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Author: Mandy Nagy

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Mandy Nagy

Mandy Nagy (aka "Liberty Chick") was an investigative writer and researcher. She primarily covered the institutional left, protest movements, hacking and cybercrime, and technology. After suffering a serious stroke in September 2014, Mandy no longer was able to work at Legal Insurrection, but she's always on our minds and in our hearts. For more information, see here.

A collective of hackers is expected to launch a major cyberattack Tuesday against various targets in the US as part of an operation dubbed OpUSA, according to a Department of Homeland Security Alert issued last week. From noted security blog KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security...

Three college classmates of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and charged Wednesday in connection with the investigation. From the FBI's official press release: Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, both of New Bedford, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to obstruct...

A sub-domain of the Department of Labor website was hacked on Wednesday, causing the site to be taken offline until further notice. The DOL confirmed the incident in a statement to WUSA-TV. A U.S. Department of Labor spokesman confirms one of its websites is offline after being...

The group of pro-Assad hackers calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army hacked The Guardian news outlet over the weekend, marking the latest in a string of cyberattacks from the same organization.  The incident emphasizes the potential threat such attacks could pose if executed for goals far more malicious than intimidation or mere gain of public attention.  And news outlets are among the most useful targets to such groups. The attack on The Guardian was in apparent retaliation for the outlet’s coverage on the conflict in Syria.  Last year, The Guardian also published a cache of emails between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his inner circle, in articles that were, not surprisingly, not very flattering of Assad. On April 15th, the same organization hacked NPR and several of its Twitter accounts, also over the outlet's coverage of Syria.  Only days later, the Syrian Electronic Army hacked several of CBS’ Twitter accounts and sent out pro-Syrian propaganda, including false claims that the CIA is arming Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria. The same week, the group also compromised Twitter accounts of the Associated Press to tweet out a false message, causing the Dow to temporarily plummet.
The false tweet said there had been two explosions at the White House and that President Barack Obama was injured. The attack on AP's Twitter account and the AP Mobile Twitter account was preceded by phishing attempts on AP's corporate network. […] The false tweet went out shortly after 1 p.m. and briefly sent the Dow Jones industrial average sharply lower. The Dow fell 143 points, from 14,697 to 14,554, after the fake Twitter posting, and then quickly recovered.
And in March, several of BBC’s Twitter accounts were also hacked by the same group.  They tweeted out snarky messages such as, “Saudi weather station down due to head-on collision with camel.” But these attacks from the Syrian Electronic Army aren’t limited to recent weeks.

Previously, we brought you reports on the Boston Marathon bombings investigation and details into the lives of the suspects, first in The Lives of the Boston Bombers: What We Do and Don’t Know and then in a follow-up, New Developments in the Boston Marathon Bombings...

There have been several new developments today in the Boston bombings case. Authorities are searching a landfill for a laptop believed to be tied to the Boston Marathon bombers, according to CNN.
Information from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev himself, plus other leads, spurred authorities to look through the New Bedford, Massachusetts, landfill, the official told CNN's Susan Candiotti. The 19-year-old went to school -- at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth -- in an adjacent town, and he was spotted in his dorm room there in the days after the April 15 twin blasts that left three dead.
ABC News also has more on this development. The lead regarding the laptop resulted from interviews authorities conducted with acquaintances of the suspects. From the same ABC News report, we learn that the two acquaintances, who are from Kazakhstan, have been arrested by immigration officers on a violation of their student visas.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is another bill that is currently moving through Congress.  It was first introduced in November of 2011, but failed to pass the Senate after a successful House vote in April 2012. It was reintroduced this past February...

The issue of the online sales tax is heating up in the Senate these next few weeks, and retailers are duking it out in a very public way. Senate bill S.336, the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, would address the longstanding issue of the online sales...

A few hours before he would be shot and killed by law enforcement, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev called an uncle with whom he had not spoken in about two years.  During that call, he asked his uncle for forgiveness. From USA Today (via the...

UPDATE 1:30 pm EST: The Associated Press is reporting that the FBI is at the New Jersey home of the alleged Boston Marathon bomber's sister.  Authorities say that she has been cooperative and that there are no reports that she was involved in any of the...