Morgan Stanley hit by China-based hackers -report - CNBC

Morgan Stanley hit by China-based hackers -report - CNBC

NEW YORK, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley experienced a "very sensitive" break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc's computers more than a year ago, Bloomberg reported, citing leaked emails from an Internet security company.

The emails from the Sacramento, California-based computer security firm HBGary Inc said that Morgan Stanley -- the first financial institution identified in the series of attacks -- considered details of the intrusion a closely guarded secret, the report said. Bloomberg quoted Phil Wallisch, a senior security engineer at HBGary, as saying that he read an internal Morgan Stanley report detailing the so-called Aurora attacks. The HBGary emails don't indicate what information may have been stolen from Morgan Stanley's databanks or which of the world's largest merger adviser's multinational operations were targeted, according to the report.

Revenge Still Sweet As Anonymous Posts 27,000 More HBGary E-Mails

An act of revenge has turned into a high-minded campaign against unscrupulous corporate and government activities–that is if you believe a group of elite, hot-tempered hackers supporting Anonymous, the online campaign group that stands up for free speech by, among other things, attacking Web sites.

A week after publishing more than 50,000 private emails of Aaron Barr, CEO of digital intelligence firm HBGary Federal who had publicly claimed to have penetrated Anonymous’ ranks, the group this morning republished those emails with another 27,606 from Greg Hoglund, the chief executive of sister company HBGary for other Anonymous supporters and journalists to pour over.

And instead of just uploading the email packet to bittorrent site Pirate Bay, they’ve created on online reader for easy perusing. It sets the stage for the launch of Anonymous’ latest venture, AnonLeaks. While the group has said little about AnonLeaks so far, it will presumably be a brazen addition to the growth of whistleblower sites like WikiLeaks.

The group said in a statement that it had taken “the game to the next level” and that HBGary’s leaked emails had revealed it was “entangled in highly dubious and most likely illegal activities, including a smear campaign against WikiLeaks, its supportive journalists, and adversaries of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America. Evidence even suggests this was done with full knowledge of the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The original emails had indeed revealed a report by HBGary looking at ways to sabotage WikiLeaks in collaboration with Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. The emails also show that Bank of America, a potential target of WikiLeaks, was to hear the proposal via its outside law firm Hunton & Williams. The proposal’s recommendations included a disinformation campaign against WikiLeaks and cyber attacks on its Web site.

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HBGary CEO Also Suggested Tracking, Intimidating WikiLeaks’ Donors

WikiLeaks and its inner circle of supporters may not have been the only targets of a group of security firms that offered to take on the secret-spilling site on behalf of Bank of America. In an email conversation, the head of one of those firms also suggested going after the thousands of individuals who have donated to the group.

Last week the loose hacker group Anonymous released a set of more than 40,000 emails from HBGary Federal, the security firm whose servers it hacked earlier this month. One of the files in those emails was a PowerPoint presentation that described “the WikiLeaks Threat,” created by a group of three security firms that suggested Nixonesque tactics for sabotaging the site on behalf of Bank of America, including spreading misinformation, launching cyberattacks against it, and pressuring journalists.

Over the weekend, the loose hacker group Anonymous published another 27,000 emails from HBGary Federal’s sister company HBGary, and also created a search engine for those documents on its WikiLeaks-like site, Anonleaks.ru.
A quick search of the company’s WikiLeaks-related conversations shows that Aaron Barr, the HBGary chief executive who first caught the attention of Anonymous by boasting that he’d penetrated the group and identified its leaders, also suggested other tactics against WikiLeaks that weren’t included in that PowerPoint: namely, tracking and intimidating anyone who had given money to WikiLeaks. The security firms “need to get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them,” he wrote in an email. “Transaction records are easily identifiable.”
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ChamberLeaks: Pro-Chamber Conspiracy Illicitly Scraped Facebook

ThinkProgress has previously revealed how Hunton & Williams — a top law firm working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — solicited three private security contractors to investigate political opponents of the Chamber. A key service that attracted the Chamber’s lawyers to the corporate spies — Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal — was the ability of HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr to use computer programs to “scrape” personal information from the websites of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites.

Leaked emails show that Berico, Palantir, and HBGary conspired to store information scraped from social media sites on Palantir’s servers. On November 11, Barr sent Facebook data about the supporters and leaders of Change To Win, CodePink, US Chamber Watch and other organizations to Berico, who then passed the “scrapes” with “mugshots” along to Palantir:

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Anonymous Ready To Dump More HBGary E-mails, Launch AnonLeaks

Anonymous used to be all about disrupting the Web sites of companies that helped block WikiLeaks’ funding. Now it’s starting to act like WikiLeaks itself. The group is planning, as early as today, to release 27,000 e-mails from the server of Greg Hoglund, the chief executive of software security firm HBGary, which it says could have permanently damaging consequences for the company.

Anonymous has already posted around 50,000 emails of Aaron Barr, the CEO of sister organisation HPGary Federal, which revealed a report by the firm looking at ways to sabotage WikiLeaks in collaboration with Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. The emails also show that Bank of America, a potential target of WikiLeaks, was to hear the proposal via its outside law firm Hunton & Williams.

A source from Anonymous says that most of the new e-mails from Hoglund are still unchecked and it is unclear who will be most liable when the information is made public, but added that briefly skimming the emails had revealed “three different malware archives, two bots, an offer to sell a botnet, a genuine stuxnet copy, and various malware lists.” Not entirely surprising given that HBGary is a security firm, but the source speculates that botnets aren’t typically rented out for “research.”

“Judging by the fact that they’d attack WikiLeaks’ operations, [we] wouldn’t be surprised if they’re up to something fishy,” the source added. “We’ll let Anon and other public devour the emails.”

A subset of Anonymous members, or Anons, who use Internet Relay Chat to communicate, are currently working on a web viewer for all the e-mails as part of the launch of a new front for the movement, AnonLeaks.

ThinkProgress also discovered via Barr’s leaked emails that similar proposals had been prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists including ThinkProgress itself

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