HBGary: Security Firm Investigating ‘Anonymous’ Hacked and Exposed
“Do not meddle in the affairs of hackers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”
Following last week’s hacking of shamed LIGATT CEO Gregory D Evans, this week it was the turn of security firm HBGary to get exposed. HBGary have been aiding the FBI with their investigations into members of Anonymous. Although Anonymous isn’t a centralised ‘group’, their recent DDoS attacks and hacks of oppressive governments and anti-wikileaks organisations (including PayPal, MasterCard and VISA), have made them a target of the US Federal Government.
HBGary were allegedly preparing to hand over information about certain members of Anonymous to the FBI, who have already made several arrests in the US and UK, and obtained over 40 search warrants in an attempt to shut down Anonymous (probably not possible imo). Angered by CEO Aaron Barr and HBGary’s involvement in FBI investigations, members of Anonymous compromised a number of HBGary servers, defacing their website, gaining access to CEO Aaron Barr’s Twitter account, and obtaining a large number of emails. In what seems to be the popular punishment at the moment, over 50,000 corporate emails were released in a torrent. Anonymous also stated, on one of their many Twitter accounts, that the source code of HBGary’s security products was also obtained – although these don’t appear to have been released (yet?).
“You’ve angered the hive, and now you are being stung.”
Anonymous posted a message to HBGary on their defaced website, where they mock the firm for their lack of security and the unsubstantial ‘public’ information that was going to be handed sold to the FBI.
Hit the jump for Anonymous’ full message.
Ars Technica has a good review of how this all went down, and a step-by-step account of how the hack was possible.
[Update] Aaron Barr steps down as CEO of HBGary Federal
OpenLeaks Website Goes Live
The website for the independent whistleblowing platform, OpenLeaks, has gone live. The concept behind OpenLeaks is to provide a secure document delivery dropbox and storage method for would-be whistleblowers. On the receiving end, news organisations, human rights groups, and others will be able to access the files and make them public should they feel it necessary.
Unlike Wikileaks, OpenLeaks plays no part in the actual editorial and publication process, it is a content distribution method that bridges the gap between leakers and publishers.
Check out the video below for their introduction to OpenLeaks:
OpenBSD IPSec Possibly Probably Not Backdoored by FBI
In a post to the OpenBSD mailing list, developer Theo de Raadt reveals an email from an ex-contributor (Gregory Perry) alleging that money was accepted from the FBI around 2000-2001, in return for implementing a backdoor into the IPSec stack. Such a backdoor would give the FBI the ability to eavesdrop on any IPSec connection made using OpenBSD, or any other projects that have since made use of its IPSec code.
Clearly this would be a big deal if true, and although we know that open source projects are regularly backdoored by rogue developers or ‘hackers’ (such as the recent ProFTPd backdoor), it is not often that we hear of governments inserting some themselves. Should we be surprised? After all it is known that the NSA was involved with the development of DES by altering the algorithm’s S-Boxes and suggesting a shorter key length. There are also rumors of a covert backdoor in several versions of the Windows OS. That said, many people are smelling a troll in this case.
Following this information (can we call it a leak rumor?), OpenBSD’s IPSec code will undoubtedly come under quite a bit of scrutiny, and I’m sure we will hear a lot more about it should anything untoward be uncovered.
Read the full mailing list post here, archived below for posterity.
[Update] Scott Lowe denies being affiliated with the FBI, and Jason Wright denies having inserted a backdoor. This is sounding more and more like a trolling. To what end, I couldn’t speculate. It’s also worth noting that this kind of activity would probably not fall under a normal NDA, but under a government-level Top Secret classification which lasts at least 25 years…
An interesting observation about OpenBSD IPSec and Stuxnet. Read more
Wikileaks Releases 250k US Embassy Cables (Chinese Gov’t Responsible for Google Attacks)
Wikileaks, who are currently the target of a massive DDoS attack, has just released 251,287 leaked US embassy cables (dubbed Cablegate). Mirrors available here.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.
One cable reveals that China’s Politbureau was responsible for the attacks against Google China back in January 2010.
[Update] A torrent is available to download the entire Cablegate site in a single archive for your personal reading pleasure (magnet links).
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