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ComputerWorld Independent 

Hacker takes out dark web hosting service using well-known exploit

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A hacker is proving that sites on the dark web, shrouded in anonymity, can easily be compromised.   

On Friday, the unnamed hacker began dumping a sizable database stolen from Freedom Hosting II onto the internet, potentially exposing its users.

The hosting service, Freedom Hosting II, was known for operating thousands of sites that were accessible through the Tor browser; the “dark web” is essentially the encrypted network comprising Tor servers and browsers. But on Friday, the service appeared to be down. Its main landing page was replaced with a message saying that it had been hacked.

Allegedly, Freedom Hosting II had been hosting child pornography sites, though its anonymous operator claimed to have a zero-tolerance policy toward such content, according to the hacker behind the breach.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Court orders Google to produce emails stored abroad

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A federal court in Pennsylvania has ordered Google to comply with search warrants and produce customer emails stored abroad, in a decision that is in sharp contrast to that of an appeals court in a similar case involving Microsoft.

Magistrate Judge Thomas J. Rueter of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled Friday that the two warrants under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) for emails required by the government in two criminal investigations constituted neither a seizure nor a search of the targets’ data in a foreign country.

Transferring data electronically from a server in a foreign country to Google’s data center in California does not amount to a seizure because “there is no meaningful interference with the account holder’s possessory interest in the user data,” and Google’s algorithm in any case regularly transfers user data from one data center to another without the customer’s knowledge, Rueter wrote.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Google ordered by U.S. court to produce emails stored abroad

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Google has been ordered by a federal court in Pennsylvania to comply with search warrants and produce customer emails stored abroad, in a decision that is in sharp contrast to that of an appeals court in a similar case involving Microsoft.

Magistrate Judge Thomas J. Rueter of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled Friday that the two warrants under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) for emails required by the government in two criminal investigations constituted neither a seizure nor a search of the targets’ data in a foreign country.

Transferring data electronically from a server in a foreign country to Google’s data center in California does not amount to a seizure because “there is no meaningful interference with the account holder’s possessory interest in the user data,” and Google’s algorithm in any case regularly transfers user data from one data center to another without the customer’s knowledge, Judge Rueter wrote.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Cybersecurity and freedom of speech under President Trump

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While President Donald Trump decided not to sign an executive order on cybersecurity (pdf), which would have required a review of the nation’s cyber vulnerabilities to be done in a mere 60 days, he told reporters, “I will hold my cabinet secretaries and agency heads accountable, totally accountable for the cybersecurity of their organization.”

8 months later, vulnerable Pentagon servers still not patched

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ComputerWorld Independent 

German consumer groups sue WhatsApp over privacy policy changes

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WhatsApp’s privacy policy change allowing Facebook to target advertising at its users has landed the company in a German court.

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBZ) has filed suit against WhatsApp in the Berlin regional court, alleging that the company collects and stores data illegally and passes it on to Facebook, the federation said Monday.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in October 2014, but it wasn’t until August 2016 that WhatsApp said it would modify its privacy policy to allow it to share lists of users’ contacts with Facebook. The move made it possible to match WhatsApp accounts with Facebook ones where users had registered a phone number, giving the parent company more data with which to make new friend suggestions and another way to target advertising.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Trump, May agree to take on ISIS in cyberspace

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The U.K. and U.S. are planning to work more closely to combat the spread of extreme Islamist ideology in cyberspace, British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday.

May was speaking at a White House news conference, alongside U.S. President Donald Trump, held to outline the results of talks between the two leaders. May is in Washington as the first foreign head of state to meet Trump.

She noted the conventional military fight against ISIS is working and the group is losing territory but noted the two countries “need to redouble our efforts.”

“Today we’re discussing how we can do this by deepening intelligence and security cooperation and critically, by stepping up our efforts to counter Daesh in cyberspace,” she said, using an alternate name for the terrorist group.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Get 72% off NordVPN Virtual Private Network Service For a Limited Time – Deal Alert

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Controversial Park Service tweets arose from old Twitter passwords

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Two instances of tweets from U.S. National Park Service accounts that became political hot potatoes in the last few days were the result of bad password management, according to officials.

The first incident took place on inauguration day when the main National Park Service account retweeted images from a CNN reporter that compared unfavorably the crowd size at President Donald Trump’s inauguration with that of President Barack Obama’s in 2009.

When Trump began to openly dispute the images and smaller crowd sizes, the National Park Service deleted the retweet and apologized.

“We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you,” it said Saturday.

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