding raises concern that the transferable gene could make its way into infectious bacteria that are already highly resistant to drugs, thereby creating strains of bacteria immune to every drug in doctors’ arsenal.

The gene, dubbed mcr-1, exists on a tiny, circular piece of DNA called a plasmid. These genetic elements, common among bacteria, are mobile; bacteria can make copies of them and share them with whatever bacteria happens to be nearby. Though scientists have previously discovered genes for polymyxin resistance, those genes were embedded in bacterial genomes, thus were not likely to easily spread.

In a study, published Wednesday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, researchers in China report first finding the mcr-1 containing plasmid in Escherichia coli bacteria isolated from a pig. The plasmid was solely responsible for the bacteria being resistant to colistin, a type of polymyxin commonly used in animals in China, but less so in the US and Europe. On further examination, the researchers also found mcr-1 containing plasmids in E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from a small number of patients in hospitals in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

Lab tests showed that the plasmid could easily move between E. coli strains, transforming polymyxin-sensitive strains into polymyxin-resistant ones. But, the plasmid had a harder time moving between different bacterial species. The researchers had to coax the plasmid into other species by zapping bacterial cells with an electrical pulse to make their membranes more permeable—a technique called electroporation. The finding suggests that the plasmid may not easily move between species naturally.

Still, the authors cautioned that if mcr-1 containing plasmids spread to multi-drug resistant bacterial strains, it could make them “truly pan-drug resistant” and resulting infections would be untreatable.

“This is indeed an important and concerning development as some multi-drug resistant bacteria are only sensitive to this type of antibiotic,” Judith Johnson, professor of pathology at the University of Florida, said in a statement.

But, other experts, such as Guy Loneragan, professor of food safety and public health at Texas Tech University, caution that it’s still unclear how likely it is that the plasmid will spread. And, just because this is the first report of mcr-1, doesn't necessarily mean it's new.

What the study clearly shows, Loneragan said, is “that antibiotic resistance is a global issue and we need to develop and share (nationally and internationally) practices that reduce the need for antibiotic use in people and animals."

Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(15)00424-7  (About DOIs).

Article from: arstechnica.com

A study released today describes a new technique that has allowed scientists to observe a planet forming for the first time. Using adaptive optics, the researchers observed light coming from the planet that gave a clear indicator that the body is still growing and forming.

Planets in general are pretty hard to observe, and forming planets are even harder. Normally, dips in the light of a star indicate to researchers that there’s a planet orbiting it. But that technique doesn’t work in young exosolar systems where the planets are still forming. Young stars, having recently finished forming themselves, are typically pretty chaotic, with their light output varying. And it’s nigh-impossible to tell the difference between these natural variations in a star’s light and a dip caused by a transiting planet.

Fortunately, a forming planetary system has its own observational advantages: the planets are putting out a lot of energy in the form of light. They're especially bright in hydrogen-alpha emissions, a particular shade of red that is very often useful in astronomy because it’s strongly emitted where hydrogen gas is ionized. It’s thought that the region around a still-forming planet can become hot enough to cause the hydrogen atoms to emit hydrogen-alpha light.

The planet’s magnetic field is thought to play a strong role in this process. It can draw in material from the disk of material around the star, which heats up as it falls into the planet, emitting hydrogen-alpha light.

Using this light, researchers have created an actual photograph (a composite of hydrogen-alpha light and a few other wavelengths) of the star system in question, LkCa 15. The image appears to show two planets, with a possible third as well. The first planet, LkCa 15b, is a strong hydrogen-alpha emitter, confirming it as a forming planet. The other two (LkCa 15c and d) are not as strong, and they are visible mostly in different wavelengths.

Researchers have been observing these planets for the past few years, watching them move through their orbits over that time. Their motion can be seen in this video as an artist’s rendition.

The UK government has announced that every coal-fired power station will be shut down by 2025, roughly 10 years from now. The move is ostensibly about reducing carbon emissions. Amber Rudd, the country's energy secretary, said that "we need to build a new energy infrastructure fit for the 21st century... this step will make us one of the first developed countries to commit to taking coal off our system."

While the government's press release includes some very punchy phrases about "energy security," "hardworking families," and "legacy of underinvestment," the document is very short on actual details. It says that coal power stations will be restricted by 2023 and then completely phased out by 2025... but it doesn't say what they will be replaced by.

The current assumption is that coal will be replaced by gas power plants in the short term, which produce a lot less CO2 than coal, with nuclear power hopefully picking up some slack in the future. Talking to the BBC, Rudd said that nuclear power is vital to the government's energy policy, noting that the new nuclear power stations planned for Wylfa in Wales and Moorside in Cumbria could go a long way toward providing the low-carbon electricity that the UK needs to meet emissions targets. No mention was made of the new Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor, which has been in bureaucratic limbo for years, though it appears that a final deal between EDF (the operator), China (which will partially fund its construction), and the UK government is in the process of being hammered out.Coal currently provides around 30 percent of the UK's electricity, with natural gas (40 percent), nuclear (17 percent), wind, and hydro making up the rest of our power mix. The Tory government's announcement isn't exactly groundbreaking; coal has been on the way out for a long time. Back in 1990, coal provided a massive 67 percent of our power, and the previous UK government had already agreed to mostly phase out coal power stations by 2025.

Renewables, such as wind and hydro power, seem to have fallen by the wayside. Earlier in the year, the new Conservative government scrapped most of its onshore wind and solar subsidies, along with a bunch of other green programs, including biomass subsidies, the green homes scheme, and the selling off of the country's green investment bank.

Earlier this week, a new report (PDF) by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) found that the UK was the only G7 nation to be dramatically increasing fossil fuel subsidies—most notably, that North Sea oil and gas production will be further subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of £1.7 billion. Shelagh Whitley, an author of the ODI report, pointed out that this is rather hypocritical. "The UK has been cutting back support for solar power and energy efficiency, arguing that the burden was too high," she said. "Our figures reveal that in spite of supposed budget constraints, the government is giving ever increasing handouts to oil and gas majors."The cut to wind subsidies was particularly irksome: onshore wind is one of the UK's best (i.e. most cost-effective) options for renewable, low-carbon electricity generation. As far as the Tories are concerned, it looks like nuclear power is the only solution that will produce enough power to prevent blackouts while also hitting emissions targets. There are still subsidies available for offshore wind, but the initial outlay is significantly higher than onshore, making it much less cost-effective.

This post originated on Ars Technica UK

"The #Anonymous hackers threatened in a new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic state (idiots)."

ISIS issues 5 Lame Advice to Avoid Getting Hacked

• Don't open any links unless sure of the source.
• Change Internet Protocol addresses "constantly."
• Do not talk to people you do not know on Telegram.
• Do not talk to people on Twitter direct messaging.
• Do not make the same email as your username on Twitter.