FBI Hacked (AGAIN) | Forensic 101
Everyone and everything is online now. We live our lives online, we chat online, we shop online and we even learn online. Our finances have shifted online too, especially post demonetisation. The government is striving to make our economy digital. Digital India is their goal. It sounds well and good. A digital economy will mean fewer cash frauds, easier transactions and a significant decrease in the flow of black money.
However, going digital isn’t really the safest bet. Hacking and online attacks are an everyday phenomenon. Online fraud, identity theft even online robberies happen all around the world on a daily basis. This is one of the main reasons we need to educate and take digital forensics seriously.
We at Forensic 101 create videos on the digital frauds and hacks that takes place in day to day life, hence educating people and making internet a safe place. We work closely with DIgital Forensic Solution companies and education institutes.
In October 2015, A HACKER group known as ‘Crackas with attitude’ broke into the AOL account of CIA Director John Brennan and obtained access by posing as a Verizon worker to trick another employee into revealing the spy chief’s personal information. Using this information , the hacker and his associates were able to reset the password on Brennan’s AOL account and were able to access sensitive government documents stored as attachments in Brennan’s personal account because the spy chief had forwarded them from his work email.
In November 2015, the same group of hackers found a vulnerability that allowed them to gain access to a portal for law enforcement that grants access to arrest records and other sensitive data, including what appears to be a tool for sharing information about active shooters and terrorist events, and a system for real-time chats between law enforcement agents, which is supposed to be available only to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the country. (Put Jabs and the list of tools here)
In February 2016, Hackers published contact information for 20,000 FBI employees and 9,000 Department of Homeland Security employees by hacking into a Department of Justice database.
And in December 2016, CyberZeist, also known as Le4ky, exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Plone Content Management System (CMS) of the FBI’s website, and leaked some of the information to Pastebin, an open source site that is often used by hackers to post stolen information and bits of code. A zero- day fault is a vulnerability in the code that has not been detected, listed, or patched yet. Therefore, the FBI had zero days to respond to the attack.
