Attorneys representing accused Anonymous member and political activist Jeremy Hammond has requested that the judge presiding over his case recuse herself due to a conflict of interest, according to reports. Hammond, who has pleaded innocent to charges that he helped hack the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011 and global intelligence firm Stratfor six months later, has been held in a New York prison without bail since last March. Hammond's attorney, Elizabeth Fink, is urging U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska to step down because her husband may have been a Stratfor customer. Preska is scheduled to hold a hearing on the matter next week. Hammond faces up to 42 years in prison if convicted. A support website has been set up for Hammond.
Ukrainian hacktivist operation IT Army has taken responsibility for a significant distributed denial-of-service attack against Russian local airline booking system Leonardo, which is used by over 50 Russian carriers, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
New attacks with the updated SysUpdate toolkit have been deployed by Chinese advanced persistent threat operation Budworm, also known as APT27, Emissary Panda, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse, Iron Tiger, and Red Phoenix, against an Asian government and a Middle East-based telecommunications provider, reports The Hacker News.
Forty-five malicious NPM and PyPI packages have been deployed by threat actors to facilitate extensive data theft operations as part of a campaign that commenced on Sept. 12, according to BleepingComputer.