sabri writes: Following the initial suspension of a California Highway Patrol officer earlier this week, news has come out that the CHP has an entire ring of officers who steal and subsequently share nude pictures. The nudes are stolen from women who are arrested or stopped. Officer Sean Harrington of Martinez reportedly confessed to stealing explicit photos from the suspect’s phone, and said he forwarded those images to at least two other CHP officers. Where is the ACLU when you need them the most? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Excerpt from:
CHP Officers Steal, Forward Nude Pictures From Arrestee Smartphones
Home Depot confirmed today that the company was, indeed, the victim of a large credit card breach reported by many customers last week. An estimated 60 million card numbers were stolen, which would make it the biggest such hack in retail history. Read more… 
It surely won’t be the last theory offered, but a century and a quarter after the notorious crimes of Jack the Ripper, an “armchair detective” has employed DNA analysis on the blood-soaked shawl of one of the Ripper’s victims, and has declared it in a new book an unambiguous match with Jewish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, long considered a suspect. Kosminski died in 1919 in an insane asylum. The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes. Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of [Ripper victim Catherine] Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match. (Also at The Independent.) It’s not the first time DNA evidence has been used to try to pin down the identidy of Jack the Ripper, but the claimed results in this case are far less ambiguous than another purported mitochondrial DNA connection promoted by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in favor of artist William Sickert as the killer in a 2002 book. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
wiredmikey (1824622) writes “China-based threat actors are using sophisticated malware installed on handheld scanners to target shipping and logistics organizations from all over the world. According to security firm TrapX, the attack begins at a Chinese company that provides hardware and software for handheld scanners used by shipping and logistics firms worldwide to inventory the items they’re handling. The Chinese manufacturer installs the malware on the Windows XP operating systems embedded in the devices. Experts determined that the threat group targets servers storing corporate financial data, customer data and other sensitive information. A second payload downloaded by the malware then establishes a sophisticated C&C on the company’s finance servers, enabling the attackers to exfiltrate the information they’re after. The malware used by the Zombie Zero attackers is highly sophisticated and polymorphic, the researchers said. In one attack they observed, 16 of the 48 scanners used by the victim were infected, and the malware managed to penetrate the targeted organization’s defenses and gain access to servers on the corporate network. Interestingly, the C&C is located at the Lanxiang Vocational School, an educational institution said to be involved in the Operation Aurora attacks against Google, and which is physically located only one block away from the scanner manufacturer, TrapX said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Techdirt has an interesting followup on the arrest and indictment of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, in connection to which the FBI seized 26, 000 or so Bitcoins. From the Techdirt piece: “However, in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million — or about 600, 000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26, 000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600, 000 Ulbright made. It now comes out that those 26, 000 Bitcoins aren’t even Ulbricht’s. Instead, they’re actually from Silk Road’s users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road. Ulbricht’s actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that the FBI does not have them, nor does it have any way of getting at them just yet. And given that some courts have argued you can’t be forced to give up your encryption, as it’s a 5th Amendment violation, those Bitcoins could remain hidden — though, I could see the court ordering him to pay the dollar equivalent in restitution (though still not sure that would force him to decrypt the Bitcoins).” The article also notes that the FBI’s own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
theshowmecanuck writes “According to the Montreal Gazette, ‘The owner and operator of a well-known ‘real gore’ website is charged with corrupting morals for posting a video allegedly depicting the murder of student Jun Lin by Luka Magnotta. Magnotta, 30, is currently in custody charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 33-year-old Chinese international student, who was killed in Montreal in May 2012. The victim’s severed limbs were then mailed to political parties and elementary schools, and his torso found inside a discarded suitcase.’ A news interview with the detective in charge of the case, airing on CTV as I type this, says he believes the web site hosts a lot of racist content and unimaginable violence. You should note that Canada has less free speech than in America (we have ‘hate crime laws’), but there will likely be some arguments in this vein. The charge against the operator is quite rare and no-one so far remembers it ever being used before.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
First time accepted submitter Bitsy Boffin writes “Xtra, the largest ISP in New Zealand, which outsources email provision to Yahoo, has in the last two days been subject to a widespread email compromise, causing potentially thousands of accounts to send spam messages to every address in their webmail address books. Discussion at Geekzone centers around this potentially being a continuation of the Yahoo XSS exploit. While Telecom NZ, the owners of Xtra internet service provider indicate that the problem was “resolved”, reports of spam from its members continue unabated. Telecom NZ are advising those affected to change their passwords.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.