#Russian #Hackers Could Influence #German Election


Angela Merkel says Russia could try to influence Germany’s general elections in 2017 by launching cyber attacks or disinformation campaigns. This statement was made after the US accused Moscow of similar meddling in the US vote, which resulted in the victory of pro-Russian candidate.

Merkel claimed that Germany already had to deal with information out of Russia or with online attacks that are of Russian origin or with disinformation news. She described dealing with that as “a daily task”, so this problem could play a role during the future election campaign. Merkel’s comments were made in response to a question about whether her country could experience the type of online attacks that have affected the US race, largely targeting Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party.

The United States in October formally accused the Russian government of trying to influence the country’s election by hacking US political institutions. Of course, Russia has repeatedly dismissed these charges. Germany’s secret service earlier in 2016 accused the Russian Federation of a series of international cyber-spying and sabotage attacks. In one of them, for example, the German lower house of parliament was targeted in 2015.

Germany is going to go to the polls in September. Angela Merkel has yet to announce her candidacy but is expected by many experts to run for a 4th term.

#Tesco Bank Was Hacked, £2.5m Stolen from 9,000 Customers

The banking arm of the supermarket chain has announced that it had experienced “unprecedented” attack on its online accounts a few days ago, which resulted in the loss of £2.5 million. Tesco Bank also revised down the number of accounts, from which money was stolen, to 9,000 and assured that banking services had been restored for all customers.



The bank issued the latest update on the situation just a few hours after the Financial Conduct Authority told MPs that the incident was unprecedented in the United Kingdom and regarded as serious. In the meantime, Tesco Bank apologized to its customers for any inconvenience it caused, saying that its first priority was protecting and looking after the customers. The bank has already refunded all customer accounts affected by the hack and lifted the suspension of transactions so that people could use their accounts as before. The bank representatives also reassured people that none of their personal data had been compromised.

The bank works closely with the authorities and regulators in their criminal investigation, including the National Crime Agency that scrutinizes what happened at the supermarket chain’s banking arm accounting for more than 7m customers. The National Cyber Security Centre also investigated the issue and launched a criminal inquiry, while providing direct assistance to the company at their request. The agency explained that cyber-related incidents sometimes could take a lot of time to understand, given the technical complexities involved. During this period it is important that no information is revealed to general public that could interfere with the criminal investigation. So far, the agency is unaware of any wider threat to the British banking sector connected with this breach.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it was too early to know the exact cause of the breach, but it appeared to be related to debit cards. Apparently, computer hackers were looking for weaknesses and “points of entry” into banks.

There are several theories about the cause of the problem. One of them is that it was caused by an internal security breach, another – that it was the work of a foreign power. Perhaps, the breach was state-sponsored.

The bank explained that the decision to suspend some banking activities meant to protect customers from online criminal activity and described the raid as “a systematic, sophisticated attack”. The role of National Cyber Security Centre was to support the investigation, work with Tesco concerned to manage the incident, investigate the root causes, and use the obtained information to provide future guidance and policy on online security.

Meanwhile, the Information Commissioner’s Office is also looking into the situation. For example, it fined telecom company TalkTalk £400,000 a months ago for failing to stop the breach of personal data of its 157,000 customers. The members of the Treasury select committee called the attack on Tesco’s retail accounts “deeply troubling” and highlighting the crucial importance of technical security to the financial system.

Leslie Jones Website Hacking Investigated by Homeland Security

Image result for Leslie Jones

The inquiry launched less than a day after JustLeslie.com was attacked by hackers who reportedly published images of her driver’s license and passport, as well as explicit photos perhaps originating from her iCloud account. Besides, Leslie Jones’

website was defaced with a video of the gorilla Harambe, which was a clear racist attack against the actor, who has faced harassment and online bullying in 2016.

Leslie Jones is not the first victim whose hack is investigated by federal officials – the DHS agents led an investigation in 2015 that resulted in the arrest of a Bahamian man, who had allegedly hacked into celebrities’ email accounts looking for unreleased movie and TV scripts and private sex tapes. The man reportedly said that he had dossiers on at least 130 accounts of stars and executives in the entertainment industry.

Besides, the FBI also investigated the attack on Jennifer Lawrence, whose explicit photos were exposed two years ago, allegedly originating from her iCloud account. Back in 2015, Sony Pictures co-chair was forced to leave her position after the embarrassing emails with racially insensitive remarks about Barack Obama were revealed in result of the hack. At the time, North Korea was suspected of the attack.

Meanwhile, many celebrities have tweeted their support for Leslie Jones, with commentators noting that black women in powerful positions often face harassment and racist attacks. Twitter even had to permanently ban a British columnist who had aggressively targeted the comic.

FBI-Controlled MegaUpload Domain Links to Porn Portal


A few years ago, the American Government seized a number of domain names that belonged to MegaUpload. Today the authorities still control those domains, but it seems that they failed to secure them. For example, Megaupload.org currently links to a soft porn portal.

MegaUpload was shutdown almost 5 years ago, but the investigation against it is still ongoing. Back in 2015, a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Kim Dotcom and his fellow colleagues can be extradited to the US to face charges, but Dotcom appealed this decision. In the meantime, the American Government retains control over the company’s assets, including cash, cars, and a dozen of MegaUpload’s former domain names. Initially, they served a banner saying they had been seized as part of a criminal investigation. But now you will be quite surprised if you visit those domains.

For example, Megaupload.org is now hosting a website dedicated to soft porn ads. Other seized domains also show adverts. At the same time, it is taking place under the watch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is still listed as the administrative and technical contact for those domain names.

You may remember that something similar happened to the main Megaupload.com domain in 2015. At the time, it was traced back to an expired domain the FBI used for their nameservers, where someone else took over the domain name and linked Megaupload.com to scammy advertisements. Last year, the American authorities eventually fixed the situation by removing the nameservers altogether, but apparently they didn’t do this for other seized domains.

As a result, a few weeks ago the domain used for nameservers expired once more and was taken over by an outsider who tried to generate some cash from the FBI-controlled domains.

According to the domain WHOIS data, Megaupload.org still uses the old nameservers, so an outsider is currently able to control several of the seized MegaUpload domain names. Although the hijacked domains don’t generate much traffic, it’s still quite embarrassing to have them linked to soft porn and other ads. Kim Dotcom noted that the sloppiness was exemplary of the entire MegaUpload criminal case and FBI’s actions.

Proxy,Tor or VPN what is best to download Torrents Anonymously? ?

BitTorrent and anonymity are not the same. If you really want to keep your activity private, your best way involves routing your BitTorrent connection through an external services – anonymous proxy, Tor or VPN. 



A proxy server is an intermediary server that forwards requests for content from multiple clients to different servers across the Internet. Anonymous proxy hides the IP address of the client to bypass geo restrictions, unblock websites

Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. Tor is a computer network run by volunteers worldwide. Each volunteer runs what is called a relay, which is just a computer that runs software allowing users to connect to the Internet via the Tor network. messaging or downloading the files.

VPN or Virtual Private Network, is a group of computers networked together over internet. A VPN is designed to provide a secure, encrypted tunnel in which to send/receive the data between the user visitor and website/network. The information sent between the two locations through the encrypted tunnel cannot be read by anyone else.

So, what’s the best choice to anonymize BitTorernt Traffic?

Unfortunately, you will discover that free proxy servers rarely work. Public proxies have slow connection. Proxies do not have much bandwidth. On top of that, a proxy server with an IP rotating system, will not be sufficient to give you anonymity.

Tor is a very slow because your data is routed through a number of relays. ISPs are trying to block Tor relays, making it difficult for some users to connect.

With VPN your BitTorrent traffic will be completely anonymous. The IP will be replaced by IP address of the VPN server. The tunnel of data sending/receiving is completely encrypted and secure. The paid VPN providers offer unlimited speed and u unlimited bandwidth, tons of the servers in many countries, no logging, encrypting and full anonymity. Besides that, they accept Bitcoin and allow users stay anonymous completely. Government agencies cannot see what you are downloading, sharing or torrenting. While using Anonymous VPN you will never receive any copyright infringement letters from your ISP

So, the VPN is the best way to secure and anonymize your BitTorrent traffic completely!