Anonymous Member Placed on FBI Terrorism Watchlist

Jeremy Hammond, one of the well-known Anonymous members, who took part in some of the hacking group’s largest cyber acts, can be now found in the FBI’s terrorism watchlist.

 

Some leaked document from the NY state division of criminal justice services revealed that Jeremy Hammond was classified as a possible terrorist organization member and instructed not to advise him he was on a terrorist watchlist. The document in question is dated from around the time of the hacker’s arrest and suggests that he was put on a Terrorist Screening Database compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, it is unknown why the FBI offered to include the Anonymous member on the watchlist.

Of course, civil liberties groups were concerned that a person with no record of terrorist behavior should be classified in this way, unless the US government has expanded definition of terrorism to including hackers.

Jeremy Hammond was arrested three years ago and sentenced in the end of 2013 to ten years of jail time for participation in Anonymous high-profile hacks. For example, he took part in the release of 5 million emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor. The hacker was prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and there was never any suspicion that he was involved in terrorist organizations. In addition, Jeremy has always insisted he is an activist and not a criminal, let alone a terrorist.

In response, the Terrorist Screening Center responsible for administering the database claimed they could neither confirm nor deny whether anyone may be included in the database, because it would impair the government’s ability to investigate and fight terrorism.

It is known that the guidelines governing terrorism watchlists are cast very wide to include “acts dangerous to human life, property or infrastructure”, which are “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction”. The representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union admitted that the approach of the American government to the watchlists was quite controversial, since it had a very broad definition of terrorism, along with a poorly defined standard of “reasonable suspicion” with many exemptions.

Infectious Porn Video Back on Facebook

The new pretend-porn trojan was fast enough: it has infected over 110,000 Facebook users in a couple days. It works as follows: one of user’s Facebook friends shares a porn video and it appears in the user’s news feed. After it is clicked, it asks the user to install an update for the Flash software, instead installing malware.

 

The malware tags the infected user’s friends in a post containing porn video clip. The clip itself can’t be played, as it asks to download a (fake) flash player to run. Of course, instead it downloads the actual malware. Security experts revealed they have been monitoring the new malware for the last 2 days where it managed to infect over 110,00 users and remains on the rise.

Once the trojan infects someone’s account, it re-shares the video adding up to 20 tags of their friends. This helps it spread faster than previous malware, which was distributing itself through private messaging on Facebook. The experts dubbed the new malware “Magnet” and explained it was able to hijack victims’ keyboard and mouse movements.

Of course, this is not the first time porn videos have been used in Facebook-targeted malware scams. For example, last summer, there was a scam designed to look like a YouTube video of someone stripping in front of their webcam.

In response, Facebook said they were aware of the latest malware, and were doing what they could to stop it spreading further across the network. Facebook used several automated systems in order to identify potentially harmful links and stop them from spreading. The company also explained that these malware varieties are normally hosted as browser extensions and distributed via links on social networks. Facebook blocks links to the scams, offers cleanup options and extra measures to make sure its users are safe.