FBI Would Have Cracked TrueCrypt Password Suspect

A system administrator who managed to steal secrets from the US Army could despite the use of the popular encryption program TrueCrypt still be caught. The man was last week sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years. Through the SunSentinel there is now more information on the case to come out.

The American was seconded as a system administrator at an air base in Honduras. From this location, the man approached the classified network without permission from the Ministry of Defence. There he deleted confidential information, including intelligence reports and military plans. Before the files were removed which he copied to his NAS system that was at home.To cover his tracks he removed include log data.

TrueCrypt

The information that the spoils system did he copied three times and remained hidden for two years, said the prosecutor. For the security of its own system, the man used TrueCrypt. He had encryption programs set up so that there was a hidden volume created. In this case, there are two volumes, each with a separate operating system, which are accessed through different passwords. Thus, a TrueCrypt user can relinquish the password from one volume, making the operating system without important data is loaded. The data on the hidden volume remain hidden.

This hidden volume had secured the system with a password of 30 characters, as did an intelligence expert from the army reported in court. In 2011, the system still had an email sent to a friend, stating that the FBI could not crack TrueCrypt.According to the information the FBI expert was in this case it managed to crack the password. How the investigation service has gotten this done is unknown. A known attack on TrueCrypt is the EvilMaid attack . In this case, an attacker with physical access to the encrypted system install a keylogger, which stores the entered password TrueCrypt.

Another possibility is that the system administrator has told his password. In early January of this year closed the system a "plea agreement" with the Department of Justice. Databreaches.net this agreement put online ( pdf ) but about whether or not to crack the TrueCrypt password is not listed here.

American City Has Allocated 3.5 Million Dollars For Firewall

The US city of Boston has $ 3.5 million earmarked for the development of a "next generation" firewall, to protect the city against cyber attacks. According Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CIO of the city, is currently the technical infrastructure for vulnerabilities controlled and it is checked whether or systems have the appropriate redundancy, reports the Boston Herald .

The firewall must be Boston in mind, would later become operational this year, but the campaign to strengthen the digital security of the city runs through 2020. Eventually, there should be a system of multi-layer data protection. Boston has not had to deal with major security incidents and data breaches, but according to Greg McCarthy, CISO of the city, there is commanded constant vigilance.

Finnish Teenager Convicted Of Computer Crimes

A 17-year-old Finnish teenager was sentenced in Finland to a suspended sentence of two years for a large number of computer crimes. The boy needs help "combating cyber crime," notes the website Daily Dot according to reports in the Finnish media .

The Finn was convicted based on 50,700 counts of computer crime. It was to include data breaches, credit card fraud, money laundering, fraud and violating commercial secrets and other matters. He placed with stolen credit cards at various retailers orders. In one case, he happened to wine from Ireland. The Finland Times reports that the teenager also the e-mail traffic of 15,000 users of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) intercepted and network traffic of the university sent to another server.

The teenager was also part of the Lizard Squad have been. The group was last year responsible for DDoS attacks on the networks of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. The Finnish teenager was also interviewed by the British television channel Sky News for the DDoS attacks. Were the attacks on the networks of Microsoft and Sony hacked thousands of home routers are used.