Screenshot from http://zone-h.org/archive

In response to a right wing website’s allegation they sustained a cyber attack from Chinese hackers, the White House has admitted to Politico that the attack occurred. However, the Obama Administration insists no data was stolen and classified systems were not compromised.

An unnamed official told Politico that the attempted hack was essentially an isolated incident in which a staffer received an email carrying a malware attachment. To be clear, everything is cool now and rogue Chinese hackers won’t be taking control of the suitcase containing nuclear launch codes any time soon:

None of the White House’s secure, classified computer systems were affected, said the official, who reached out to POLITICO after the Free Beacon story appeared — without having been asked for comment. Nor had there been any attempted breach of a classified system, according to the official.

As Politico notes, the Washington Free Beacon, which broke the news of the attack, has a clear right wing agenda and has worked to portray the current administration as weak on foreign policy. The same site has also alleged that Russian nuclear subs were patrolling in U.S. territory, a charge denied by the Department of Defense.

There’s no doubt there are teams of possibly Chinese government-sponsored hackers at work attempting to dig into all sorts of Western systems–Telvent Canada, an energy industry giant, was hacked sometime around Sept. 11.

“Think Different” by XVALA (cacanet.com)

It’s not every day that we find ourselves sympathetic to Apple’s attorneys but a weird bobblehead-like plastic sculpture of Steve Jobs, created by a sculptor with the deeply obnoxious handle XVALA (we suspect XVALA’s last name is CAPSLOCK), might just have us rooting for the legal eagles from Cupertino. Apple’s lawyers are famous for squashing attempts to co-opt or appropriate any aspect of the Apple brand, and this certainly qualifies.

As Slashgear reports, the sculpture is of Jobs in his trademark mock turtle and jeans wielding an iPhone and standing on Apple’s classic bitten apple logo.

As seen in photos it’s an almost comically creepy image but the press release about the show featuring the sculpture claims the real twist is in the materials used to create the… thing:

Coated in an “Apple White finish,” the sculpture is cast in the artist’s patented plastic porcelain, mixed with a recycled resin made up of Steve Job’s residential trash which the artist collected from the tech icon’s home several months before his death.

XVALA’s motives for creating the sculpture will likely get more attention than the piece itself. In the press release from Cory Allen Contemporary Art, the artist says, “Either waiting in line or in an assembly line, Apple is to die for.”

XVALA also promises an upcoming series of pieces “coated in Apple Black” that will “serve as a motif for the past suicides at the Foxconn factories.”

The pieces will be part of a gallery show in Los Angeles on October 13.

It’s probably no surprise that XVALA calls the work “Think Different.”

Chinese flag

Telvent, which provides services that facilitate remote control and monitoring of large sections of the energy industry, may have recently fallen prey to Chinese hackers. While notifications about the Sept. 10 systems intrusion were distributed by Telvent Canada, Ltd., the cyber attack was “sophisticated” and targeted operations in the U.S. and Spain as well as Canada.

Security experts believe the culprits are a group of Chinese hackers who have attacked Western companies in the past.

Krebs on Security explains more about the hack:

Telvent said the attacker(s) installed malicious software and stole project files related to one of its core offerings — OASyS SCADA — a product that helps energy firms mesh older IT assets with more advanced “smart grid” technologies.

The firm said it was still investigating the incident, but that as a precautionary measure, it had disconnected the usual data links between clients and affected portions of its internal networks.

Krebs also viewed documents that explained that the malware used in the attack suggested the intruders may have been Chinese hackers known as both Byzantine Candor and the Comment Group. As Krebs notes, Bloomberg News has taken a deep dive into possible Comment Group exploits.

The hackers, whom many experts believe are part of the Chinese military establishment, have struck targets as diverse as Halliburton Co., Canadian court officials and the president of the European Union Council.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but Saturday, just a few days after Krebs on Security first reported the Telvent intrusion, Rogers Internet, which services millions of Canadian customers, had a sustained and serious service outage. That just doesn’t sound subtle enough for an outfit like the Comment Group.

Screengrab

The foundering Greek government, in a state of disastrous financial decay, has begun referring victims of crime to the fascist Golden Dawn party for protection.

The Guardian reports on the experience of a civil servant who went to police with complaints about immigrant neighbors from Albania:

“They immediately said if it’s an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn,” said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity. “We don’t condone Golden Dawn but there is an acute social problem that has come with the breakdown of feeling of security among lower and middle class people in the urban centre,” she said. “If the police and official mechanism can’t deliver and there is no recourse to justice, then you have to turn to other maverick solutions.”

The Guardian also reports that Golden Dawn, which recently opened a New York office only to immediately have its website and phones attacked by Anonymous, also assists the poor and infirm with social outreach, providing food and clothing–in return for loyalty to the party.

Golden Dawn’s savvy in capitalizing on widespread anger at Greek austerity measures has led to a recent 10 percent rise in the positive opinion about the party, which currently holds 18 seats in the Greek parliament.

The rise of a formerly fringe far-right nationalist party in an economically devastated European nation is not new; it happened in Germany after World War I.

Financial writer Robert Gottliebsen noticed this parallel in May and published “A Weimar warning for Greece” in Australia’s Business Spectator. Mr. Gottliebsen didn’t mention Golden Dawn but he didn’t need to. Referring to the economic devastation across the country he noted that “[out] of such chaos comes political political movements of the extreme left or extreme right.”

Mr. Gottliebsen noted that 1920s Germany flirted with the extreme left, but ultimately chose the opposite. He concluded with a warning:

Greece has all the ingredients for a Weimar Republic if it exits the euro and its new currency becomes worthless… then Weimer Republic style chaos will be its destiny.

American neo-nazis are watching the rise of Golden Dawn. The following video was recently posted in a discussion of the party on the white supremacist message board Stormfront.org. It was posted on YouTube in late July by “Race Realist GR,” who wrote that the video was from a “closed meeting of Golden Dawn.”

We can’t be certain of the validity of the translation, but the first speaker appears to call Golden Dawn ‘a flaming river’ which will sweep away ‘whatever has deprived us from dignity, freedom and the Greece of our dreams.’

The uploader, whose full description of the video appears supportive of the neo-nazis, continued, “I translated one of these to show you the booogie-men who will destroy Greece and Europe lest we stick to the EU-ECB-IMF-MULTI-CULTI-GOD-SAVE-THE-BANKERS plan.”

Even if the English subtitles are inaccurate, the red and black flags, the swastika-like symbol and the stagecraft speak louder than words.

Mr. Sulzberger’s insistence on independence was shown in his decision in 1971 to publish a secret government history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers. It was a defining moment for him and, in the view of many journalists and historians, his finest.

The publication of the Pentagon Papers led to a major Supreme Court ruling in favor of press freedom and in 1972 netted the Times a Pulitzer Prize.

Though Mr. Sulzberger passed publishing duties at the Times to his son Arthur Jr. in 1992, he stayed on as chairman for five more years, officially retiring in 1997. The Times reports he died after a lengthy illness.

Mr. Sulzberger was 86.

Researchers at the US Naval Surface Warfare Center created PlaceRaider and have dubbed it “visual malware.” It was developed as a proof of concept but would also be a great idea to sell to producers seeking spy gadget ideas for the next James Bond film, because PlaceRaider hints at the future of covert surveillance:

Their idea is that the malware would be embedded in a camera app that the user would download and run, a process that would give the malware the permissions it needs to take photos and send them.

PlaceRaider then runs in the background taking photos at random while recording the time, location and orientation of the phone. (The malware mutes the phone as the photos are taken to hide the shutter sound, which would otherwise alert the user.)

PlaceRaider would send images to the attacker’s servers and those would be assembled as a 3D model of the victim’s home or workspace. Using those models, the hacker controlling the app could examine the targeted space in detail, picking up vital details like passwords and banking information.

On the original page presenting an explanation of the app, the authors note that their work demonstrated “the effectiveness of using mobile devices as powerful surveillance and virtual theft platforms.”

They also suggest defenses against “visual malware” such as antivirus applications and making sure your phone’s camera shutter click is always on.

Which is good, since they’ve put the idea out there, so it’s likely someone else is already working on it.

Street View UFO (Google Street View)

Andrea Dove, who lives outside Houston, Texas, was using Google Maps to get directions to a relative’s house when she made an interesting discovery on Street View: something that resembles a fading, pinkish UFO straight out of cartoon sci-fi.

KLTV-TV sent a reporter after the story, who went full man-on-the-street in tracking the alien image:

I looked up a dozen different cities and didn’t find any similar anomalies. That must make Jacksonville special.

“Do you see anything?” I asked a couple residents.

“Not yet,” they replied.

The KLTV reporter seemed to be unaware that finding anomalies on Google Street View is a cherished Internet past-time. Other high strangeness captured by Street View cameras includes:

• Ghosts–several ghosts, in fact
• Randomly levitating children
• And to bring things full circle, the likely pilot of the Texas UFO, ET, the extraterrestrial.

Of course, Street View is also good at capturing scary slices of real life, as we recently discovered when the Google cameras captured the business end of a gun.

As for the UFO in Texas, chances are good it’s an artifact of light refracting inside one of the many lenses inside the Street View car’s Death Star-shaped camera.

HoneyMap (screengrab)

The Honeynet Project has made monitoring the war in cyber space weirdly fascinating with its HoneyMap, which displays malicious attacks as they happen. The result is reminiscent of old animated maps from newsreels reporting on battles during World War II.

The Atlantic Wire explains how to read the HoneyMap:

Each red dot that pops up when you go to the map represents an attack on a computer. Yellow dots represent honeypots, or systems set up to record incoming attacks. The black box on the bottom says where each attack is coming from as they come in.

The Honeynet Project is a worldwide chain of honeypots that track these attacks. As The Atlantic reports, some members of the network aren’t pushing their data to the map, so it currently tends to display more attacks across Europe.

Betabeat observed several attacks occurring across Brazil and fewer in the United States, though it appears computers in Google’s home city of Mountain View, California and Microsoft’s area of Washington State are under sustained attack throughout the day. A large number of the attacks come from various locations in Russia, however we spotted a few actually coming from servers in Mountain View.

Try to not lose a few minutes gazing at the HoneyMap making exploding sounds with your mouth as each red dot bursts on the screen.

Mark Zuckerberg’s dog, Beast. (Facebook)

Facebook is finally following up on its plan to eliminate the phenomenon of fake page or profile ‘likes’ produced by malware or deception. As CNN reports, this has caused noticeable dips in likes on a number of popular pages, such as those for Lady Gaga, The Simpsons and Zynga’s page for Texas HoldEm Poker. We tried and failed to see if the page for Zuck’s dog Beast had taken a hit during the purge, but with 989,000 likes and counting, we think the adorable Hungarian Sheepdog can rest easy, for now.

Julian Assange

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that the United States considers WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an enemy of the state. Soldiers who contact Mr. Assange or WikiLeaks could be charged with communicating with an enemy. Members of the military found guilty of such communication could be sentenced to death in a military court of law.

Technically, this status puts Mr. Assange and his site on the same legal footing as the Taliban.

As Australia’s National Times reports, the government’s view of the whistle-blowing organization and its founder was revealed in documents regarding an investigation into an Air Force officer’s actions while stationed overseas:

The documents, some originally classified “Secret/NoForn” – not releasable to non-US nationals – record a probe by the air force’s Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.

The counter-intelligence investigation focused on whether the analyst, who had a top-secret security clearance and access to the US military’s Secret Internet Protocol Router network, had disclosed classified or sensitive information to WikiLeaks supporters, described as an “anti-US and/or anti-military group”.

The case was closed and no charges were filed, but the unnamed female analyst was cut off from further access to classified data.

The case documents are interesting reading, though they have been heavily redacted. The subject of the investigation was said to be “obsessed” with Julian Assange and sympathetic to PFC Bradley Manning, the soldier who is currently awaiting trial for allegations he gave classified diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

The Australian paper contacted Mr. Assange’s American attorney, Michael Ratner, who said that based on his interpretation of the documents, “It appears that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the ‘enemy’. An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc.”

WikiLeaks addressed the investigation on a page published Wednesday, writing that an allegation “of ‘Communicating with the Enemy’ indicates the extremely serious threat Julian Assange and WikiLeaks face from the United States.” The statement goes on to say:

Therefore the term “Communicating with the Enemy” would appear to show that the US government term Mr Assange and WikiLeaks the “enemy”. By deeming them the “enemy” they can be treated under the laws of war which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial etc.

Mr. Assange gave a video address to the United Nations Thursday, in which he talked about the Manning case and said that the “United States is not the enemy,” but it is “time for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, to cease its persecution of our people, and to cease its persecution of our alleged sources.”

Mr. Assange, who faces accusations he sexually molested two women in Sweden in 2010, remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Johnny Lewis. (Getty Images)

Johnny Lewis, a 28-year-old actor known for his role as Kip “Half Sack” Epps on FX’s Sons of Anarchy, has died. Los Angeles authorities tell TMZ that Mr. Lewis is also their only suspect in the murder of 81-year-old Catherine Davis, from whom the actor rented a room.

TMZ reports on the awful scene discovered after cops arrived at Ms. Davis’s Los Feliz home:

According to our law enforcement sources, 28-year-old Lewis was found in a driveway Wednesday morning in the Los Feliz neighborhood — and the elderly woman who owned the home was found dead inside … the victim of a homicide. Investigators say they believe Lewis beat the woman to death.

Mr. Lewis, who once dated pop star Katy Perry and also starred in films such as AVPR: Aliens vs Predator–Requiem and The Runaways, also allegedly attacked two men at the scene with his bare hands and a 2X4. TMZ reports the actor seemed “phenomenally strong” and may have been on PCP or meth at the time of his death.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Catherine Davis was indeed bludgeoned to death.

It isn’t clear whether Johnny Lewis died while trying to flee the scene or committed suicide.

Jimmy Hoffa. (Wikimedia)

The mystery of the fate of International Brotherhood of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is one of the most enduring in American history. Hoffa vanished in July 1975 and in the decades since his name has become a punchline for jokes about unexplained disappearances.

Shouts and murmurs of a new Hoffa resting place come out every other year or so–the latest candidate is an innocuous suburban driveway in Roseville, Michigan. It’s hard to take new rumors that Hoffa’s grave has been found too seriously anymore, but ABC News reports there may be something to this one:

James Berlin, the police chief in Roseville, Mich., a town about 20 miles north of Detroit, says his department will take soil core samples from under the driveway of a home in the area this Friday after “credible” information recently surfaced.

“We received information from an individual who saw something,” Berlin told the Detroit Free Press. “The information seemed credible, so we decided to follow up on it.”

Multiple Michigan press outlets say Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality recently performed a “ground scan” of the driveway and discovered evidence that something is buried beneath the pavement.

Detroit TV station WDIV reports that the tip regarding Hoffa’s location was credible because it came from a witness who is dying of cancer. Roseville’s police chief told the NBC affiliate that the dying man “believes what he saw. That something took place that day out of the ordinary.”

The same broadcast outlet also notes that the FBI is skeptical of the story, one retired agent telling WDIV that the claim “doesn’t match up with anything we already know. I’d say it’s just another story. Someone is trying to get publicity or is looking after a reward.”

This new claim may at least present another opportunity for late-night talk hosts to open a forgotten desk drawer and blow dust off a fading folder labeled, “Jimmy Hoffa jokes.”

You’d think this was expected.

Large protests against austerity measures have roiled Spain as demonstrators rallied across Madrid on Tuesday. The protests were spawned by economic woes and have targeted politicians and government facilities.

They climaxed Tuesday night with protesters surrounding the Spanish congress building in action dubbed “Occupy Congress.” Clashes with police ensued, resulting in multiple arrests and fueling the wrath of Anonymous.

The hacktivists issued a press release expressing their solidarity with the Spanish occupiers and announcing a “Operation Spain” in support of their efforts.

Anonymous said the livestreams of “the horrendous brutality on the part of the Spanish National Police” against the protesters prompted the hackers to remove “from the Internet the web site of the Spanish National Police located at www.policia.es.” They say the site will be kept offline as “long as we continue to watch scenes of brutality.”

Anonymous won’t stop there, though:

Beginning tomorrow, Anonymous will also begin an attack on the primary website of the Parliament of Spain. This attack will include not only DdoS and hacking, but also Black Fax & E-Mail bombs – effectively removing the Parliament of Spain from the Internet entirely.

The announcement closes with the usual Anon valedictory about not forgiving and not forgetting before telling the Spanish government that it is “to (sic) late to Expect Us.”

Muslim cleric Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (Wikimedia)

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters have returned with a new declaration published on Pastebin and a new set of targets. If you park your money with Wells Fargo and can’t reach the bank’s website, you apparently can blame the hackers and their Operation Ababil.

The group’s Pastebin post renewed their call for the anti-Muslim video Innocence of Muslims to be removed from the web. They also refuted allegations their actions have been state-sponsored by Iran, stating that they “strongly reject the American officials’ insidious attempts to deceive public opinion.”

The Cyber Fighters went on to give a timetable for their attacks and urged others to join the fight:

We shall attack for 8 hours daily, starting at 2:30 PM GMT, every day. We repeat again the attacks will continue for sure till the removal of that sacrilegious movie.

We invite all cyberspace workers to join us in this Proper Act. If America’s arrogant government do not submit, the attack will be large and larger and will include other evil countries like Israel, French and U.Kingdom indeed.

Several large financial institutions can expect to go the way of WellsFargo.com, which was timing out for users accessing the page from multiple locations on Tuesday afternoon.

The bank acknowledged the problem and posted the following on its Twitter account around 4 p.m. ET:

We apologize to customers who may be experiencing limited access to @wellsfargo.com & online banking. We are working to quickly…

— Wells Fargo (@WellsFargo) September 25, 2012

resolve this issue. Customers can still access their accounts through our ATMs, stores and by phone at 800-956-4442.

— Wells Fargo (@WellsFargo) September 25, 2012

Muslim Cyber Fighters say they will also target the following:

Wednesday 9/26/2012 : attack to U.S. Bank site, http://www.usbank.com
Thursday 9/27/2012 : attack to PNC site, http://www.pnc.com

Past cyber-attacks for which this group claims responsibility struck Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

While the problems for the larger banks were intermittent, the Wells Fargo attack seems to have been the most effective so far, indicating the group may be improving their methods.

Ravi Borgaonkar demonstrating Galaxy handset flaws. (Screengrab)

During a recent security conference in South America, a Berlin-based researcher revealed that Samsung has a major problem with its iPhone challengers, the Galaxy 3 and Galaxy S2 smartphones.

Both can easily be remotely wiped by code embedded in a web page.

Ravi Borgaonkar found that the Galaxy’s “service loading” feature, its method of communicating with application servers, can be exploited with just one line of code tucked away in a web page’s HTML. If the attack is successful, the malicious code reverts the phones to their factory settings. Worse still, once the attack begins, the phone’s user can’t do a thing about it.

That’s bad enough. There’s also this:

Alongside web pages, the code can also be embedded in malicious text messages, or triggered by a QR code or NFC tag.

Security researchers are pressing Samsung to patch the problem because as DigitalSpy reports, experts say this is a “major security vulnerability.”

Mr. Borgaonkar, who reportedly wondered aloud what Samsung’s engineers were smoking when they created the vulnerable system, demonstrates how it works in the video below.

Viewers may need headphones to hear Mr. Borgaonkar clearly, but the shocked audience reaction at 2:10, when he uses a link from a tweet to demonstrate how quickly a malicious web page can reset the phone, is unmistakable.

Leaky. (Screengrab)

If you own one of the world’s billion or so Windows computers, we are sorry to inform you it probably contains a Java vulnerability that could allow a malicious attacker to sidestep Java security and exploit your browser.

According to Softpedia, most browsers are vulnerable:

The researchers have confirmed that Java SE 5 – Update 22, Java SE 6 – Update 35, and Java SE 7 Update 7 running on fully patched Windows 7 32-bit operating systems are susceptible to the attack.

The affected web browsers are Safari 5.1.7, Opera 12.02, Chrome 21.0.1180.89, Firefox 15.0.1, and Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421.

Researchers at Security Explorations, who have made it their business to pick out all the vulnerabilities in Java, have given Oracle a full breakdown of the problem complete with source code and proof-of-concept demonstrations of how the exploit might work.

Oracle doesn’t issue critical patch updates for Java until the middle of October. Whether much of the planet’s population waiting for this hole to be fixed will goose them into moving faster to fix the problem remains to be seen.

Lady Gaga, not thinking of the children. (Screengrab)

James Molinaro may know who Lady Gaga is but he probably isn’t aware of her fandom, the “little monsters,” and how they might react to an NY1 report that Mr. Molinaro referred to the pop star as a “slut” while launching an anti-drug campaign Monday night.

The performer’s fans are fiercely loyal and may not take well to the Staten Island Borough President’s characterization of their idol, whom Mr. Molinaro said was part of a celebrity culture that promotes drug use, among other things.

As reported by NY1, Mr. Molinaro said that to him, the artist formerly known as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is “not an actress, she is a slut in the pure–in the pure meaning of the word.”

A photo published with NY1′s brief account of Mr. Molinaro’s remarks showed the Staten Island pol gesturing at a board with the legend, “STOP glorifying drug use in the media” and displaying what appeared to be photos of Lady Gaga toking up during a recent stage performance in Amsterdam. The performer can be seen destroying our nation’s youth in the concert video below.

Apple iPhone 5. (Photo: twitter.com/DiarioLaPrensa)

The New York Police Department has good reason to be concerned about consumers’ Apple products: theft of Apple hardware has risen 40 percent in the last year. Compare that to an overall four percent rise in crime and you have what almost sounds like a crime wave focused on iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Plenty of iThefts occur in the street, but NBC New York reports your beloved cuddle phone is in even more danger on the subway:

The problem is especially severe underground. As a result, the NYPD has been working with the MTA to hide decoy cops on trains and monitoring cameras across the subway system.

According to the NBC affiliate, the high resale value of Apple products makes “anyone holding an iPhone” a potential target.

Until the advent of the iPhone 8 with an embedded industrial laser or hidden switchblade, this may continue to be a problem.

First @YourAnonNews, one of the main Twitter accounts for the chaotic hacker collective, tweeted Golden Dawn New York’s phone number to more than 630,500 followers:

Call the new New York offices of the Greek neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, and give them a warm welcome to the neighborhood: 347 670 3163

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) September 24, 2012

This was retweeted over 130 times. The account’s followers apparently took the suggestion, as a short time later, @YourAnonNews made it clear that both the New York office’s phones and website were down for the count:

GOLDEN DAWN NOT ONLY IS YOUR PHONE LINES TANGO DOWN, BUT UR WEBHOST R BELONG TO US:xanyc.org

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) September 24, 2012

Golden Dawn New York’s xanyc.org was still offline at 8 p.m. ET.

@YourAnonNews’s most recent tweet regarding the attack read, “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

Golden Dawn New York (Screengrab)

Golden Dawn is a Greek neo-Nazi party that has gained an alarming amount of power as Greece reacted to harsh government austerity measures. In an effort to reach out to Greek expatriates, Golden Dawn has opened an office in New York.

Salon reports that the party calls its American outpost “Golden Dawn New York” and the party has set up a creepy website.

Golden Dawn New York’s “About Me” page explains that it “unapologetically stands for the sovereignty, security, and dignity of the Greek people.”

Golden Dawn elaborates on what that means before concluding with this chilling statement:

We must resist and overcome the genocidal multi- culturalist, and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order.

The unholy alliance of the bankers, the media, corrupt politicians and the educational system are rabidly attempting to extinguish all traces of Hellenism- past, present and future through poverty, historical revisionism, media distortions and third world immigration.

The Golden Dawn is the only party that truly recognizes the problem and has the solution.

While Neo-Nazi groups in the United States are the very ragged edges of the far-right fringe, Golden Dawn has achieved real wins in Greek elections.

The party has been linked to anti-immigrant violence and even overt public acts of violence against political opponents: Golden Dawn spokesman Elias Kasidiaris struck a female politician on live TV.

Check out our dissection of the privacy scare: Anatomy of the Facebook Hysteria: Remember the Aughts? You Will Now

Facebook users in the U.S. and European Union have begun reporting old private messages visible on their timelines. According to TechCrunch and multiple French and Italian publications, the newest messages are three years old and tagged as having been “Posted by friends.” TechCrunch reports the first tips about the bug coming from readers, while MetroFrance asks if it is a “bug or security breach?”

The French news site reported that where the flaw occurs messages are clearly past private communications and they are often mixed up with ‘comments from friends on [your] wall.’

Betabeat has also had multiple old messages pop up on our timelines, prompting unpleasant walks down Memory Lane. 

UPDATE: In a statement emailed to Betabeat, a Facebook spokesperson said, “A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.”

However, at least two New York Observer reporters are seeing items labeled as “posted by friends” (in some cases sensitive, work-related communication) that they believe to be have private messages. It’s hard to say with 100 percent certainty because the posts were from 2008. In this screengrab of what is now a post below, you can see the person who wrote it refers to their Facebook page, implying that this was a private message. The items that they believe to have been messages–now posted on Timeline–are no longer located in the original thread. TechCrunch also reports that direct messages, not older wall posts, are now showing up on their Timeline.

Reuters’ Anthony DeRosa tweeted with the same complaint.

Wow, I just had to hide private messages from several years on Facebook, I can confirm that this is an issue, for my account at least.

— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) September 24, 2012

The reports–and Facebook’s denial–has inspired a good deal of frantic brain-ransacking among the tech press. What was the difference between how we wrote PMs and wall posts back in 2005? Before Newsfeed, most of us assumed wall posts were basically the digital equivalent of pinning a note on a friend’s dorm room door–not totally private, but not like taking out a billboard on the campus green, either. Now even those of us without PMs showing up are looking at what we wrote under those assumptions and groaning in sheer mortification.

If there’s confusion of just what the hell Facebook is publishing, it may point to a larger problem with the social network, which is that it wants to be around and leveraging your data for years into the future–and yet it keeps shifting what we can expect from the way it treats our posts and personal information.

UPDATE 2: In an extended denial published by TechCrunch, Facebook expanded their explanation of how they checked out the rumors of private messages being revealed on public timelines:

Every report we’ve seen, we’ve gone back and checked. We haven’t seen one report that’s been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]

UPDATE 3: Whether they’re private messages or old embarrassing wall posts, you can easily hide them:

1. On the right sidebar, click on the year you want to hide posts from. We hid everything from pre-2009.
2. In the box that aggregates all your wall posts and says “X number of people have written on your wall,” there’s an “edit or remove” option. Click it.
3. Click “Hide from Timeline” and all wall posts from that year will be hidden from your timeline.

UPDATE 4: Facebook also told TechCrunch’s Josh Constine that technical barriers prevent private messages from appearing as wall posts. Mr. Constine was told that “The two systems are totally separate.”

UPDATE 5: We consulted with an outside developer for Facebook, who works closely with the social network’s API. “I think it boils down to possibly three options,” he said. “1) facebook royally fucked up and some private messages were imported into the wall system. 2) facebook did not fuck up at all and some people are more public than they thought, 4-6 years ago 3) facebook fucked up a little bit – maybe in some cases – but people are going crazy over shit they said 4-6 years ago.”

The developer said that he checked his private messages from around the years allegedly impacted–2007-2009–and “couldn’t find any of those messages” in his inbox. This “isn’t evidence either way, but if they are separate systems [as Facebook told Techcrunch], one would think they would still exist in the private message system.”

“It’s obviously possible they fucked up,” he said. “Just seems unlikely that they fucked up so badly.” Though, “anything is possible code wise,” he added.

Screengrab from a site defaced by Sizzling Soul.

Protests against anti-Muslim “film” Innocence of Muslims have been violent and continue in several countries, but they have not yet exploded into sustained military conflict. However, religiously motivated hackers are waging active war online. While DDoS (Directed Denial of Service) hits against large, well-known sites owned by financial instutions may have been sponsored by Iran, independent Muslim hackers appear to be targeting a slew of small websites with wickedly effective full-blown hacks and defacements.

A hacker calling himself Sizzling Soul and claiming membership in a hacker collective dubbed the Pakistan Cyber Army has taken down more than 80 sites in the name of the Prophet. Many of of those sites remain under his control and are displaying his message:

100 %
Attempting Bypass…
Code broken!
A message for Boobish People:
Dont Try To Insult Our PROPHET (P.B.U.H)
Why You People Always Try To Attack Our Religion?
You Made An Insulting Movie Of PROPHET(P.B.U.H)”
Damn
This Is Totally Insane,.
You Are Provoking The Anger Of PeaceFull Muslims!
Stop This
Otherwise You WOn’t Be Able To Stop Us
This Is Just A Warning For You….
If You Don’t Stop,Next Attack Will Destroy Yours Whole Cyber Space
If You Want Some Then Come And Get Some…

As HackRead notes, most of Sizzling Soul’s victims are “small and local businesses, such as banks, chemical factories” as well as pages related to gaming and the auto industry.

Sizzling Soul has listed his hits on Pastebin. We could joke about the hacker choosing easy targets, but going after so many small establishments could add up to a minor but noticeable hit on multiple local economies.

Sizzling Soul isn’t the only cyber attacker working this angle. A hacker with the handle Rude_Thunder has slammed over 100 sites and posted his own list on Pastebin, stating the web pages were “defaced for insulting the holy Prophet.”

Since Google will not completely remove Innocence of Muslims from the web, we suspect you should just change your passwords now and hang on for more bumpy rides to come, Boobish People.

BlackBerrys (Flickr/Hyku)

BlackBerry makers Research In Motion (RIM) have faced a host of troubles recently, including a widespread European service outage, and now comes perhaps the worst news of all: people just aren’t buying BlackBerrys anymore. Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports on the Canadian smartphone maker’s diminishing market share:

Some analysts believe the total number of BlackBerry users is now declining – or on the verge of declining – as existing customers abandon RIM in greater numbers than new customers sign up.

“This is the first quarter we are expecting zero subscriber growth – a loss in enterprise [customers] offset by a small gain in international consumer subs,” said Kris Thompson of National Bank Financial. “Starting next quarter, we see the sub base in a downward spiral with Blackberry 10 potentially slowing [the losses], but we’re not holding our breath.”

As depressing as this is, RIM has to soldier on in preparation for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in January. While some analysts apparently believe users in southeast Asia and the Middle East may save the BlackBerry’s bacon, others contacted by the Globe and Mail seem to believe the explosion of user preference for iPhones and Android-powered handsets may force RIM to seek novel solutions to remain viable, such as licensing its newest operating system to other cell phone manufacturers.

Should RIM succumb to a buyout and  BlackBerrys be consigned to the junk bin of history, we’re kind of worried for the person who ends up telling proud BlackBerry user Beyonce, who seems pretty happy with her super-expensive Porsche-designed BlackBerry Bold.

Stuxnet, the first shot across the bow. (Krebs On Security)

Cyber attackers who went after Chase and Bank of America with Directed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the banks’ websites may have been working for Iran.

A report from the Washington Post cites several officials who have made this claim, including Senator Joseph Lieberman, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The Post reports that in an interview with C-SPAN, Sen. Lieberman disputed the idea the attackers were independent hacktivists outraged by a controversial anti-Muslim film:

“I don’t believe these were just hackers who were skilled enough to cause disruption of the Web sites,” said Lieberman in an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program. “I think this was done by Iran and the Quds Force, which has its own developing cyberattack capability.” The Quds Force is a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the military.

Lieberman said he believed the efforts were in response to “the increasingly strong economic sanctions that the United States and our European allies have put on Iranian financial institutions.”

The Post also reported that there have been similar attacks against American telecoms such as AT&T and Level 3.

What wasn’t clear from Sen. Lieberman’s remarks or the Post‘s report was whether the “Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam,” who claimed credit for the attacks and dubbed them “Operation Ababil” were opportunistic trolls or misdirection by Iranian cyber forces.

If officials and cyber-security experts quoted by the Post are correct, it is likely Iran intended the bank attacks as a response to U.S. actions such as the infiltration of the Stuxnet worm, which disrupted Iranian nuclear operations in 2010. Stuxnet targeted uranium enrichment centrifuges and caused them to spin wildly out of control.

The most recent Pastebin post from the Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam claimed the attack on Chase’s web properties was step two. They seemed to imply there were several more steps to go.

Movie poster edited for Project X Haren

A Dutch girl posted an invitation to her 16th birthday party on Facebook. She apparently forgot to set it to private–friends and family only.

Somehow her invitation went viral in a distastrous way. Thirty-thousand people showed up, rioted and shut down Haren, a small town over 100 miles from Amsterdam. CBS reports that authorities in Haren knew something was coming, and the city thought it was prepared:

The crowds were not entirely unexpected. After the Facebook invite went viral, “Project X Haren” website and spoof videos announced parties and after-parties. A giant banner was unfurled on the side of a building. Thirty thousand revelers signed up that they planned to attend. One company planned to offer live streaming of the event.

The city prepared by removing street signs, closing off streets and banning alcohol at the train station.

Project X was a comedy about a high school party that spirals out of control. It premiered in the U.S. in March, 2012. Film critics hated the movie, using words like “loathsome” to describe it, but it still netted just over $100 million at the box office.

Project X Haren, before the riots, spawned all the usual viral digital polyps and pustules, including a Twitter account and its own website.

The most recent tweet from the Twitter account is in Dutch:

RT als je bij Project X Haren bent en nog niet dronken genoeg bent

— Project X Haren (@Projectxharen) September 21, 2012

It translates to a pretty predictable sentiment: “RT if you’re with Project X Haren and not yet drunk enough.”

The unfortunate teen girl, who will probably never neglect her Facebook privacy settings again if she remains on the social networking site at all, didn’t even get to participate in all the fun: CBS reported that she and her family spent her sweet 16 at a secret location.