Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

Threat level reports more than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle.

via Read Full Article.

Crude Bomb Found On Board Flight In S India

A security alarm was triggered Sunday when an explosive, suspected to be a crude bomb, was found on board a private airline flight in the southern state of Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, a senior police official said.

“The crude bomb was inside a ball-shaped package found wrapped in a newspaper in the cargo compartment of Kingfisher flight IT 4731 which arrived from the neighboring city of Bangalore. Airlines staff spotted the explosive during a routine security check-up after all the 27 passengers on the small aircraft had deboarded,” the official said.

He said that the aircraft was immediately moved to the isolation bay and the bomb disposal squad was called in which defused the crude bomb by putting it in water.

A statement from Kingfisher Airlines said that the unclaimed package was found during a routine security check.

via Read Full Article.

Man Stabs Himself To Death At Myrtle Beach Airport

Police in Horry County say one man is dead following a stabbing at the Myrtle Beach International Airport late Friday morning.Sgt. Robert Kegler, spokesman for the Horry County Police Department, said authorities were alerted of an unauthorized person on the airfield at the Myrtle Beach International Airport at 10:45 a.m.Police were dispatched to the airport after a maintenance worker found the unidentified man in a restricted section of the airport.

As authorities responded to the scene, that’s when Kegler said the man began stabbing himself.” In the process, the man pulled out a knife and began to stab himself repeatedly,” said Kegler. “As a result of that stabbing, the male suspect has now been pronounced dead at Grand Strand Hospital. “The 49-year-old was transported to the Grand Strand Regional Medical Center and died of his injuries at 11:05 a.m.Airport officials say the man was not a passenger on a flight and have not commented on any association with Myrtle Beach International.

via Read Full Article.

Consulate Staff Killings in Mexico May Be Mistaken Identity

The murders of three people with ties to a US consulate in Mexico was probably a tragic case of mistaken identity rather than a deliberate attempt to launch an offensive against American officials, the FBI believes.

Initial investigations into the attack, which saw hitmen in balaclavas attack two cars leaving the birthday party of a consular employee's child, suggest the assailants accidentally turned up at the wrong address in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, a bureau spokesman told reporters.

Members of the Juarez drug cartel had been ordered to kill the occupants of two white SUVs attending a different event in the city, on Saturday afternoon, it seems. But they opened fire when they saw similar cars leave a nearby venue.

via Mistaken identity blamed for drugs hit on US staff – Americas, World – The Independent.

New Password-stealing Virus Targets Facebook Users

Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a program that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company’s own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

Facebook could not be immediately reached for comment.

McAfee estimates that hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the campaign began on Tuesday.

via Read Full Article.

More on CNET

Virginia Tech Police, FBI Look Into YouTube Threats

The Collegiate Times reports that the Virginia Tech Police Department and the FBI continue to investigate threatening postings made over YouTube and via e-mail this week, as rumors of more specific threats circulate.

University president Charles Steger sent an e-mail to the Tech community yesterday afternoon. The message was regarding an individual who has been creating threatening posts on YouTube as well as sending threatening e-mails to members of the Tech community, including students and university employees.

Steger’s e-mail stated that there have been many rumors circulating about a potential specific threat.

“The individual responsible has made threats about March 18 as a day of possible action when he might commit harm. Given all that this university has endured, I can understand how this can be very upsetting to the university community,” the e-mail said.

The Collegiate Times obtained a copy of an e-mail forwarded through multiple listservs and Facebook groups that addressed the alleged threat.

via Read Full Article.

Roanoke Times -Internet threats against Virginia Tech not believed to be credible

Virginia Tech officials urged calm this afternoon amidst news that e-mails and Internet postings originating in Italy contained threats of an attack on campus on Thursday.

Tech police, Virginia State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working on the case, and Tech police have said that the threats are not believed to be credible.

The case dates back to October, when a person or people using the screen name “NextKillerVirgTech” posted threats on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com.

At least four Tech students interviewed by television reporters about those postings have since received unsettling e-mails alleged to be connected to the October incident.

Read Full Article

Gunmen Kill American Consulate Staff Members in Juarez

Gunmen in the drug war-plagued Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local U.S. consulate, an attack U.S. President Barack Obama said “outraged” him.

An American woman working at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, and her U.S. husband were fatally shot by suspected drug gang hitmen in broad daylight on Saturday as they left a consulate social event, U.S. and Mexican officials told Reuters.

A Mexican man married to another consulate employee was killed around the same time in another part of the city after he and his wife left the same event, a U.S. official said.

The U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said it was not clear if the victims had been specifically targeted, and the motive for the attacks was unknown.

Bloodshed has exploded in recent months in Ciudad Juarez as the head of the Juarez cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, fights off a bloody offensive by Mexico’s No. 1 fugitive drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, at the worst hotspot of Mexico’s three-year-old drug war.

via Read Full Article.

From AFP – ‘Hit teams’ attack US consular staff, families in Mexico

Suspected drug cartel “hit teams” gunned down an American consular employee and her husband in a Mexican border city and killed a co-worker’s Mexican husband in a separate attack, a US official said Sunday.

The victims two Americans and a Mexican came under fire in separate locations as they were driving Saturday through Ciudad Juarez after earlier attending the same social event, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The killings marked an ominous turn in the drug violence wracking northern Mexico, and prompted the State Department to announce that Americans working at six US consulates in the border area could send their families away.

Read Full Article

Feet Stink Up Security Checkpoint At Florida Airport

Officials at a Florida airport said security workers want to replace two carpets at checkpoints they say have been ruined by passengers’ smelly feet.

Palm Beach County Airports Director Bruce Pelly said at an advisory board meeting Wednesday that security officials at Palm Beach International Airport “are complaining of odor” left behind on the floors from the smelly feet of those who remove their shoes for the two security checkpoints, the Palm Beach Post reported Thursday.

“They just want the carpeting changed,” airport spokeswoman Casandra Davis said.

Davis said airport managers are formulating a plan to replace much of the carpeting and tile inside the airport, but no plans have been finalized.

Sari Koshetz, a Miami spokeswoman with the Transportation Security Administration, which operates the security checkpoints, said officials would support changing the carpets. She said finding time to clean the carpet is difficult, as the checkpoints open at 4:30 a.m. each day and may not close until 1 a.m. if flights are delayed.

via Feet stink up airport carpet – UPI.com.

Man Claiming To Be Vampire Prompts Bomb Scare

A two-block section of Third Avenue near the King County Courthouse was closed for two hours Friday morning after a man with a suspicious device wired to his arm told people he was a vampire looking for food.

Bomb-squad officers took the man into custody near the main entrance to the King County Courthouse shortly after receiving the call at 8:11 a.m.

Read Full Article

Mexican Military Helicopter Hovers Over Texas Homes

The Houston Chronicle reports that the Zapata County sheriff Thursday was questioning why a Mexican military helicopter was hovering over homes on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.

It was one of the more jarring incidents of the fourth week of border tensions sparked by drug killings — and rumors of drug killings — in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he’d reviewed photos of the chopper flown by armed personnel Tuesday over a residential area known as Falcon Heights-Falcon Village near the binational Falcon Lake, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line. He said the helicopter appeared to have the insignia of the Mexican navy.

“It’s always been said that the Mexican military does in fact … that there have been incursions,” Gonzalez said. “But this is not New Mexico or Arizona. Here we’ve got a river, there’s a boundary line. And then of course having Falcon Lake, Falcon Dam, it’s a lot wider. It’s not just a trickle of a river, it’s an actual dam. You know where the boundary’s at.”

The sighting came amid ongoing fighting between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, Los Zetas. The mounting death toll and crisis of fear in cities opposite the Texas border have drawn global attention, as has a news blackout in affected cities with the kidnappings of eight Mexican journalists, at least one of whom was killed.

via Read Full Article.

Mexican Cartels Attempting To Corrupt Border Agents

Mexican drug cartels are infiltrating federal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border and those charged with weeding them out say they don't have the money to catch all the corrupt agents, homeland security officials told a U.S. Senate panel Thursday.

James Tomsheck, assistant commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Internal Affairs, told a Senate homeland security subcommittee in Washington that only about one in 10 of the new hires for agency jobs are given polygraph tests, and of those, 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment.

That means that many who joined the agency during the recent hiring boom and did not take polygraphs could have joined with corruption already in mind, Tomsheck said.

via US Customs: Mexican cartels corrupt border agents – Yahoo! News.

FBI Probes N.J. Man Linked to al Qaeda, Worked At Nuclear Plant

Fox news reports a suspected Al Qaeda militant from Buena, N.J., is being investigated by the FBI after his arrest in the Middle East for allegedly trying to shoot his way out of a hospital in Yemen, WMGM-TV in Atlantic City reported.

Federal sources confirmed that 26-year-old Sharif Mobley is in custody after a shooting rampage in a Yemeni hospital that killed one guard and injured another.

FBI spokesman Rich Wolf in Baltimore said the agency is looking into the case. Mobley was reportedly being held prisoner in the hospital and was caught after a chase following the shooting.

Mobley’s mother told WMGM-TV the accusations are false but did say that when she last spoke to her son in late January he was in Yemen. She said the FBI had visited her for questioning but insisted her son has never been in trouble and is a good Muslim.

Mobley’s father, Charles, said the family was waiting for further information.

“We don’t know nothing, we’re trying to hear something,” Charles Mobley told WMGM-TV.

Mobley’s former classmates from New Jersey expressed shock at both his suspected Al Qaeda ties and his deadly escape attempt in Yemen.

Read Full Article

From CBS NEWS

An American man from New Jersey is reportedly among 11 members of an al Qaeda cell arrested in Yemen last week in a security raid.

Several Arab newspapers and a local NBC television affiliate in New Jersey have reported that 26-year-old Sharif Mobley, of Buena Borough, New Jersey, is in Yemeni custody after killing at least one security officer while trying to escape from a hospital in the Yemeni capital.

NBC40 reports that U.S. government sources have confirmed Mobley’s arrest in Yemen, and say “federal investigators have an interest in Mobley and are waiting for more information to come out of Yemen.”

The Yemen Post reports that the suspect in the hospital shooting was a German-Somali dual citizen, but Yemeni foreign ministry sources confirmed on March 8, that the suspect was a U.S. national, not German.

Yemen’s Interior Ministry said last week it had arrested 11 suspected al Qaeda militants during a raid on one of their homes.

Read More

UPDATE: From AJC – Mobley moved to Yemen about two years ago, supposedly to learn Arabic and study Islam, a former neighbor said.

Before that, Mobley worked for several contractors at three nuclear power plants in New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, PSEG Nuclear spokesman Joe Delmar said. Mobley carried supplies and did maintenance work at the plants on Artificial Island in Lower Alloways Creek, and worked at other plants in the region as well.

He satisfied federal background checks as recently as 2008, Delmar said, adding that the plant is cooperating with authorities.

Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said that his office had been told that Mobley was always supervised, caused no problems and was not believed to have breached security at the plants.

Source

Virus Sent To Sabotage Terror Watch List Computers

Colorado’s 9News reports federal prosecutors have charged a former Transportation Security Administration employee with attempting to sabotage terror watch list computers.

According to the report, Douglas Duchak, 46, of Colorado Springs, faces two charges of attempting to damage protected TSA computers.

Duchak pleaded not guilty and was released from custody.

The suspect allegedly tried to send a virus into the computer system’s servers, after learning he would be terminated, 9Wants to Know confirms.

The computer system includes the government’s no-fly list.

Duchak worked at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operation Center where the government loads computers with data received from the federal government’s Terrorist Screening Database and the U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network, according to a U.S. Attorney’s office spokesman.

Duchak worked at the Colorado Springs Operations Center from August 2004 to Oct. 23, 2009 as a data analyst.

via Read Full Article.

Bali Bomber Mastermind Dulmatin Kiilled in Shoot-out

The alleged mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombings is believed to have been killed in a shoot-out with Indonesian police on the outskirts of Jakarta today. Dulmatin, nicknamed “the Genius”, was an explosives expert who was believed to have set off one of the Bali bombs with a mobile phone, as well as helping to assemble the massive car bomb used in the attacks, which killed 202 people.

The shoot-out happened during a morning raid on a house in Pamulang city, west of the Indonesian capital. Police said the raid, which comes two weeks before a visit by President Obama, targeted Dulmatin and two other senior members of the militant Islamist organisation Jemaah Islamiyah.Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, has launched a series of raids across the archipelago following the discovery of a militant Islamic training camp in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, last month. Police have detained 21 suspected members of the group in Aceh and Java, while two have been killed.

via Read Full Article.

Next Page »