Category: International news

Friday, January 18, 2019

It may be time to change passwords on your email account.

Security expert warns that a massive leak containing over 700 million email addresses and associated passwords has been discovered. The technology magazine Wired mentions it as the largest single leak in the history of the internet.

The massive database, known as “Collection # 1”, has been circulating openly online since it was first observed on the MEGA file sharing service last week. The database is 87 gigabytes large, according to Wired.

It has now been removed from MEGA, but still circulates on forums often used by hackers.

Over 700 mill.

The database contains 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords. The reason why there are fewer passwords a number of email addresses is that people generally choose passwords with poor security.

Many people use the same passwords, of which “123456”, “password” and “123456789” are the most commonly used passwords in the world.

Troy Hunt is among other things behind the website Have I Been Pwned? – A database that can easily tell you if your password has been leaked into the new leak or previous leaks.

On his own website, Hunt tells that 140 million of the leaked email addresses have not occurred in his database before. That means that even if you haven’t been hit by a leak before, you may have become it now.

The leak may also have hit people who have previously received the email address and their password leaked, and later have changed passwords.

Hit Norwegian high social profiles

In October last year, Dagbladet mentioned a leak of 1.4 billion passwords, which hit a number of Norwegian social peaks. The collection was published on the website Reddit in December 2017, and Dagbladet’s review showed that at least 573,000 Norwegian e-mail accounts were affected.

The surveys also showed that there were leaked passwords for 166 e-mail addresses associated with the Storting. In addition, the same information was leaked about 739 different email addresses from the ministries and 342 from the police.

It was Aftenposten who first mentioned that several Norwegian social peaks had been affected by the leak.

They could confirm that passwords used by Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Telenor chief Sigve Brekke, DnB chief Rune Bjerke and Minister of Development Nikolai Astrup, had been posted openly online.

New and old leaks

Avisa wrote that spot checks showed that Norwegian top politicians and business leaders resort to very obvious phrases when they make their passwords. They claimed that in many cases the name of the wife, child or dog is used in combination with the year of birth or other numbers.

Some of the password leaks took place several years ago, and have been circulating online for a while. It doesn’t make the information less useful for criminals, writes Forbes.

For people, it is customary to recycle their own passwords or use similar versions of the password later. There are also many who do not respond quickly enough to password leaks, which can cause several of these passwords to remain in use.

Monday, January 14, 2019

A 53-year-old man is detained in the Danish city of Vollsmose, suspected of attempting murder against his daughter. He has lived in the Danish city for 15 years, but had to use an interpreter in the interrogation court.

According to the police, the man must have put his 21-year-old daughter in danger of death by stabbing her in the stomach, groin and back. It writes the Danish telegram agency Ritzau, and it is reproduced by Funen County Avis.

The daughter is no longer in danger of death, but her condition is described as critical, and she was connected to a respirator after losing much blood. The Arab man has three other children. He told the interrogator in the interrogation court.

The man refuses to punish, but both his wife and his daughter say that he is the offender. During the hearing, the prosecutor read aloud from the minutes of the first police interview.

During the actual interrogation, the 53-year-old explained that when he came to himself in the afternoon after the murder attempt took place, he discovered a knife in his hand and saw the daughter lying in front of him. He threw the knife when he went out and couldn’t remember if there was blood on it.

Sunday, January 13, 2019

The Islamic emirate Dubai is a tax haven with extensive secrecy and few extradition agreements.

Now, a huge data leak shows how corrupt politicians, criminals, and smugglers from all over the world have placed huge amounts in Dubai’s real estate market.

Dagbladet reveals how Norwegians have invested millions in hide for Norwegian tax authorities and make money from it.

Dubai is Las Vegas for adults in the Middle East. Wonderful restaurants, great food and wine and nightclubs, tells an elated Norwegian in the 60’s, who has owned an exclusive apartment right on the beaches for several years.

– But I wonder one thing: How did you find me?

Indoor resorts, diamond and gold trading, 10,000 crowns, and 24 carat gold ice cream balls attract people from all over the world.

“You can pay in cash when you buy property in Dubai.”

People from all over the world with money flocked to the tax haven in the desert, offering luxury properties at a low price. An investment of 2.5 million also ensures a residence permit for both the buyer and the family.

Dubai was also known to guest workers on slave contracts and underpaid maidens without rights. Investors with spreadsheets or black money faced few obstacles. House prices were quadrupled in a few years and who owns a home in Dubai is strictly kept secret by the state.

The Emirates have no extradition agreements with Norway, other European countries or the United States. Dubai is a well-known haunt for those who need protection from police, tax collectors or creditors in their home country.

Now a large database of information on 129,000 buyers, sellers and owners of 54,000 addresses in Dubai has leaked out of the country. The analysis company C4ADS and the journalist organization OCCRP have sorted the information and found huge real estate investments from people associated with corruption, murder, smuggling, money laundering or embezzlement from a number of countries in the world.

In the Dubai leak, Dagbladet has found about 80 properties associated with Norwegians, only in this one of the seven emirates.

Calculations show that half of the properties the newspaper Dagbladet found total are valued at over NOK 150 million. The other half have not obtained value calculations.

In the Dubai leak, around 30 Norwegian taxpayers are sorted by “Norwegian citizenship”. But Dagbladet has also searched among 950,000 registrations of people with “unknown citizenship”.

There were far more Norwegians here, which Dagbladet has identified by searching by name and Norwegian phone numbers, addresses and e-mail addresses. Not everyone has been able to make contact with. Some have rejected inquiries.

Exclusive Norwegian area

In the United Arab Emirates, torture of prisoners is widespread, according to Amnesty International. The law discriminates against gays and women, who have been arrested for having sex outside of marriage because the police report rape.

About half of the Norwegians Dagbladet have found in the leak, are registered with apartments in newly built Dubai Marina. Sunset over the Arabian Gulf, exclusive restaurants, gorgeous clubs and fashion shops lure people to the artificial island.

Car wash investors

Among the Norwegian e-mail addresses in the leak is “contact@ensjobilpleie.no”. Next to it stands the name “Arshad Akhtar” and two apartments in the apartment blocks Lago Vista and Lakeside.

Several of the companies in which the 43-year-old was the general manager, owner or chairman of the board, went bankrupt or has been forced to retire after several years of serious auditor notes, shows information from the Brønnøysund Register Center. Among the remarks are illegal lending to shareholders, lack of tax deduction, breach of the Accounting Act, lost share capital, late accounts and lack of reconciliation of cash holdings against accounts

Several people have been contacted by Dagbladet, and it is quite clear that there are embezzlement of tax in the multi-million class.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

USS Pennsylvania is silent and invisible. Under the hull, some of America’s greatest military secrets hide – and an incredible amount of explosive power.

You can’t see her. She can go to depths of 250 meters and stay under water for six months. You can’t hear her and she can keep going for 20 years without refueling.

She is the most effective murder weapon ever designed, an apocalypse machine capable of destroying the entire continent.

No, we’re not talking about a twisted Nazi weapon to take over the world, but the USS Pennsylvania nuclear submarine. She is one of 14 vessels in the Ohio class and the largest submarine in the US Navy.

The 165-man crew is hand-picked and must meet high physical and, not least, mental requirements.

“Sailors on my ship have to cope with being locked in during the entire voyage, which can last ten weeks straight,” said Bradford S. Neff. Neff was former captain of Pennsylvania’s “blue” team.

The USS Pennsylvania nuclear reactor is one of the most secretive military technologies in the United States, and is much more advanced than the Nautilus prototype.

Uranium fuel the size of a fist is all it takes to power the 1700-tonne ship that can maintain a speed of 45 km / h under water.

– Pennsylvania was in service in 1989 and is not yet refilled with fuel. The only thing that limits how long we can be at sea is access to food, says Bradford S. Neff.

The ship has supplies for three months.

With a length of 171 meters, the USS Pennsylvania is still the largest submarine in the Western Hemisphere. She is one of 14 similar ships in the Ohio class.

The submarine is as good as impossible to detect, and under the hull there are 24 Trident missiles that each have more explosive power than all the bombs released during both world wars.

NUCLEAR WATER: Here a Trident missile is fired from underwater. The USS Pennsylvania submarine is equipped with 24 such nuclear warheads, each of which has more explosive power than all bombs detonated during World War I and World War II.
(Wikipedia)

Monday, November 5, 2018

Norwegians do not understand how bad Washington works
People vote for Trump because they want a maniac that can kick down all trash cans in Washington.

WASHINGTON (Nettavisen): Hans Høeg (47) from Drammen is the first and only Norwegian with the title of chief executive officer in Congress. He has worked for five years for his close friend Republican Thomas Massie in the House of Representatives, and therefore knows a lot about what many of us Norwegians do not fully understand:

Why so many Americans want Donald Trump.

People in Norway do not fully understand that the United States is a federation of 50 states, where the central government under the Constitution really should not have so much to say, “he said.

Eventually, “Washington” has taken more and more power over the 320 million inhabitants of the various states, Høeg believes, while lobbyists have taken over the policy in a huge and ineffective management system.

“Norwegians simply do not understand how bad Washington works. The United States does not have a functioning democracy, “says Høeg.

Sprinkle the trash cans

“There are people from Washington telling you why you can not regulate the river over your land. People are so pissed off. Therefore, they will have a maniac that can kick down all trash cans in Washington.

“Did you mean to get Donald Trump chosen two years ago?”

“The system is such that the various representatives work mostly on behalf of themselves, so our primary task was to get Thomas re-elected in Kentucky. But he is Republicans, so you may say that.

Originally, Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Hans Høeg from Drammen were old college students from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Refused to join

When Massie was elected to Congress in 2012, he would bring the Norwegian buddy to the staff of 20 people in the House of Representatives.

– I refused, of course. I could not talk about politics. But Thomas persuaded me, that’s why he wanted me, he said.

After five years in the center of power, Høeg has now resigned as chief of staff, but is still a consultant for the staff. At the same time, he writes book, in Norwegian, with the working title “A Norwegian in the House”.

Here he will tell how the lobbyists and the everlasting struggle for money to fund the next campaign control most of the policy in the world’s most powerful country.

House of Cards

“Life at Capitol Hill is really quite similar to the House of Cards. A colleague of mine said that the only difference is that in the House of Cards «there is actually a guy with a plan».

And this is what Americans have become more and more furious about, says Høeg. He points out that in Norway we mostly trust the politicians. We may disagree, but mostly we see that they are doing their best for countries and people.

– That’s not the way in the United States. In Kentucky you meet those who come to political meetings literally with high heels. The politicians have built up for many years. Many actually believe that the government is evil, that the government is evil, says Høeg.

And with such a point of departure, it is easy to think that Obamacare, for example, is really designed for the insurance industry, and that politicians are only looking to mingle their own cake.

Hillary’s forefront

Hans Høeg has an American mother and Norwegian father, and was even home in Norway the summer before the election in 2016. Then he said that Trump had to win. Not because people liked Trump, but because the predecessor of Hillary Clinton – who symbolized “Washington” – was so deep and so many.

And he saw how the polls in the New York Times and the like did not really capture the questions people of “bygda” (very small place) were concerned with.

“But now, as Trump is still being put to lies?”

– Yes. I myself have trouble understanding how the Conservative, Christian Right and Trump have found each other. He does not live after the ten commandments, just right. Yet they look at him as a kind of broadcast, I have heard people say that God would not allow Hillary to win.

Raised on Soprano

Hans Høeg also points out that Trump has actually carried out some things that the Republicans have been concerned with, for example, lower taxes.

“But when Trump is sitting in the night and twittering in the way, is it a conscious strategy?

Just “Twitter-Trump” are few who want to say so much about. But remember, he grew up in New York on a kind of Tony Soprano show. If someone offended you then you had to do everything to offend. And he is probably more calculating strategically than many think.

Just who wins on Tuesday, Høeg does not want to think so much about. He also does not believe that means so much. The grip to lobbyists will be no less anyway.

– A maniac in the White House

Even Hans Høeg has never voted for the Republicans. While the representative and study cameraman Thomas Massie belongs to a group commonly known as “libertarian conservatives” – who want as little state as possible.

“And originally, it was meant that the states should take care of the most necessary. Then it would not matter if there was a maniac in the White House, he says and laughs.