As WikiLeaks continues to leak extensive and highly damaging e-mails, group leader Julian Assange saw his Internet access cut off by the Ecuadorian embassy in London despite finding refuge there from 2012 onward. However, this will only slightly disrupt his endgame of compromising communications between covert organizations. In other news we witnessed a week of somewhat speculation, redemptions and interesting revelations. The facial recognition database employed by the U.S. law enforcement enjoys data of 117 million individuals, a new report revealed. This indicates nearly half of all American adults should know they are being monitored with such technology. With the U.S. elections just around the corner, so to speak, even the thought of Donald Trump becoming President and gaining control over intelligence agencies such as the NSA is truly worrisome. The notorious and renowned Anonymous hacker Hector Monsegu, aka Sabu in the old days, made headlines by becoming a white hat after temporarily working as an FBI informant and spending seven months behind bars. And the turbulent week came to an end with a considerable portion of the Internet being compromised by a huge DDoS attack that may be continuing with small side-effects as you read this article.
Weebly hacked, 43 million accounts tampered
Weebly, the known web-hosting company, issued a report this week confirming it was the target and victim of a huge cyberattack, with data from reportedly 43.4 million accounts made highly vulnerable as a result. Weebly has confirmed to its users and those following the developments that no full credit numbers were stored in its database. However, user names, passwords, email addresses and even IP addresses were amongst the treasures hauled and stolen by the hackers. If you are a Weebly user you have to think twice about your password, and we recommend you change it ASAP.
Russian hacker arrested
Earlier this month reports indicate a Russian hacker was arrested by authorities in Prague. Despite early speculations he may have had links to state-supported hacks targeting the Democratic Party in the United States, the business social media LinkedIn was able to identify the man involved back in 2012 in the theft of over 117 million user passwords. FBI was involved in making the arrest possible, and it is yet to be determined if the Russian hacker will be facing extradition to the U.S. or not.
WikiLeaks founder loses Internet access
The Ecuadorian embassy in London has been the host of Julian Assange for the past four years now. The country’s government took a bold move in shutting Assange’s internet access this week, explaining their measures by saying they respect “the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states.” To be more precise, the Ecuadorian government had come under pressure and it was getting a bit tired of WikiLeaks, still under Assange control, continuing to leak further private emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of their presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Despite all this, Ecuador turned down any worries of expelling Assange from its embassy, and the move did not stop others in WikiLeaks from launching a tweet storm in this regard.
Phishing trap was the beginning of Podesta email leakage
It remains a question how thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta, chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign, went public. A phishing attempt that was quite successful is to blame, as reported by Motherboard. It doesn’t stop here. Such an attempt was also seen to have been used by Fancy Bear in the past. What, or who, is Fancy Bear? It is an elite Russian hacking group linked extensively to the DNC hack that took place just months ago and made the headlines for quite some time.
TechMoralitics 