FBI Targets Hosting Company In Seizure

A hosting company based in Switzerland, with servers in Reston Virginia, found itself the target of an FBI seizure which left a number of clients looking for answers. According to a story in the NYtimes, DigitalOne's chief executive, Sergej Ostroumow, said in an email to one of it's clients that “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we cannot check it.”


Speculation is that the seizure is in relationship to an investigation into the hacking group Lulzsec (Lulz Security group) but no one from the FBI would comment. Sites affected by the seizure include Curbed Network, bookmarking services Instapaper, and pinboard. There is no reason to believe that these sites where the target of the raid and Lockhart Steele, Curbed Networks' President told the news paper that “Our servers happened to be in with some naughty servers,”

French Arrest Hacker Who Targeted Obama Twitter Account

A 25 year old Frenchman who used the online persona HackerCroll has been arrested after hijacking US President Barack Obama's twitter account.

“This individual spread information about a dozen American personalities, notably Barack Obama, on specialist blogs,” Adeline Champagnat, head of the French office against online fraud, said.

HackerCroll appeared to be driven by the challenge and apparently acted alone in his quest to gain access to the accounts. No sensitive information was allegedly targeted.

“He thinks he is good at this, and he is,” Ms. Champagnat said.

The French were tipped off by the FBI according to this Globe and Mail article.

Scene Of The Crime... Twitter

An Oklahoma City man, Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested earlier this month by the FBI for allegedly issuing death threats on April 11th. The threats were in the form of tweets on his Twitter account (http://twitter.com/CitizenQuasar) which is still active, particularly disturbing are the posts of April 11 and 12. “The WAR wWIL start on the stepes of the Oklahoma State Capitol. I will cast the first sotne. In the meantime, I await the police.” and "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!" There is also a direct threat to police which I'll refrain from posting...

Source: Globe and Mail

FBI Investigate Stolen Medical Records

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate an extortion attempt on a medical benefit management company from St. Louis. Express Scripts received a letter in October threatening to expose data about the companies clients, the letter contained personal information on about 75 members "including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, prescription information." “We have been conducting a thorough investigation since we received this threat and we are taking it very seriously,” said George Paz, chairman and chief executive, in a statement. “We are cooperating with the F.B.I. and are committed to doing what we can to protect our members’ personal information and to track down the person or persons responsible for this criminal act.”

The company has created a website to inform it's clients about the extortion attempt, and have made the following statement "We believe we have identified where the data involved in this situation was stored in our systems and have instituted enhanced controls." That's reassuring!

The company handles prescription benefits for approximately 50 million people for various health insurers, employers and union sponsored plans.

New York Times story.

FBI building a billion dollar biometric database

According to Reuters the FBI is about to award a 10 year contract for the building of a billion dollar database comprised of digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns. "If successful, the system, called Next Generation Identification, will collect the biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes". This sounds a little big brother like; no matter how you spin it...

FBI turns to spyware to trace bomb threat

According to this CNET post the FBI remotely installed spyware on a MySpace account suspected of being used by a bomb threat hoaxster. The software was designed to phone home with the IP address of the suspects computer and other information garnered from the PC. The suspect was a former student of the High School that was subject of the threats. The FBI had reported in 2001 that it was working on such software, a virus called Magic Lantern, but hasn't said much about it since. I wonder if MySpace cooperated in this case or if it was done totally cloak and dagger?