FBI

Nicholas Merrill is planning to revolutionize online privacy with a concept as simple as it is ingenious: a telecommunications provider designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance.

Merrill, 39, who previously ran a New York-based Internet provider, told CNET that he's raising funds to launch a national "non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption" that will sell mobile phone service and, for as little as $20 a month, Internet connectivity.

The ISP would not merely employ every technological means at its disposal, including encryption and limited logging, to protect its customers. It … Read more

Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 has powered fictional games like Gears of War 3 and Mass Effect 3, but now the technology is being used to assist real-world endeavors at government bodies like the FBI Academy through the just-launched Unreal Government Network.

Epic Games today announced a long-term Unreal 3 reseller agreement with Virtual Heroes, an interactive learning simulation company based in Raleigh, N.C.

As part of the deal, agencies and units of United States and allied governments will make use of Epic's game engine for a variety of purposes through the UGN.

Read more of "FBI using Unreal Engine 3 crime scene sim" at GameSpot. … Read more

When the Antisec branch of Anonymous hacked into security think tank Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, at the end of December, one of its claims was the theft 200GB worth of data, including e-mails and clients' credit card information.

Days after the hack, the group published 860,000 e-mail addresses and 75,000 unencrypted credit card numbers on the Web.

Now, the FBI's Milan Patel says that between December 6, 2011, and February 2012, "at least $700,000 worth of unauthorized charges were made to credit card accounts that were among those stolen during the Stratfor Hack," according … Read more

The group of hackers known as "LulzSec" frequently taunted government pursuers over the last year as they published sensitive data snatched from myriad public and corporate Web sites.

Tuesday, we may have learned what happens when you mock the feds for too long. Authorities announced that five men in the U.K., Ireland, New York, and Chicago had been charged with hacking-related offenses. They also said the alleged LulzSec leader, known as Sabu, had entered a guilty plea on August 15 to 12 counts of computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes. According to the U.S. Attorney's … Read more

Anonymous is having a busy weekend.

The loose-knit hacking collective, which last week scored a coup against the FBI, claimed yesterday to have taken down the CIA's Web site, in what appeared to be a distributed denial of service attack (one of the group's specialties, such relatively unsophisticated attacks paralyze Web servers with waves of data requests).

The group also posted information it said was pilfered from police and government servers in Alabama, and, as blog RT reported, took down the Mexican Senate and Interior Ministry Web sites. It also said it had exposed e-mail addresses from the … Read more

Turns out that the FBI did a background check on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1991, when he was considered for an appointment on George H.W. Bush's President's Export Council.

According to the report, which the bureau published today, Jobs' past drug use raised some questions, as did his lack of support for his eldest child, who was born out of wedlock. Jobs died last October after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.

You can read the report here. We've pulled some screen shots from the report and they're below. Many names in the report … Read more

Anonymous today released a recording of a conference call between the FBI and U.K. law enforcement over Anonymous and other online activist groups.

A Twitter message posted earlier this morning from AnonymousIRC handle, says "The #FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now. #OpInfiltration."

A link to a Youtube video also posted today records a conversation apparently between U.S. and U.K. law enforcement officials discussing people behind specific hacking cases and legal strategies. Real names of individuals are bleeped out, although nicknames are used.

The … Read more

Contrary to recent media reports, the FBI did not arrest MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom after being pressured by managers at the four major record companies, who supposedly feared DotCom would launch an unlicensed music service, sources close to the investigation told CNET.

Numerous film and music industry sources have discussed some of the events that preceded the January 19 raid in New Zealand on DotCom's home. What becomes clear is that two years ago, when the FBI began investigating the cyberlocker service, the film studios were far more intent on taking down MegaUpload than their counterparts at the music … Read more

One of the most curious aspects of the U.S. government's case against MegaUpload is the large number of the company's internal communications acquired by the FBI.

In one exchange, MegaUpload managers fretted via Skype IM chat in 2007 that founder Kim Dotcom wasn't "safe with his money" and "the current situation is a bit risky," according to documents U.S. authorities filed with a New Zealand court this month as part of their criminal pursuit of the embattled cyberlocker service.

While it's still not clear how federal investigators gained access to … Read more