The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Steelie Neelie admits laptop hack during IGF

EU officials' MacBooks hacked in Azerbaijani hotel

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Two laptops used by European Commission officials were pinched last week in Azerbaijan's capital Baku during the Internet Governance Forum, Digital Agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes has revealed.

In a blog post at the weekend, Kroes explained that she was in two minds about attending the summit, held this year in the gas and oil-rich country, because the Azerbaijani government has “a very troubling attitude to freedom and democracy”. She added the following:

When the IGF comes to town, radical change often follows. Because, when empowered, connected citizens press for greater freedom. As happened in Tunisia and Egypt in the years after they held this conference.

But on the other hand I was denied access to meet political prisoners, despite a commitment from the President himself. Activists were harassed at the internet conference. My advisers had their computers hacked. So much for openness.

The attack in question targeted the MacBooks of Kroes’ spokesman Ryan Heath and a second colleague while they were in their hotel. Heath told AP they received a warning message from Apple that the computers had been accessed by a third party.

“I’m presuming it was some kind of surveillance,” he told the news wire.

“What we’re going to do is to get the computers forensically analysed to see what if anything was taken out of them.”

The Azerbaijani administration has since hit out at Kroes, claiming her accusations were made to deliberately undermine the event organisers, and the country’s good name.

"We state beforehand that there was no such interference, and couldn't have been,” head of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Social and Political Department, Ali Hasanov, told local news site Trend.

“If Kroes and her assistant really believe that there was interference in their computers, then please let them turn to the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office. A criminal case will be filed and investigation will be launched based on this appeal.” ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Re: Great Success!

Hi there, your APPLE_DEVICE has been affected by a third party! To prevent PR disaster, just send login details, email addresses, passwords, etc to: i.r.haxor@phishmail.ru and your APPLE_DEVICE will be fixed.

8
0

Coo - A really hard choice

Now who do I believe - Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Social and Political Department, Ali Hasanov, or Neelie?

5
0

Pinched or hacked?

First line of the article says 2 laptops were pinched, Kroes's post indicated thet 2 laptops were hacked. So which was it? Or was it 2 pinched + 2 hacked?

2
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Number of cops abusing Police National Computer access on the rise
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
Flash flaw potentially makes every webcam or laptop a PEEPHOLE
But it's a Google problem - Chrome only, insists Adobe
Internet fraud still stings suckers
Australians twice as gullible as Americans
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
 breaking news
Yahoo! joins! rivals! in! PRISM! data! request! admission!
Keep calm and carry on using American tech firms, folks
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?