U.S. probes hack of credit data on Mrs Obama, Beyonce, others

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that U.S. authorities are investigating whether hackers unearthed and posted online financial information that belongs to first lady Michelle Obama and a variety of celebrities like Beyonce and Jay-Z.

"We should not be surprised that if we've got hackers that want to dig in and have a lot of resources, that they can access this information," Obama told ABC News. "Again, not sure how accurate but ... you've got websites out there that tell people's credit card info. That's how sophisticated they are."

The FBI and other U.S. agencies said they were investigating a website that posted financial and personal information about Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, other government figures and celebrities.

Some of the information was fraudulently obtained via a commonly used website for consumer credit reports, according to credit monitoring firm Equifax Inc, which said it was launching its own internal investigation.

It was unclear how much of the data, which first appeared on the website www.exposed.su on Monday, was accurate or who posted it.

The site listed Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, addresses and credit reports purportedly belonging to 18 prominent Americans. At least some of the telephone numbers were inaccurate.

The website, whose first page portrayed a mysterious-looking woman wearing heavy eye make-up with one finger over her lips, was still accessible on Tuesday although some links relating to individuals could not be opened.

Others listed on the page included FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Eric Holder, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, actors Ashton Kutcher and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and property mogul Donald Trump.

Asked about the posting on Michelle Obama, Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said: "We are investigating the matter. Due to the ongoing investigation we can't comment any further." A Justice Department spokeswoman said the FBI was investigating.

Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman Sara Faden said the department was also looking into the matter but said celebrities would have to file a police report to get their entry investigated.

It was not clear how many, if any, celebrities had filed a report. Faden said the entry of information purportedly on Police Chief Beck was being investigated.

Equifax, one of three main U.S. credit monitoring companies, said the information for four of the high-profile individuals was accessed through annualcreditreport.com, a shared website also used by rivals TransUnion Corp and Experian PLC. It did not name the four individuals.

The company's initial investigation found that the perpetrators had personal information on certain individuals that allowed them to pass authentication steps, company spokesman Timothy Klein said.

"The fraudsters would have had to have a lot of information ... this is pretty detailed stuff," he said. Those responsible for the breach would have had to know about mortgages, car loans, or other credit accounts to get the reports, he added.

'DOXING'

Social Security numbers, home addresses and other personal information can be used for identity theft or other illegitimate purposes such as stalking.

Equifax said it was working to fix the problem, which Klein said involved the credentials used by the free public service website that allows consumers to pick which of the three credit monitoring companies' reports they want.

"We are actually taking the necessary steps to further improve and tighten the credentialing process," Klein said.

Six reports from Equifax were linked on www.exposed.su as of Tuesday afternoon and were for rapper Jay-Z, Holder, Schwarzenegger, Beck, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and reality TV star Kris Jenner.

Experian said it froze the credit files of those "victimized by this malicious attack" and was investigating what information may have been compromised.

It said its own systems had not been hacked. But it said in a statement: "Criminals accessed personal credential information through various outside sources, which provided them with sufficient information to illegally access a limited number of individual reports from some US credit reporting agencies."

TransUnion said its systems had not been compromised. Representatives for Experian did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The phone number given for Biden on the website turned out to be that of a store in Delaware, and one given for Kutcher was for a New York City accounting firm, raising questions about how much of the other information posted was accurate.

FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said the website under investigation was an example of "doxing" in which someone creates a Web page with a list of personal information about a target.

"What we've seen on the website is an example of doxing, with pretty high-profile individuals, celebrities and public figures," Shearer said. "(It) doesn't mean it's true," she added.

Publicists for several of the celebrities named on the website and contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Roberta Rampton and Steve Holland in Washington and Piya Sinha-Roy, Eric Kelsey and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles. Editing by David Storey and Eric Beech)

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U.S. probes racial disparities in Seattle school discipline

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The Education Department is investigating whether Seattle's public school district discriminates against black students by subjecting them to tougher and more frequent discipline than white students, agency and district officials said.

The inquiry, launched in May 2012, is focusing in part on the district's own statistics showing that African-American high school students are suspended or expelled more than three times as often as other students, school officials said on Wednesday.

In middle school, the racial disparity is greater, with blacks 3 1/2 times more likely to be disciplined than other students, according to district data shared with Reuters.

More than a quarter of all black middle school pupils have received short-term suspensions in any given year since at least the 2006-07 academic year, compared with 7.4 percent or less annually for white students, the data shows.

African-Americans represent just over 20 percent of the 12,500 high school students in the Seattle district and 18 percent of 8,000 middle school students there, and yet they account for more than 40 percent of all suspensions and expulsions in those schools.

The racial disparity in student discipline "is a problem," Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda, who was appointed last May to oversee the district, told Reuters. "It is a concern for us."

School officials said they were unsure what led the Education Department to single out Seattle, but Banda added, "It was something that I was aware of when I started. The community has voiced concerns."

U.S. Education Department officials declined to say what led to the review. But spokesman Jim Bradshaw said the department was looking at whether Seattle schools were discriminating against blacks by disciplining them "more frequently and more harshly than similarly situated white students."

Banda said he believed Seattle was only the second school district, after Oakland, California, to come under a similar examination by the federal government.

That inquiry was concluded, according to the Seattle Times, when Oakland settled the matter by agreeing to avoid suspensions and expulsions as much as possible and to take a variety of other steps designed to minimize racial disparities.

Seattle, with some 50,000 students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, ranks 99th among the nation's 100 largest public school districts, according to ProximityOne.com, an education resources website.

A sweeping study by the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights last year found black and Latino students across the United States were far more likely to be suspended than white students, and far less likely to have access to rigorous college-preparatory courses.

Among the study's findings were that one in five African-American boys, and one in 10 African-American girls, was suspended from school during the study period, the 2009-10 academic year.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Vicki Allen)

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Guatemala probes reports Mexican drug lord may be dead

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan authorities are mobilizing security forces to scour a remote, rural area where residents reported a gunbattle between drug gangs and said one of the dead resembled Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

But officials stressed late Thursday that they had not yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened.

Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told The Associated Press that police and soldiers would begin searching on foot and in the air at first light Friday, looking for the scene of the reported gunfight in Peten province near the border with Mexico.

Authorities initially said Thursday night that they were investigating whether Guzman was one of at least two men killed in the remote area, but hours later backtracked and said they had only received reports of a battle from local people.

Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shootout.

"We have to wait for all the technical information in order to determine if, in fact, one of the dead is of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman," Cuevas said.

Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities hadn't yet found a body or the scene where reports said a shootout took place.

He never said what led officials to think that one of the dead men might be Guzman.

But Interior Department spokeswoman Carla Herrera told The Associated Press that one of the victims physically resembled the drug lord. She said officials had asked the Mexican government to send Guzman's fingerprints to compare them to the man found inside a vehicle and to send investigators.

However, Herrera's boss, Lopez Bonilla, told the AP that it was residents of the town of San Francisco who had told officials of a gunbattle and reported that one of the people killed looked like Guzman.

"The fact is we don't have any of this information confirmed," Lopez Bonilla said.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Thursday that he had no information on the case.

"I don't have any information that can confirm that," he told reporters.

Peten province is an isolated area of jungle and ranches where 27 ranch workers were massacred in 2011 by the Zetas drug gang, a top rival for Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Guzman, who has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001, is one of the world's most dangerous and most wanted fugitives.

He's also one of the richest: Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1 billion.

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